Originally Posted by littlebulbs
If you are called to an aircraft that has returned to stand, you go to the MEL. If you cannot find a relevant section in the MEL for the defective item that you have, it means that it is either an non airworthiness item or it is a no dispatch.
As a pilot, I don't need to return to stand to put a heater off and check the MEL ... I would do that in less than 2 minutes at the holding point.
If I need a technician, it means I need its professionnal expertise :
- documentation ;
- tools ;
- manual skills ;
- experience ;
- analysis skills ;
- ...
Because one should not put an item on the defect list iaw the MEL and go flying, without :
- properly identifying the failure (here a relay failure)
- properly isolating the system
- analysing the consequences of the failure
The MEL objective was never to dispatch an aircraft in a hurry, without even "thinking". That is the reason the captain came back to the stand in the first place : investigation!
By the way, since the problem was not new, somedy (a supervisor?) would have got the time to think about it in the previous 24 hours. Normaly the maintenance office would collect, read and analyse the maintenance reports at least on a daily basis, and as close as possible as in "real time". This is not intended to be a boring paper work job! This is supposed to support the field technician ... in the confort of an office, with all the neat documentation on hand.
I know ... we don't live in an ideal world !