Originally Posted by
Cargocapt
This is 135. I've been working for a couple of air ambulance outfits and in 2 of them I was responsible for filling the O2. I changed to a new company this year and they have maintenance do it. But I was never told to write it up. It's actually one of the mechanics daily jobs to refill the tanks on both the med bed and the crew so it never has a need for me to ask or write it up. I beat them to doing my preflight one day and found it down so I asked for a top off and apparently because I asked instead of them just doing it as the normal procedure it's now a write up.
Writing it up is just good practice. You may or may not have a minimum bottle pressure for dispatch based on how many occupants there are in the cockpit. However, if someone enters in the MX record: "bottle pressure OK to continue." Well, it's on the record now. You did your due dilligence. Is it possible the low bottle pressure could impede the flight? yes. Planned cruise altitude, or the flight itself could be scrubbed. Not your problem.
What if you wrote it up and someone filled the bottle incorrectly? There's now a paper trail.
What if you didn't write it up and another pilot took the aircraft and failed to check it and he/she needed that O2?
Twice I have been given airplanes and I tested the O2 and the O2 did not work when testing it. The maintenance guys freaked out when I wrote it up. They asked me not to. They forgot to turn the O2 back on in the belly of the jet prior to returning it to service, and prior to the final maintenance supervisor sign off. It was a 121 passenger aircraft.
Systems that "sustain life" should be written up if they are not in compliance with the required or minimum standard for airworthiness or the operation about to be conducted. the PIC is responsible for that.