Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Workload; Training / Qualification; Distraction; Communication Breakdown
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Flight Crew FLC complied w / Automation / Advisory; Flight Crew Took Evasive Action; General Maintenance Action
Environment - Non Weather Related; Procedure; Company Policy; Aircraft
Upon arrival my First Officer found a hydraulic leak on the aircraft we were flying. After making a write up we were informed that no maintenance would be available for several hours and we would be waiting for a terminating aircraft to complete our day. The previous day was an early report with 6 legs and this day was another 6 leg day not scheduled to finish until near midnight so any normal sleep pattern may as well have been thrown into a spinning prop. The aircraft finally arrived and we took over from the inbound crew. When trying to enter the flight number in the TAMDAR then we were unable to because the unit was 'frozen' and would not receive any inputs. We powered down and powered up and it did not self correct so I notified Dispatch. First my Dispatcher did not want to take a write up on the TAMDAR because it was sending accurate OOII times. I tried explaining that the time reporting function was literally of no concern but that the SATCOM portion of the unit was unusable and my primary means of contacting the company airborne was no longer available. My First Officer listened in to my conversation in disbelief the reluctance to accept a write up for the TAMDAR. I was finally switched to Maintenance to finally make the write up. I described what was wrong and we agreed upon the wording to be put in the logbook. I entered the discrepancies and must have written the wrong word or made a grammatical error because I scratched it out and entered the correct word so that the same wording in the logbook would appear in Maintenance Controls computer. MEL's were issued and we left to complete our day after midnight; legal doesn't equal safe. A couple days later I was called by my Supervisor and told to I made a mistake when making the write up and that if I have to scratch something out of the write up I only make a single line so that they can see what I mistakenly wrote. I've looked in the manuals and so far have been unable to find where I'm only to make a single line through a word so that you could see my spelling error or where I mistakenly wrote the same word twice in a row. Guess grammatical perfection is to now accompany FAA mandated mathematical perfection.This company has an unhealthy love affair with the TAMDAR units. I just flew the aircraft in question again and apparently it was self cleared before it got into a Maintenance Base. It was very obvious that my Supervisor absolutely did not believe the unit was malfunctioning and felt he had to make a phone call to somehow intimidate me. Sadly this is the culture at this company; it's not the first time I feel like I've been pressured to not write something up or to just keep flying. Apparently over 10;000 hours in the this aircraft type means I don't know jack about the airplane I'm flying and I can't tell when something is broken. Why didn't my Dispatcher want to take the write up? Why did my Supervisor have to call me about this issue? Once again; my issue with the TAMDAR unit was I couldn't use the SATCOM portion; a legitimate safety concern. Somewhere that was lost and I don't envy anyone in the Safety Department at this airline working with the personality types we have running this company.
Against his Dispatcher's wishes; a fatigued Captain entered a TAMDAR malfunction in the maintenance log because SATCOM and ACARS were disabled and the Captain's Supervisor criticized his maintenance entry error correction method. The Captain felt pilot pushing pressure.