I wish I hadn’t started to write this blog. What I found out while researching it scares me.
Earlier this week, my colleague, Charlie Leocha, wrote about the sorry state of aircraft maintenance. He postulated, in a nutshell, that all of those broken reading lights, torn seat cushions and malfunctioning headsets might point to a larger systemic problem with airline maintenance programs in the era of airline cutbacks.
During my days as an airline employee, I often heard the term “MEL,” short for Minimum Equipment List. It was a nebulous term for me — I kind of knew that it meant an aircraft could fly with certain items out of service, but I naively thought it was stuff like the coffee pot or maybe some minor onboard item.
Or maybe I was just in denial.
What I found in the following list, which is approved by the Federal Aviation Administration for the Boeing 757, is unsettling. Of course, there are caveats and “if X then Y” provisions with many of the MEL items, but some of the systems or items that can be inoperative or malfunctioning are:
1. Fuel tank quantity indication system
2. Windshear alert system
3. Ground proximity warning system
4. Traffic Alert Collision Avoidance System (TCAS)
5. Thrust reversers
6. Engine fire detection system
7. Fuel tank pumps
8. Passenger emergency oxygen system
9. Ice detection system
10. One of the windshields in the cockpit can have a crack in it (go figure)
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. To me, the non-pilot, the complete list seems to stop just short of saying the flight can try to take off with one of the wings missing.
This stuff goes way beyond reading lights.
