"Did you really ask me that, Mr. Captain?"

I love working Line Maintenance and one of the things that really keeps me interested is seeing how other guys I work with deal with the situations that come up versus how I would react to them. For the most part we all have about the same reactions to Flight Crews, airplanes, the FAA, etc. There are those guys who have a really negative view toward all of the above and those guys generally hate their jobs/life. These are the types who are always negative. Most of the guys at SWA have positive out looks and really try to help the company by getting the planes back into service.

This week when I was at work something happened that put into words a philosophy that I have come to accept as a reasonable way to deal with Flight Crews who ask stupid questions or complain about systems that work fine.

We had a Captain who had just pushed off the gate and was taxiing to the runway when his APU shutdown on him uncommanded. Instead of calling Dispatch he called MX Control and they could not decipher his mumbo jumbo explanation so they told him to return to the gate. As we know if he had called Dispatch they would have helped him to Crew Deffer the APU and he would have been on his way. They mechanic (let's call him NiceNice) got the low down from the Captain and started to work the problem. Surprise, surprise the APU worked normally, there were on Faults on the thing and it would not break for NiceNice.

I was out working on another plane when the call came in so I was listening to all this on the radio. After a while NiceNice came back into the shop and I asked him what that was all about. NiceNice explained to me why the Captain returned to the Gate (MX Control) and what he was doing to check out the APU. When he was done and said the thing worked great I asked him if he signed it off as "Ops checks good, no faults found". NiceNice said "Nope. The APU was fine but I MEL'd it anyway because the Captain didn't deserve to have an APU". It turns out that when crews call him to fix things that are not broken or things that don't work because of something that the crews did, NiceNice always MELs it. He says that if they can't figure out or don't know how it works-they don't deserve to enjoy the use of it!

I really like that way of operating and until now I was torn when I came upon crews who are the ultimate reason for problems that I was trying to fix. Next time I come across the HUD problem and I look into the Fault History coming across the old ALTITUDE Warn, or INCORRECT NAV faults, I am going to MEL the HUD. Better to take it away from those dummies than to let them use it incorrectly.

I figure this will also work well for the crews that refuse to "take the plane" until their little problems are fixed or who are really demanding or obstinate about the work being done etc. One of my buddies here is MEL King. This is very close to what he does. He is known for MELing items because the Crew got on his nerves or couldn't explain things fully. Maybe if we all did such the Crews would bother to learn more about their systems....