B777 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 207; Flight Crew Total 18592; Flight Crew Type 8246
Communication Breakdown; Confusion
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural MEL / CDL; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Air Traffic Control Provided Assistance; Flight Crew Diverted; Flight Crew Overcame Equipment Problem; General Maintenance Action; General Release Refused / Aircraft Not Accepted
Aircraft; MEL; Logbook Entry; Equipment / Tooling
Numerous maintenance defects were noted during preflight planning. -Log history report from previous flight showed FMC EICAS message that was closed after reset test.-History of inertial actual drift; as noted by maintenance.-Additional write up; 'left FMC message verify position every 20 minutes or so- Maintenance test on GPS and FMC says. All operations normal at this time. Could not duplicate fault on the ground'.-Maintenance Release Document (MRD) closed Deferred (DF) item was; 'Autopilot EICAS with LNAV/VNAV degraded. ALTITUDE HOLD and HEADING HOLD resets' with action items of 'downgraded to no autoland due no CAT qualified technician' and 'could not comply with due to insufficient ground time.'-There were also confusing items on the MRD relative to the autoland status.I asked the dispatcher to contact maintenance control to clarify the maintenance history. After much discussion he indicated that he was going to contact line maintenance with the intent that they were going to accomplish repairs on the aircraft prior to our departure.We arrived at the aircraft and the aircraft had already been released with an MRD that did not reflect any further maintenance action. I asked to have either the maintenance supervisor or the releasing mechanic of the MRD to come to the aircraft so that we could fully understand the aircraft status. We waited for quite some time and no one arrived. Repeated the request at least 2 other times; but no one arrived. My First Officer contacted them by landline and they asked him if we would take the aircraft with LNAV/VNAV inoperative. I relayed that that was not acceptable and was told I needed to refuse the aircraft via the dispatcher. I contacted the dispatcher and asked him to note my refusals; which he did. Only at that point did maintenance agree to attend to our concerns. Apparently this was all occurring near shift change time.The flight was delayed for nearly 2 hours as Maintenance replaced the mode control panel. When I asked why no one would communicate with us; and why nothing was done to the aircraft in the several hours that the aircraft was on the ground prior to our departure; the mechanic told me that he couldn't be in 5 places at once. They had no intention of effecting any repairs to the aircraft absent my refusal to operate.After agreeing to waive duty time limits we departed late. During the flight we noted that the previously reported inertial drift was still an issue; but apparently not affecting our navigational integrity; and made additional notes to maintenance. After approximately 7 hours into the flight; LNAV and VNAV failed and we got an autopilot EICAS message. We discussed with Dispatch; Maintenance and the Duty Manager the options open to us given that we may or may not be RVSM compliant; that we still had terrain decompression routes; as well as other difficult territories where we did not want to be faced with an unnecessarily complicated divert. We ultimately elected to divert where an available aircraft and crew were available to take our passengers onward. Although I recognize that the Dispatcher/Duty Manager were busy considering various options; the time between our initial discussion and actually obtaining routing to divert was a couple of hours. Dispatch was in the middle of a shift change; and we never did get any suggested routing. It was left to us to come up with a return route; and we were not in a position to know overflight restrictions or restricted areas. We requested what we thought would be a good route. ATC granted our request; but we overflew an airport without overflight clearance. (I had not actually [requested priority handling] at that point; although I was using my emergency authority to divert.) Also worth noting is how difficult it is to use the Jeppesen-pro app in a divert situation. It was a hard On the Job Training (OJT) lesson for us and would be a good training exercise for all long-haul international pilots.We ultimately relied on the paper charts in the flight bag to come up with our own routing for the three-plus hour return. Uneventful landing.We were assigned to ferry the aircraft back to [our original departure airport] the next day after maintenance repaired the aircraft. The flight was uneventful; but I noticed that the 'aircraft refusal/unable to operate' notation was not made in the aircraft maintenance history. I believe that my refusal should have been a matter of record; and I do not know why it was not made.
Flight was diverted due to failure of L/NAV; V/NAV and the Autopilot.