A319 captain reports refusing an aircraft that has just ferried in due to a foul smell in the cabin....

Narrative:

When I got to the gate; the flight attendant and the gate agent had already gone down to the aircraft and came back up saying that we might need to delay boarding due to the aircraft cabin having a heavy chemical smell. We went back down and the aircraft cabin did smell. The agent said that aircraft just ferried in. I had her pull up pilots and it was two check airmen. When I looked at the logbook the APU was on MEL. I went to the logbook page where that was done and the write up was: 'started engines at gate with external power and air with APU off; after engine start cabin has smell of dirty socks'; as best I can remember. The sign off said source of smell found to be from APU; placed it on MEL; and there was some kind of work to be accomplished at a later date. I reasoned that since the APU was off during start it could not have been source of smell; so putting it on MEL did nothing for the problem but only allowed aircraft to be ferried. When I got to the gate the pilots that brought it in had already left. I called my dispatcher and told him that I could not that the aircraft like this and while we were on the phone they had another aircraft for us within 5 minutes. He also thought the sign off didn't make sense. Something in the bleed air system leaking oil into the system is what I think happened.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A319 Captain reports refusing an aircraft that has just ferried in due to a foul smell in the cabin. The smell had been attributed to the APU which was MEL'ed and the smell was still present.

Narrative: When I got to the gate; the flight attendant and the gate agent had already gone down to the aircraft and came back up saying that we might need to delay boarding due to the aircraft cabin having a heavy chemical smell. We went back down and the aircraft cabin did smell. The agent said that aircraft just ferried in. I had her pull up pilots and it was two check airmen. When I looked at the logbook the APU was on MEL. I went to the logbook page where that was done and the write up was: 'started engines at gate with external power and air with APU off; after engine start cabin has smell of dirty socks'; as best I can remember. The sign off said source of smell found to be from APU; placed it on MEL; and there was some kind of work to be accomplished at a later date. I reasoned that since the APU was off during start it could not have been source of smell; so putting it on MEL did nothing for the problem but only allowed aircraft to be ferried. When I got to the gate the pilots that brought it in had already left. I called my Dispatcher and told him that I could not that the aircraft like this and while we were on the phone they had another aircraft for us within 5 minutes. He also thought the sign off didn't make sense. Something in the bleed air system leaking oil into the system is what I think happened.

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.

Attributes
ACN	958065
Time
Date	201107
Local Time Of Day	0601-1200
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	A319
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Parked
Person 1
Function	Captain Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Events
Anomaly	Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Smoke / Fire / Fumes / Odor

A319 captain reports refusing an aircraft that has just ferried in due to a foul smell in the cabin. The smell had been attributed to the APU which was MEL'ed and the smell was still present.