Originally Posted by 450knotOffice

You're not getting it.

We've ALWAYS deferred items per Crew MEL procedures. Very simple and very fast. See my post above. We'd write it up, call MOC, if we all agreed that it could be crew MEL'd, I'd get a MOC# and his employee number, fill out three lines in the crew log, put a little orange temporary crew MEL sticker wherever it needed to go, and that would be it. Good to go...until we got to a maintenance city at some point.

Once we got to a maintenance station, the real maintenance folks would convert the Crew MEL to a normal MEL, which involves a LOT more paperwork procedure...WAY more. THIS is what our company has charged us with doing now.

The opportunity for a **** up has gone WAY up and our FAA maintenance inspectors have not been kind to the company and associated employees in the past for paperwork lapses.