Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 250; Flight Crew Total 20502; Flight Crew Type 8502
Workload; Situational Awareness; Confusion
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural MEL / CDL; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Fuel Issue
Flight Crew Became Reoriented; General Maintenance Action
Human Factors; Aircraft; Procedure
I flight planned the flight at my hotel room before we left to go to the airport. I saw that the aircraft had deferral for Spoiler Fault displayed on upper ECAM. Maintenance had attempted to fix the issue several times in different stations; but they had no parts. I read the requirements of the MEL and I didn't think that it was going to present a problem for our flight. Maintenance was supposed to have the faulty spoiler #4 on one wing and the other wing's symmetrically opposed spoiler deactivated and secured in the stowed position; per MEL. We called local maintenance for a window wash and the Mechanic that showed up to do it told me that they worked on the spoiler fault here all night and that the Aircraft was ready to go; but the deferral was still there. We took off. While I was flying I did not notice anything unusual as far as the flying characteristics of the airplane. I engaged the autopilot and we proceeded with the climbout.The first thing that we noticed was when my First Officer mentioned that the airplane has a slight bank to the left; while tracking on the airway in LNAV mode and when it was supposed to have wings level. At that point I noticed that the Beta target was a bit off to the left. I looked down at the rudder trim indicator and I saw that the airplane was putting a constant 1.7 degrees of right rudder in. The airplane was obviously flying sideways. I told the F/O to go back and look at the left wing. We set up with the FAs and he walked back. He looked out of the window; with care so he doesn't alarm the passengers. When he came back to the cockpit; he confirmed our suspicions of the #4 left wing spoiler actually floating at about; I would estimate; 5 to 7 inches above the horizontal stowed position.I immediately; typed a message to Maintenance control explaining what was going on and I sent a 'CALL ME' message to Dispatch. My main concern was the added drag on the airplane and the subsequent increased fuel consumption. Thankfully we had flight planned with enough gas; for altitude flexibility due to turbulence reports and I knew that our destination demand was under capacity. The QRH chapter for this kind of abnormal situation had the extra burn at 10%; which is A LOT of fuel. We estimated an additional 2;800 lbs to 3;000 lbs. I knew we had it; but the burn would be big.Our Dispatcher was an invaluable source of information. With his help and our airmanship; we all concluded to continue the flight to our destination with the airplane's degraded performance; but at lower cost Index; slower speed than flight planned and higher altitudes as soon as we had the performance to fly them. It should be noted that at our second fuel score before taking the fuel saving measures; we were already down 1;100 lbs from our checkup and at that point we still had 3.5 hours of flying to go. By the time we got around 600 miles to go; we had reversed the trend of excessive fuel burn to only 100lbs down from planned. We concluded the flight 6 minutes early at the blocks; with 7;800 lbs in the tanks.We should have never had to deal with such a mess. All because maintenance; while attempting to troubleshoot; they forgot to reconfigure the aircraft per MEL.
I noticed during the climb that the airplane has a bank to the left; and that the beta target was displaced. I mentioned it to the Captain and checked to see if we had a fuel imbalance that would cause the issue. Once we unable to determine a cause from the flight deck I went back to look at the spoilers to see if they were all retracted. I saw that spoiler number 4 on the left wing was extended about 6 inches.I handled the aircraft and radios while the Captain coordinated with dispatch and maintenance to ensure we had the fuel to make it to our filed destination.
A320 flight crew reported the number 4 spoiler was discovered floating because Maintenance had not completed the spoiler fault MEL procedure.