A1TAPE said:
Care to share the story so we can learn from it? Did the capt use his PIC Authority to push back against dispatch? What was the end result?
pljenkins
Sure.. It's been almost 2 decades since this happened, so I guess I can de-identify it enough not to implicate anyone.
Some names/cities/details may be changed to protect the parties involved...
This involved winter operations in the venerable CRJ-200. It was your typical east coast winter weather scenario. Everything 400 miles surrounding the departure airport is at or below minimums. Our pilot flew into Philly, and on the way down the flaps locked out somewhere between 0 and 10 degrees, leading to a sporty approach nearly to minimums to a contaminated runway (those that have ever dealt with the CRJ-200 has either had or will have this issue, and this airplane lands with no flaps at about the same speed as an F-104) and an understandingly shaken pilot. She gets to the gate and calls contract maintenance who comes out and manages to get the flaps working. As the mechanic is standing at the door to the cockpit finishing up the logbook he casually mentions that the flap track is pretty much worn out and he didn't feel at all confident that the flaps wouldn't lock out again on departure. Now our pilot, obviously concerned, calls maintenance control and says, "hey, the mechanic doesn't think this fix is gonna stick". MX Control simply states, "well, he cleared it and signed it off, obviously he fixed it. Fly the bus". Unsatisfied with this, our pilot now calls the dispatcher for the outbound flight and tells the tale. Outbound dispatcher loops in MX control and a spirited debate ensues over "fixed" vs. "pencil whipped", and how given the conditions "good enough" ain't good enough. MX control holds their ground, so they disconnect from him and the dispatchers stands up and says "no-go" to the coordinator sitting across the room. Coordinator calls MX control and after a short discussion takes the side of MX control. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the CP is calling the captain, who somehow has gotten wind of this situation. The dispatcher, who is one of the old school veterans there, is firmly holding ground.
I'm privvy to none of this as I'm busy dealing with my own 95 flights for the day, nearly all of which are flying in this crap. As an aside, I'm about 5 months on the job at this point there, so I'm green as baby •. Suddenly, I find the chief of the watch tapping on my shoulder, who presents me with the following; "I have a flight in Philly that had a flap issue going in. MX fixed it and signed it off. I need you to take care of getting him out of there."
Ummm, okay, boss. I'm already getting my ass kicked, what's one more flight? I click-monkey through it and ship it. Seconds later the phone rings. It's the captain and the chief pilot. I find this odd, but I have no time to really consider what this actually means and assume we are just doing some sort of briefing about the weather and the flap situation. In retrospect, this is where the alarm bells really should have started going off, but again, I'm an FNG, I'm solidly in the yellow, and I've just been presented with a working airplane and a legal, mission ready crew by whom I thought was a trustworthy source. In reality, I was presented with none of those things. We do a quick brief. Captain is asking a lot of questions about weather and takeoff alternates (of which there was one, at the edge of range, in the opposite direction of where she was going). She seems satisfied, declines the invitation by the CP to ask any further questions, and we end the call.
About 20 minutes later the flight blasts off. About 5 minutes after that I get a call on the radio (we had direct radios for some stations that we monitored) that the flaps have jammed at around 18 degrees, she's in icing conditions, and as she was already well on her way south she felt the safest course of action was to continue that way to get out of the precip and icing. She gets down to around Charlotte where she lands uneventfully.
Here's what I didn't know. She flew for an hour and a half, by hand, in IMC and ice, keeping the airplane in a remarkably narrow band between overspeed and stall. The passengers got off that plane never knowing how bad the situation was, because this pilot was a Steely Eyed Missile Woman. No doubt, her skills are what saved the day.
As I'm walking out the door the original dispatcher, somewhat, ummm, annoyed, accosts me in the parking lot and asks me, with many more metaphors than I will add here, what I was thinking. I'm initially confused. I tell him the story from my perspective and his attitude goes from outrage to concern. He tells me, in no uncertain terms, that the next thing I need to do with my time is fill out a NASA form spelling out EXACTLY what I told him, which I promptly did. We had no union representation there, so that wasn't an option, but our DI was a really sympathetic and the conversation I had with him ended up being mostly his apologizing to me for ever being put in that position. That was really the last I heard about it, but from what I gather the FSDO sent some suits over to the head honchos for a "come to Jesus" meeting about coercing crews into situations they were not comfortable with, and we never had that issue again going forward.
These days, there is a lot of talk about DRM and CRM. No doubt situations like this played into the FAA's increased interest in not tolerating blow back on dispatchers who stand up and say "Hell no, we won't go", and they act pretty decisively against companies that attempt to do so these days, thankfully. As for that day, we all got lucky. We all kept our licenses, we all kept our lives, and we all learned a valuable lesson... One I have been sure to instill in every dispatcher I've ever had the honor to train.
Now, back to my scotch.
