Narrative:

[The aircraft for this flight] is in CAT 1 status due to autopilot and autothrottle issues and has a total of 7 mels; including an inop wheel brake. Forecast for panc at time of dispatch was for above 3000/5; with occasional 4 miles in mist. However; national weather service had fog in the vicinity and temperature/dew point spread with moisture in the area was 1 degree. Paed; closest alternate was below alternate minimums. Pafa had similar temperature/dew point spread as panc but with no ability to use the CAT 3 approach there if needed; elected to use cyeg as the alternate with plenty of contingency fuel in case conditions dropped in panc while enroute. Requested service recovery specialist swap to a more suitable aircraft; but [maintenance] refused because they had made plans to work the mels there. After prelim flight plan sent; captain called questioning the mels and the weather in panc. Per his request; got duty officer involved who looked at prelim flight plan; confirmed forecast with meteorology (who actually lowered the forecast for arrival time to occasional BKN003 and 1 mile;) and personally requested to swap aircraft. [Another company aircraft] was parked right next to this flight and could have been swapped; but again [maintenance] refused because they were more concerned with sticking to their plan. When captain showed at the hub; conferenced him in with duty officer and we discussed delaying the flight to arrive after 1800z when weather was forecast to improve as a compromise. However; among crew's other concerns was that if they did have to divert to cyeg; they would have a 3 hour after flying nearly 7 hours with only a 2 man crew. Duty officer offered to add rfo (reserve first officer) to the trip and captain agreed to go as scheduled. I had been holding off sending the release hoping for a swap or some kind of resolution; sent release late once the rfo was added. This still did not address issue with [maintenance] blatantly ignoring a request from the dispatcher; captain and a flight ops duty officer to swap aircraft. Although [the aircraft] was technically legal to go; a lot of holes in the proverbial swiss cheese were present. (Degraded aircraft; marginal weather; relatively new captain; new hire first officer; new hire rfo; etc.) also; if the captain and dispatcher have a safety or operational concern with an aircraft that should automatically override any desires by maintenance (or service recovery specialists) since the captain and dispatcher are the individuals responsible for the flight. If we're supposed to have a safety culture in place here; then our concerns should have outweighed [maintenance]'s convenience. As dispatcher/captain we have operational control of the flight; not [maintenance].[maintenance]'s desire to put their convenience (and possibly expense) ahead of dispatch operational control and dispatch/captain desire to have aircraft assigned that was suitable to mission at hand. [Maintenance] also failed to take into consideration the items that needed to be repaired on the aircraft when deciding where to send it for those repairs; i.e. Reduced CAT status aircraft to panc during winter. Change policy to require [maintenance] to accommodate dispatcher/crew requests for aircraft changes. Have [maintenance] get dispatcher involved when deciding where to send a degraded aircraft to be worked on. Put aircraft routing under [operations] control with directives to assign best aircraft for routes (i.e.; clean aircraft in good condition on international flights) and schedule maintenance around that need rather than planning maintenance and expecting dispatch and crews to accommodate them. Strongly remind [maintenance] that they have absolutely no operational control over flight dispatch decisions.

Related reports:

Google
 

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air Carrier Dispatcher reported he was unable to get an aircraft swapped for a flight to ANC even though the aircraft had various MEL's; including downgraded autopilot status and the weather was forecast close to minimums.

Narrative: [The aircraft for this flight] is in CAT 1 status due to autopilot and autothrottle issues and has a total of 7 MELs; including an inop wheel brake. Forecast for PANC at time of dispatch was for above 3000/5; with occasional 4 miles in mist. However; national weather service had fog in the vicinity and temperature/dew point spread with moisture in the area was 1 degree. PAED; closest alternate was below alternate minimums. PAFA had similar temperature/dew point spread as PANC but with no ability to use the CAT 3 approach there if needed; elected to use CYEG as the alternate with plenty of contingency fuel in case conditions dropped in PANC while enroute. Requested service recovery specialist swap to a more suitable aircraft; but [maintenance] refused because they had made plans to work the MELs there. After prelim flight plan sent; captain called questioning the MELs and the weather in PANC. Per his request; got duty officer involved who looked at prelim flight plan; confirmed forecast with meteorology (who actually lowered the forecast for arrival time to occasional BKN003 and 1 mile;) and personally requested to swap aircraft. [Another company aircraft] was parked right next to this flight and could have been swapped; but again [maintenance] refused because they were more concerned with sticking to their plan. When captain showed at the hub; conferenced him in with duty officer and we discussed delaying the flight to arrive after 1800z when weather was forecast to improve as a compromise. However; among crew's other concerns was that if they did have to divert to CYEG; they would have a 3 hour after flying nearly 7 hours with only a 2 man crew. Duty officer offered to add RFO (Reserve First Officer) to the trip and captain agreed to go as scheduled. I had been holding off sending the release hoping for a swap or some kind of resolution; sent release late once the RFO was added. This still did not address issue with [maintenance] blatantly ignoring a request from the dispatcher; captain and a flight ops duty officer to swap aircraft. Although [the aircraft] was technically legal to go; a lot of holes in the proverbial Swiss cheese were present. (Degraded aircraft; marginal weather; relatively new captain; new hire FO; new hire RFO; etc.) Also; if the captain and dispatcher have a safety or operational concern with an aircraft that should automatically override any desires by maintenance (or service recovery specialists) since the captain and dispatcher are the individuals responsible for the flight. If we're supposed to have a safety culture in place here; then our concerns should have outweighed [maintenance]'s convenience. As dispatcher/captain we have operational control of the flight; not [maintenance].[Maintenance]'s desire to put their convenience (and possibly expense) ahead of dispatch operational control and dispatch/captain desire to have aircraft assigned that was suitable to mission at hand. [Maintenance] also failed to take into consideration the items that needed to be repaired on the aircraft when deciding where to send it for those repairs; i.e. reduced CAT status aircraft to PANC during winter. Change policy to require [maintenance] to accommodate dispatcher/crew requests for aircraft changes. Have [maintenance] get dispatcher involved when deciding where to send a degraded aircraft to be worked on. Put aircraft routing under [operations] control with directives to assign best aircraft for routes (i.e.; clean aircraft in good condition on international flights) and schedule maintenance around that need rather than planning maintenance and expecting dispatch and crews to accommodate them. Strongly remind [maintenance] that they have absolutely no operational control over flight dispatch decisions.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.