Originally Posted by
PPSept15
Yes. I have seen some disturbing incidents of this myself.
I was given an airbus for dispatch, on which the previous sector the recirc fan has overtemped and stopped, triggering the overhead fault light on. The previous crew had started the smoke/fume checklist before the recirc fan managed to stop itself. Fumes were evident in the cabin, as per the cabin log.
The engineers solution was to simply reset the recirc fan, as per the fault/pushbutton.
At no point did they express any intention to inspect, or replace, the fan. They simply reset an overtemped recirc, and signed it off as [test satis].
Needless to say, we were not happy with this, and the engineers grumbled and carried on when we told them to track down a spare from another carrier. Took 2 hours, but who cares.
Did the previous crew write it up as a smoke/fume event? No engineer in their right mind will pen off a smoke event which stops after a recirc fan is isolated, with just a reset. That sort of negligence should be reported to CASA.