Originally Posted by
Boomer
I must not understand what "balancing" means.
I don't see why you have two versions of MEL for one item. At Comair, we don't do MELs; rather, we "defer an item per the MEL". Perhaps that's where you're losing me.
A deferral is a deferral. Doesn't matter who writes it in the logbook.
I don't know how much paperwork MX is doing back at base while we're putting our entry into the aircraft logbook, but I do know that their copy stays clean and dry if the plane should go down.
Well, we don't actually have two MEL's. In the twenty years I've been here, we've always had a procedure for a crew deferral. However, the FAA's stance for us has always been that once the airplane arrived at a company maintenance station, formal deferral BY MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL had to replace the crew deferral. They've changed their mind apparently.