Just Living w/Speed Tape

So my first rant will be against my current employer and their maintenance practices.


The air vent on the Caravan is actuated with a push/pull button that's attached to a push rod that opens and closes a vent on the side of the aircraft.  Back in Mar/Apr of 2011, this push rod bent (it's old like the rest of the plane.)  The pilot, in response to maintenance doing nothing about it, removed the interior vent face and stuffed a bunch of old manifests into the opening to reduce the noise and cold air.  Maintenance was notified several times over the intervening months and nothing was done to fix the problem.

Flash forward to November of 2012.  It's significantly colder.  In the Summer, the extra breeze was nice but the underlying problem was still there.  Now we have cold air blowing into the cockpit that cannot be stopped even when you've stuffed a couple of shop rags into the hole.

So the plane goes in for maintenance (taking over 2 weeks to do Phase Inspection) and the solution is to put some silver speed tape over the opening in the cockpit.  Okay.  Unfortunately they had to leave a tiny gap on each side of the vent so as to have the tape not blow off due to ram air coming in from the partially open vent on outside of the plane.

New solution:  Remove the outside vent flap and apply several layers of speed tape over the now 3"X4" opening.  Problem solved.

But was it?

No.  It's a temporary solution to carry the plane through the winter.  Next summer we'll be told to "live with it".

Like the intermittent, inaccurate fuel gauge in the other Caravan.  Our Caravan's are notorious for not using fuel equally between wing tanks.  So during flight we are constantly having to shut off one or the other fuel selector to maintain the required minimum fuel imbalance of 200 pounds of fuel.  But now, one cannot tell because the gauge drops 200 pounds then fluctuates between 100 pounds low and 500 pounds low.

Maintenance response to the complaint? 

"You'll have to live with it."

*facepalm*
*headdesk*

Now I have a small laundry list of intermittent and annoying little squawks that will turn into airplane grounding issues should they not be taken care of.  Certainly the VP of the company and the CP would have some pull to get the plane back to home base for some overdue TLC?

Nope.

Not even with the plane being "in the window" for a Phase and being due for an Annual in this month.  This will, historically, be attended to with 2 to 3 days left in the month and us being notified that "on paper, it's done but we'll be working on it for a few more days" (read: weeks).

I will ground this plane in the most inopportune place should the need arise to get attention to maintenance issues.  Or, most likely, the plane will, itself, decide that somewhere between Mather and Modesto it's going to give up the ghost.


That's been the rant for today.

Edgy