MX Write Up

BobDDuck

Island Bus Driver
You're the captain and, after checking the maintenance log book when you first get in the airplane you fly 5 legs. After the 5th leg (which conveniently happens to be back into a hub) you open up the logbook to write up a burned out nav light your FO just discovered on the walk around only to find an open write up that was added during the second leg of the day pertaining to a broken galley coffee pot. It appears to be in the FA's handwriting and the format of the writeup is correct.

What's your next move.
 
Call MX to get the appropriate DMI/MEL/fix as appropriate.

Ask the F/O if they entered anything into the logbook. If not, ask the F/A. After you verify that either one or none of your crew did the entry:

If you have the ASAP program, call the hotline, start the 24hr clock. Jot down your notes from the flight, noting log pages and flight numbers (trust me your ASAP rep will thank you). Fill out the paperwork and send it in.

If you don't have ASAP, fill out a NASA form, then whatever your company calls the Flight Crew Report, irregularity report, or what ever you'd like to call it.
 
It is not a legal open write up, hence real no legality issue. Flight Attendants at my place are not trained to write up items in the Maintenance Log, like at your place I am assuming, or can they legally sign for it. Proper format doesn't matter.

I would ask her if she did write something down and if she did I would write her up and make sure she had disciplinary actions taken against her. I would demand she was sent back for retraining actually on CRM.

I would write an ASAP report just in case, but wouldn't lose sleep over it.
 
Jeanie

Near the end in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Mrs. Bueller is ranting about all the trouble their daughter Jeanie caused throughout the day and how it caused her to lose an important business deal. Mr. Bueller simply replies, "I think we should shoot her." Sorry, that had nothing to do with this scenario.

* * *​

I would take the advice of Seggy and Polar 742 and file an ASAP if I was the captain. If the logbook is technically supposed to be checked at some point during the pre-flight/through-stop check then some FAA type might find some problem with why it wasn't found after the second leg.

But, I can see an ASAP event review committee easily agreeing that if the captain had filled it out and stowed the book at the end of the previous flight and also set it up for the next flight, then that is the preflight check of the book since a flight attendant is not supposed to be grabbing the thing from an empty cockpit on a turn.

It does sound like the flight attendant (and the rest of the FAs at the company for that matter) needs to be informed of who has the authority to make entries in the logbook and that they need to speak up if something is broken instead of writing it down and saying nothing.
 
You're the captain and, after checking the maintenance log book when you first get in the airplane you fly 5 legs. After the 5th leg (which conveniently happens to be back into a hub) you open up the logbook to write up a burned out nav light your FO just discovered on the walk around only to find an open write up that was added during the second leg of the day pertaining to a broken galley coffee pot. It appears to be in the FA's handwriting and the format of the writeup is correct.

What's your next move.

Unless you're changing pages every leg, I don't see how you would be able to tell that it was written up on the second leg. And, since you are able to fit 5 legs on a page, you'd notice it pretty quick. Unless the FA was smart enough to start a new page once you got the write up on the first page..... hmmmm.... but then you'd notice that you're on legs 3-5 on a new page, and you don't remove the carbon copies yourself.
 
Pull the plane over... open the door... kick out the FA... tell her to take a taxi back to the hub.
 
It is not a legal open write up, hence real no legality issue. Flight Attendants at my place are not trained to write up items in the Maintenance Log, like at your place I am assuming, or can they legally sign for it. Proper format doesn't matter.

I would ask her if she did write something down and if she did I would write her up and make sure she had disciplinary actions taken against her. I would demand she was sent back for retraining actually on CRM.

I would write an ASAP report just in case, but wouldn't lose sleep over it.

Unless you're changing pages every leg, I don't see how you would be able to tell that it was written up on the second leg. And, since you are able to fit 5 legs on a page, you'd notice it pretty quick. Unless the FA was smart enough to start a new page once you got the write up on the first page..... hmmmm.... but then you'd notice that you're on legs 3-5 on a new page, and you don't remove the carbon copies yourself.

I see this as one question that generates a couple issues.

First, let's talk about logbooks. The FAA mandates that a company keeps a logbook on each aircraft. Like personal logbooks, they outline what records need maintained at a minimum, and it's up to the individual company how to format, record and add any extraneous data they want to keep. Naturally, all this information is laid out in the Operating Manual for the airline (Trivia: Did you know that there is only ONE operating Manual for an Airline? It is broken down into various volumes to give each workgroup what they need, but the various volumes are viewed as one manual by the FAA.).

