View Full Version : Incident during maintenance on taxiway
Who is responsible if anything goes wrong in this case when you have one certified mechanic on the left seat and copilot on the right? But no captain on board..
First - Who's Driving? and what sort of "Problem"?
I my opinion:
1. Even if the pilot is doing what the engineer says he wants, the pilot is responsible for allowing the aircraft to get into a hazardous situation. that is his job.
2. If a problem arises because of the tests being run (if the test is looking for this problem)- the test has sucessfully raised the problem into view.
3. If a problem arises because of the tests being run (even if the test is NOT looking for this problem)- the test has sucessfully raised the problem into view.
Obviously, company rules may differ for responsibilities when ground running for maintenance reasons.
SeldomFixit
7th Oct 2007, 01:13
Other than a flight engineer, no one rides "side saddle". You are in the seat or you aren't. If you take the seat you take the responsibility. If you ask the crew to do something for you that you rightly should have done yourself but would rather duck shove, you are the wrong man for the job. Of course, certain circumstances require you to request crew assistance (not qualified for EGR being one example), but let's keep this simple.
Piper19
7th Oct 2007, 09:13
Even if there is a captain on board preparing his papers, and I do final ground checks on e.g. a thrust reverser operational check I am responsible for what I do on the aircraft. When I as mechanic am still doing maintenance tasks, that means the aircraft is not declared serviceable by me, and the captain cannot have signed an acceptance, thus cannot be responsible. When I release the aircraft serviceable, captain signs, I am already in the coffee room!
I never had a situation where a copilot and mechanic are both acting in the cockpit. If I'm not qualified for an engine run, or no other mechanics can do this, the airplane stays on ground, crew or not.
ericferret
7th Oct 2007, 10:03
I think that some (most?) airlines require 2 people to be present on the flight deck for engine running.
If you were alone you might well ask for assistance from an aircrew member (if you could find one!!).
The aircrew member would be acting in lieu of the second engineer and prime responsibility would lie with the engineer in charge of the ground run.
There would be no captains acceptance signed in the tech log and the aircraft would be engineerings responsibility.
greatwhitehunter
9th Oct 2007, 16:02
Thats how it is where I am Erricferret. Until the captain signs for it it's engineerings aircraft and my responsibility.
Once had a capatain complain that we were 'getting in one anothers way' and basicly tried to order me off the flight deck. I agreed that we were indeed getting in one anothers way, then pointed out it was my flight deck and asked him to leave until I was finished. A nice moment dealing with one of the very few rude pilots I have ever met.