MEL Balancing
 

Just wondering how many - if any - carriers have pilots balancing their own MEL entries? I'm hearing they are making our owned regional start doing it on the premise that many others do it; so I was wondering who else actually does that?

What do you mean by "Balancing?" Is that the same thing as a "Flight Crew Placard?"

I'll be damned if imma put that book on my head and walk around. The hat is bad enough.

If you're talking about doing the MEL procedure (placarding) ourselves, as pilots, XJT has done it for years and Colgan did it when I was there, too. We have the procedure outlined in our book and MX Control gives us the control # and sign-off. Saves a lot of time at the outstations. They even allow us to accomplish (M) items, so long as it doesn't involve special tools or skills (i.e. pulling and collaring circuit breakers).

Id be careful doing that at 9L. My last oral included a whole deal about MELs including one simple one, that could EASILY have been taken care of by the PIC, however it had an (M) and the check airman was looking for us to say "Maintenance must do it," not us.

I imagine the check airman has probably never read the preamble in your MEL.

I think he is at XE, not 9L.

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.

We can do it for certain items at Delta.

Delta, Colgan, and Allegiant do it. As far as your example goes, I used to be a mechanic and when I show up to defer your autopilot and yaw damper I couldn't give a crap about your IC 600 unless the MEL says to look at it.

I'm confused about what "balancing" means, is the question whether there are airlines that allow their crews to write something up and per MX permission MEL it in the logbook and then placard it and high five the next crew with news the autothrottles and FMS are on MEL?

Surely every airline has an MEL procedure that doesn't involve a mechanic coming to the airplane don't they?


If you google MMEL FAA, it will come up with the Flight Standards IMS page in which you can pull up the FAA's Master MEL book for any aircraft. In there is this under definitions:



^^ That was from the BAE146, where you can MEL one of the 5 APUs. :D I lie.