Originally Posted by UASnake

That's exactly what I did as a Captain. I never had a discussion with anyone but my FO about an aircraft refusal, I just did it through Unimatic, ACARS or a short phone call to Dispatch. And I was never questioned by anyone about it, which was a good thing because the decision had been made and was not negotiable. If I was at a maintenance station, I'd call or go talk to the line mechanics to see what the real story was on how long it would take to fix. I'm sure at times there was some eye rolling going on, like when I refused one of the old Shuttle -300s for an inop forward lav. I was not willing to fly 133 pax and crew with one operative lav on a 3:45 leg from PHL to DEN. So we waited 45 minutes for another jet to arrive and swapped with that crew, as they had a shorter leg back to ORD.

Digging deeper, I should never have been put in that position to begin with. That jet came in from ORD with the lav deferred inop, and I guess no one knew or cared where it was going next. That's a systemic problem. It should have been fixed at ORD before being flown to outstations. Not to mention that the old Shuttle jets with fewer lavs and no galleys should not have been assigned to longer legs like that. Moot point now.

It's a fact that UAL MX is grossly under-resourced, and senior management is obviously responsible for that. IMO, UAL abuses the MEL. It should be used to get a jet from a station where it can't be fixed to one where it can, not flown around for a week in and out of large maintenance bases.

When I write up a jet, I never try to tell MX what the cause of the problem is. You guys are the experts and will find the cause, I just report the symptoms as accurately as possible. I ask you to give Captains that kind of professional courtesy when they refuse a jet.