Narrative:

[We] flew with deferral for cabinet door under sink in forward lavatory inoperative. Next leg same aircraft; maintenance advised would fix door; watched mechanic install door; went to cockpit. Shortly; cabin door was shut; purser advised cabin ready and I asked about lavatory door. He said something like looks like they are not going to fix it. We did a release verification and came back showing same maintenance release that we had at our initial departure. As we were originally going to fly the leg with the deferral; did not think much about it; figuring they had encountered a problem and elected to just let the aircraft depart on the old maintenance release. After push and thinking about it more; I called maintenance just to make sure that it was okay to leave. He said that we were good to go they way we are. On climb out we received a message to return to gate. After calling dispatch we were told to continue. I learned that the cabinet door was not on the aircraft at all and realized that this was an issue. I am now aware that just because I asked for and received a release verification message; that in this case; it would still not guarantee that the aircraft was properly released. I suppose that I need to work closer with maintenance on these issues and seek an explanation as to why there is a change in planned maintenance activity.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An A319 was mistakenly released for flight and got airborne with a lavatory door missing because a communications lapse between Maintenance; the flight crew and Dispatch indicated the work complete when it remained a deferred item.

Narrative: [We] flew with deferral for cabinet door under sink in forward lavatory inoperative. Next leg same aircraft; Maintenance advised would fix door; watched mechanic install door; went to cockpit. Shortly; cabin door was shut; purser advised cabin ready and I asked about lavatory door. He said something like looks like they are not going to fix it. We did a release verification and came back showing same maintenance release that we had at our initial departure. As we were originally going to fly the leg with the deferral; did not think much about it; figuring they had encountered a problem and elected to just let the aircraft depart on the old maintenance release. After push and thinking about it more; I called Maintenance just to make sure that it was okay to leave. He said that we were good to go they way we are. On climb out we received a message to return to gate. After calling Dispatch we were told to continue. I learned that the cabinet door was not on the aircraft at all and realized that this was an issue. I am now aware that just because I asked for and received a release verification message; that in this case; it would still not guarantee that the aircraft was properly released. I suppose that I need to work closer with maintenance on these issues and seek an explanation as to why there is a change in planned maintenance activity.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 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.