Unfortunately this does seem to be a regular occurance. I caught my CFI repressurising a nose wheel oleo the other day, luckily one of my students is an engineer, so I dragged him over to have a check, where he found the fork seal had blown and immediately suggested grounding the thing until it could be checked properly and replaced. So that's what I did. Cue much histrionics from aforesaid CFI.
Remember as a/c captain it's your right to ground an aircraft you do not think is safe. Non-trained people doing maintainance is a worry, but most will only do little things that anyone with a smattering of mechanical knowledge could cope with. Problem is, it's illegal and if anything were to happen.......
One example of the wonderful maintainance system we have here.
A couple of months ago the electric fuel pump on one plane failed, the engineers turned up, had a look, said "it's ******ed" and ordered us a new one. It cost about £160 before VAT and fitting. I had a look at the pump and found that it was exactly the same one as in my old car. It even had AUTOMOTIVE PART stamped on the side!! thing is from halfords it's only £35 inc. VAT!! All because of one piece of paper! :o
This unfortunately can cause some people to cut corners a bit. If you're unhappy with that make sure you say so and if it means going somewhere else, then so be it , remember unless they are trained and licenced if it all goes wrong it will end up in your lap.
[ 06 September 2001: Message edited by: Say again s l o w l y ]