A319
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation - Speed All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Flight Crew Landed As Precaution; Flight Crew Returned To Departure Airport; Flight Crew Requested ATC Assistance / Clarification; General Maintenance Action; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed
Aircraft
During third segment climb from ZZZ; got an ECAM: 'F/CTL Flaps Lock' at 1+F. Immediately pushed nose over to level off to maintain VMC before punching into a cloud base; pulled speed at 190kts but AC continued to accelerate into overspeed since we were close to max speed for configuration when fault occurred. Situation was exacerbated by the fact that I attempted to level off quickly to avoid IMC while aircraft was accelerating to clean speed. FO thinks [auto-throttle] faulted but I think what he saw was [auto-throttle] off after I had pulled the thrust levers to idle. Advised FO to ask departure for return to field. ATC vectored us around thunderstorms on a long downwind in order to complete checklists. Gave FAs TEST info while FO set up box for [the] ILS. FO completed checklists and applied speed corrections from QRH and we landed without further incident; taxied to gate; apologized to passengers and entered fault and overspeed in log book while passengers disembarked. After advising Dispatcher that AC was out of service he transferred me to Maintenance Control. Notified Maintenance Control of write-ups in Logbook. I advised Maintenance Control that since this was the second time we got this fault today that I considered the AC unairworthy and refused to fly it without complete inspection. (Inspection was required anyway since I overspeed of flaps) I then took crew to lunch. Upon return; mechanics took me out and showed me that outboard trailing edge flap track was so badly worn and parts were missing that they were surprised that right flap remained on aircraft. Basically; only thing holding it on was actuator. Mechanics advised that it had been written up multiple times in previous days and the write ups cleared by simply resetting the computers and signing it off without conducting any kind of actual inspection of flaps.Should have been more vigilant by reading all previous write-ups rather than just checking to ensure there were no open write-ups subsequent to the last AWR per FOM Vol 1. This incident is proof of the failed idea that an AWR is only required every 8 or 10 days and that pilots are required to simply ensure that all subsequent write-ups are addressed/closed with SOME type of action in the corresponding MX action block. Pilots are NOT experts on airworthiness. Pilots should not be the only 'backstop' to ensure that this kind of situation does not occur. Clearly MX has no procedure/process in place to ensure that in cases when there are multiple write-ups of the same fault that they are investigated to determine if there is a real problem. If they claim they do have the proper processes in place; then this case suggests that they knowingly cleared write-ups and dispatched an unairworthy aircraft presumably to get it back to [destination] for maintenance. In doing so; knowingly put the lives of passengers and crew at risk.
A319 Captain reported that an ECAM message appeared 'F/CTL Flaps Lock' during climb.