737-700 M. E. L.

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hello every one,

here some more food for thaught.
a long time ago i was scheduled to fly a fokker 28 out of my home base with a snag on the tailmounted speedbrakes : speedbrakes worked fine, only the autoretract cb was popped with no reset possible. this meant that in case of go-around the speedbrakes would not retract automatically. would then be similar to boeing aeroplanes where this autoretract feature is deemed unnecessary( the aa b757cali pilots might disagree if they still could, black humor, i agree. ...).
anyway, the fokker mel stated that in case of the speedbrakes autoretract system inop, in order to dispatch, the speedbrakes should be disabled alltogether in the retract position. so no sbrakes on this flight. anyone who has flown the f28 knows how valuable an asset the tail speedbrakes are in flight, no vibrations whatsoever, you can descent & decelerate at the same time etc.
& normally at 100ft above ground you extend them to reduce gently from vref+10 to vref at touchdown.
although not required in take off/reject scenarios ( the liftdumpers on the wings are required for that matter), i considered that in view of the short rwy 1476m/4842ft & being at the home base, the remedy of the mel(no speedbrakes), versus manual sb only, was worse than the original problem. i fully understood the fokker technical concern about going around with sb still out in case we forgot to retract them. i don't remember if weather/icing conditions were a factor, but it could have been.
so i refused to accept the aircraft in this condition, causing great commotion to maintenance & the head honchos(management) in their yvory tower upstairs. they even tried to contact another captain to replace me. luckyly the chiefpilot at that time was on my side & stopped the whole thing.(wonder if he would be able to do the same nowadays?). finally, after much hassle back & forth, it was agreed upon to make the necessary repairs & the flight departed with about 3 hours delay & went uneventful. even the passengers understood the tecdelay was for their & our safety.

i welcome any comments, many thanks.