Originally Posted by shfo

He is asking if there are any other airlines out there that have the flight crew defer an item per an MEL and document it in the logbook like this:

Problem: overhead reading light seat 4B inop

corrective action: overhead reading light seat 4B deferred per MEL 21-18

The captain fills out both the problem and the corrective action part of the log book and MELs the light. Maintenance does not need to get involved until the MEL expires.

This is done at outstations and hubs with maintenance while the mechanics sit in the break room and watch basketball. American Eagle is the only airline I know that does this.

What I don't like is that there are many things that are MELable that are an indication of more problems. An example would be on an APU start with a bad GPU you can get the Autopilot/yaw damper fail which on the Embraer is an indication of an IC 600 taking a dump. The autopilot and yaw damper are MELable but the IC 600 is not and can lead to big problems down the road.