Some airlines, like the one I came from previously, had a log page that recorded employee numbers, flight times, trend info, and discrepancy info for multiple flights throughout the day. The airline I'm at now records the same information, but there is only 1 flight per logpage.

Other airlines, and I'm going to guess PSA is like this according to what BobDDuck wrote, have purely a maintenance book, to include employee numbers, but no flight times as the FAA approves the station or ACARS times in the airline's computer network as approved record keeping.

In the third case, I can see how Bob (or whoever told him the story) got blindsided by flying a couple legs with an open write up.

The other factor is the "legality" of the write up brought up by our resident wookie.

Each company's Operating Manual designates who may enter a discrepancy in the log (CA, MX, "crewmember" or "flight crewmemeber"). The previous airline either the CA or MX were the only ones allowed to enter discrepancies (the F/Os might do it under the CA's discretion, and then have the CA sign the block - IMO a great technique for helping develop our Captains in Training). This airline, the CA, FE or MX will make an entry into the discrepancy block, and just about everyone does.

The company operation manual will also designate if a flight may occur with an item in the "discrepancy" block, or if it MUST be closed out prior to continued flight. I've only worked for 2 air carriers, and at both, all discrepancies must have a corrective action. That corrective action might be an inspection, MEL, DMI, CDL, or repair, or another approved method to veirfy that the discrepancy has been dealt with appropriately.

From an FAA standpoint, and especially after the maintenance records issue, I doubt they'll really care who wrote the discrepancy in the book, and if you argue, they'll wonder why the FA or whoever had to writeup something the CA refused to (Argue this point all you want, but I guarantee the Feds will come in from this angle, and you'll lose...). All the FEDS want to do is to verify there is a corrective action for each discrepancy so they don't have to do more paperwork than the minimum to keep their jobs.

The ASAP will keep the FEDS at bay in the case the Company self-discloses or the open writeup is found during a records inspection (which under the new world order of commercial aviation this percentage of likliness is increasing exponentially).

The ASAP report will provide several things: 1) It will alert the company and the FAA to an obvious issue in training individuals. 2) It will provide protection to the flight crew from punititive action. 3) The ASAP news letter will alert other pilots to this incident, allowing the collective group to learn as a whole. 4) The accepted ASAP report (which under the ASAP acceptance criteria, this will definately be accepted) will convert to a NASA form, getting this info into the ASRS system. This allows trend monitoring of related issues inside the company's safety system, as well as the ASRS system. Also, the ASAP program can recommend changes to current company procedures. Perhaps a "Cabin Discrepancy" form might be created out of this. It happened at my old company. We gave the F/As a pad that they could write up cabin issues and slip it to us inflight. Then we could notify MX and have the issue resoved at the inbound station.

While ASAP is a union negotiated benefit, ASRS (NASA form) is a benefit to everyone.

On a side note, reporting an individual who did this for punitive action furthers the cockpit/cabin (or CA/FO or Pilot/MX) divides. Perhaps a report of the incident with a recommendation purely for training, and taking the tack of an honest mistake from an aviation neophyte (most FAs) will collectively strengthen the knowledge base the group, and foster working together versus raising a wall to CRM.
 
Like Polar said, our aircraft logbook is strictly a maintenance thing. The only time an entry gets made is if there is something wrong with the airplane. It also has a hard card with MELs and DMIs listed on it. Also, when an entry is made (and nowhere does it say who can and can not make an entry so the FA entry was "legal") there is no place to sign who actually made the entry. You simply enter the item number (1st write up, 2nd write up etc) the flight, the date, the station and the discrepency. Then Maintence comes along and writes in the solution along with the ATA code, if there was a work order attached and their name and employee number. The logbook can go up to 3 days (they do three day MX checks here) with no entries being made.
 
No entering an employee number of the person making an entry?

Seems kinda strange to never have any clue who actually entered an entry.

The Phantom MX Write-Up Bandit.

And they thought the Phantom ####er would bring down an airline. . .no accountability of maintenance write-ups, interesting.
 
Nope, no accountability, which I sort of like. That way people never feel pressured into NOT writing something up because people will think less of them or MX will get angry with them.

I think they mostly know when I write stuff up though because my hand writing is really bad and I sometimes do the write up in the form of a haiku.
 
You could put a single line thru the entry and below it write "entered in error." You could also go the ASAP route. Either way I would write up whoever wrote it up without bringing it to the Captain's attention.
 
Back
Top