Maintenance One Offs.

[MEL-king]

Good Old EASA have a cunning plan to make it easier for the airlines operation. They are planning to give you chaps in the left seat authority to issue a Certificate of Release to service with Maintanance manual guidance. An example of this would be a Lightning Strike Inspection or heavy landing inspection. My question to you Pilot types is would you feel confident in Signing without any further training?
As an engineer i already see commercial pressure to get things airborne amongst both the pilot and engineer community. Every day i see aircraft return to base with "ACF" signed in a Action Taken box. And in most if not all cases the boundaries were pushed and luck played a big part in the return of the aircraft.

[matkat]

This is nothing new I was drafted into Prague 10 years ago when KLM thought it would be a good idea to do this it ended up with Them having an awful dispatch rate as the Aircrew were continually phoning back to Maintrol for guidance and making the aircraft late after I went there the rate shot back up and They discontinued the "experiment".

[Empty Cruise]

When MEL only states O-procedures, I'd be more than happy to sign off. However, I wouldn't sign off on a strike inspection, I know far too little about how materials display heat/kinetic damage (but could prolly find out how to confirm no welding of flight control surfaces had taken place & that the no. of static wicks remaining was within dispatch limits).

Empty

[Flying Torquewrench]

Personally, i think it is a bad development.

Please leave these inspections up to an engineer. At least an engineer knows what he is looking for and makes sure the inspection is completed as it should be. You can not expect a pilot to perform a lightning strike inspection if he/she doesn't know what to look for.

It seems to be another money saving exercise. As it works like planned than an airline doesn't have to call out an engineer and there fore saving some money.

Keep the professions seperate and let everybody do what he/she is trained for. As mentioned before they don't give a one off to a engineer to fly the aircraft. And i am sure that most of the engineers out there are capable of performing an autoland. However you still take a risk by letting an untrained person fly the aircraft and it is the same risk that you take when you let a pilot perform an inspection that he/she is not trained for.

Only my two penny's

[Sunfish]

With the greatest of respect, I suggest that the real skill the pilot needs is to know is when to call the engineers, and when no call is needed. I'm not sure that this can be easily taught, based on what Mr Torquewrench has said.

[GotTheTshirt]

Apparently the next stage is that if one flight deck member goes sick down the route a licenced Engineer can sit in the seat to get the aircraft back to base. This will only apply to 2 crew operations:} :ok:

[Georgeablelovehowindia]

When I was a sprog first officer on a geriatric 707, the captain and I were interrupted during our pre-flight checks by the flight engineer entering the flight deck, having done the walk-round. "You can forget that, gents," he said. "We're going nowhere - it's got corrosion right through the pressure hull!" Well, the captain and myself jumped out to have a look and agreed that we wouldn't have seen it.

We offloaded the passengers and flew unpressurised to our home base, where overnight they put a big shiny patch over it.

The aircraft was on third-party lease to another airline, but we were supplying the flight deck crew. Thank goodness that flight engineer knew what to look for!

[OVERTALK]

Good Old EASA have a cunning plan to make it easier for the airlines operation. They are planning to give you chaps in the left seat authority to issue a Certificate of Release to service with Maintanance manual guidance. An example of this would be a Lightning Strike Inspection or heavy landing inspection.
.
Any EASA web-site (or elsewise) link for this revelation?

[Arnie DeDump]

George, Interesting comments but the curious thing about Flight Engineers that I knew was that they never had ready access to the Maintenance Manual or the Structural Repair Manual, the Licensed Engineers did, who's call then ?

[Georgeablelovehowindia]

Arnie DD: Yes, perhaps I shouldn't have brought the vanishing breed of flight engineers into the discussion. I only used it as an example of someone with an engineering background seeing a defect in an aircraft, which I, as a pilot wouldn't have noticed.

I have only ever once brought an aircraft back to the UK, with uncertified rectification. This was following the loss of hydraulic fluid on a 737, caused by a split 'o' ring. After much telexing with Maintrol, I signed the CRS, under what was called the 'Uncertified Defect Rectification Procedure.' After some years, the regulations changed, and I was interested to see that this procedure was no longer authorised.

Now it's being proposed that, with due reading of the relevant manuals, pilots will be allowed to sign the CRS for defects including lightning strike and heavy landing damage. Blimey ... surely not!

[woptb]

Worst case scenario;With the benefit of telephonic advice & no access to a maintenance manual,'YOU' sign a CRS clearing the aircraft for flight - if an incident were to ensue & god forbid lives lost or people injured,the burden would be intolerable.
In the final analysis you would be signing the CRS & taking on all the responsibilities that entails

[Golden Rivet]

Maintenance control will only give you the answers you want to hear. It's their job to get you back home.

Would they be held responsible for any advice or guidance given over the phone ?

[Flying Torquewrench]

It doesn't have to be such a problem to get hold of a maintenance manual. The company that i used to work for carried a laptop on every aircraft with the digital maintenance manual on it.

But it is not the access to the information which is the problem. If your not used to a maintenance manual it can be a daunting task to find what you need.

And what are the limits of what a pilot is allowed to do? Using the example from the first post (lightning strike inspection), it can be required to open the radome if damage is suspected. Who is going to open and close (torque) it? And where do you get the tools from?

Being an engineer on various types and a pilot i think i am capable of performing these inspections. But there are some pilots around that i would not like to see performing any kind of inspection apart from the pre-flight and even that is for some a bit hard.

But we will see. It is going to be very interesting if there is any thruth in this rumour.

[Rigga]

Hear, Hear FT!
Leave the assessments, repairs and ADD's to the professionals - and we will leave the flying to you.