Airline Pilot Forums

In two months I have flown over 100 sorties totaling more than 140 flight hours. In that time I had 5 maintenance write ups. Yesterday I got counseled for making writes up in the aircraft forms that maintenance was unable to duplicate. Here are the five: 1) CO2 indicator turned black, 2) No right brake/steering from the left or right seat, 3) Engine running roughly. Sounds like a valve stuck open, 4) Unable to obtain greater than 1900 RPM's at full throttle, and 5) Fuel fumes in the cockpit.

I was told I was highlighting myself in a negative manner for writing up aircraft and that management was now watching me. Is it me or does this sound like a safety issue? I been thinking of sending an email to our company's safety office.

The aircraft being flown is a Diamond Katana DA20-C1.

Sounds like it is time to find a new job since those jokers are not interested in safety.

Any company that councils a pilot for writing up maintenance faults on an aircraft is definately a company you want to run from QUICKLY!!!

And my letter to the safety department, ownership, and possibly the local FSDO, would state specifically why I was leaving.

Go in and tell the boss you genuinely want to improve your understanding of the company's safety and maintenance writeup guidelines, and ask for them in writing. Chances are you will either get fired or a "never mind, go back to work" comment.

In writing, especially where MX logs are concerned is where the feds find all their violations. They don't want any writeups for the feds to review, not realizing having a plane with no writeups over a long period is just as much of a flag to the feds as pencil whipped signoffs.

You are either working for a company hurting and skimping on MX (most likely), or your impression of what is broken and what is not is wrong (least likely).

The CO detector is a great metaphor for safety. There's white, there's black, and there's varying degrees of gray. It's up to the PIC to determine if the gray is too dark for the intended operation.

I fired up the resume on Monday. It's just hard to walk away from this job. Pays super well, has OK benefits, with pretty much bankers hours for a pilot, and if you don't have big, shiny jet syndrome, in a nice, simple aircraft.

All the advice was great! The safety officer and I finally have some between flights time to sit down in his office and chat. Going to go over the company's concerns, our safety/maintenance program, and then if it's not looking good perhaps it's time.

I think the biggest concern is that the maintenance chief doesn't want to have to explain to the FSDO a bunch of could not duplicate.

When I have had most of my issues it has been close to 100° F with a DA of 8000-9500' at field elevation. I just don't think that little engine is cut out to perform perfect in those condition.