Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Communication Breakdown
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Maintenance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Company Policy
[Company] maintenance doesn't seem to repair defective items by normal troubleshooting; but rather by random parts movements or replacement. There are numerous instances where an aircraft has a maintenance issue that is documented and the maintenance action is either 'could not duplicate' and return to service or move some parts and return to service. This puts the next flight crew in the position of being part of the troubleshooting process rather than having a repaired aircraft. Recent examples are Bleed leak issues experienced on Aircraft X and Aircraft Y. Both aircraft were documented with Bleed leak (R) CAS messages when the anti-ice was used. Maintenance did not trouble shoot and repair the problem; but moved parts and released the aircraft for flight. After several repeat write ups; the problem was finally repaired properly. This exposed the flight crews and passengers to increased risks due to hot bleed air being allowed to leak into sensitive areas of the aircraft. This also exposes the company to significant liability for using airplanes that are knowingly flown without being repaired. When first picking up a 'new' aircraft; a review of the logbook will sometimes show a history of repeat write ups. It is only a matter of time until the problem reoccurs. It may be the next flight or a few flights later. This failure to properly troubleshoot and repair aircraft causes increased risk to the flight crews and passengers; costs the company for several maintenance actions; rather than the one it should have taken to effect the repair and can have the unintended cost of crew fatiguing (to cover for the broken aircraft) or the cost of a sell-off to a vendor aircraft. This also reduces the number of available aircraft and destabilizes the operational schedule.Maintenance providers should be given the necessary training to properly troubleshoot and repair [company] aircraft. [The company] should expect that in most cases; problems are repaired correctly the first time. Since the company has moved away from in-house maintenance and started using contract maintenance; these problems have seemed to become more common. [The company] should require the highest level of professionalism and quality of work from all our maintenance providers. Maintenance seems to accept the practice of paying several vendors to solve a problem rather than fixing it correctly the first time. This practice must add greatly to costs for unnecessary repeat maintenance. Accept only highly trained maintainers and only pay them when the problem is fixed correctly.
Air taxi Captain reported that company aircraft have not been properly maintained.