I just cannot see JT's concerns - if correct maintenance actions had been completed and no fault found, why would he be in the 'firing line'?
Perhaps my words were ill-considered. We are quite aligned in base philosophy .. my concern related to the scenario if one had a system which permitted U/Ss to be cleared either without fixing or deferring them IAW whatever the system permitted (if that's not too many circles going around and around ..)
No-one is 'carrying' an unfixed defect.
I fear that many do. Certainly is evident in some areas of the GA arena. Then, of course, there is the MEL, CFU, and so on ...
the next occurrence of this snag may not occur for another few flights
indeed, a problem. We have many histories where a fault cannot be found, hides for a week or two, jumps out to say "hi" and so on. Usually, it eventually comes out into the open, can be found, and then fixed .. but it can take quite some time, on occasion. For the strictly electronic stuff, it is not at all unusual for a problem to manifest itself for a while .. and then just quietly go away and not bother us again ... sometimes wastes a lot of time and is very, very frustrating to the boys on the floor.
nobody knows about snag XXX 4 days ago.
that is a definite fault in the crews and systems. The log either carried on the aircraft (or, at least, available preflight) should cover a reasonable history. In our case, the logs are 50 pages with multiple flights so we might see anything up to 100 - 150 flights per book. Snag details are in a subordinate log document which, likewise, is available.
We have a small team at XXX Airlines, so we just email each other with the latest odd 'grey' snag,
in my view, a silly system and very prone to missing out the guy who has the subsequent problem and need. Why can't the crews review all the recent history ? If they can't then that is a real problem
and it goes against the whole spirit of the techlog system
I think I need some philosophical guidance on what your system is setting out to do ? as that statement doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The techlog needs to be a living record .. tells me what the originator thought he/she saw etc ... tells me what the maintainer did to investigate and acquit the snag .. and is available to all and sundry for review .. indeed, anyone can go back to the very first flights on the fleet and read up on the history for any given tail ... just a matter of digging out the archived techlog copy from the filing cabinet.
Perhaps, if the CAA REALLY don't like open ADDs
as I'm not familiar with your local details I can't make any direct observation. However, in my view, a sensible system will have a prescribed process to declare and permit continued operation with known defects. Typical is the civil MEL process which is quite rigorous in its detail.
Another is the military CFU process which is a bit more ad hoc (which, indeed, has its own lack of procedure hazards). We use something similar and any such defect is raised in the techlog, cleared to the deferral record where it stays until it is finally rectified ... which meets your desire precisely ... the flight crew has the defect directed to their attention ..and they then can refer back to the relevant original techlog pages to get the full story.
I don't have time to go through the last 50 techlog pages to decipher the faint carbonised writing and illegible comments.
I concur with those sentiments .. the formal deferred rectification process (by whatever name) does make the thing a lot easier for the user.