Narrative:

During flight planning; I noticed that our aircraft had 11 deferred and one carry forward item which to me was an initial red flag. I'm not used to seeing so many deferred maintenance items. My first officer voiced a safety concern over a deferred map light on his side. He thought it might be important as we were scheduled for an all night trip coupled with training. He also mentioned that it may be difficult to read the 'emergency evacuation placard' on the window clipboard with the reading light inoperative. An additional consideration was the the first officer was on his first flight in over three months due to a detached retina and was just coming back from surgery to repair the retina. It was his first trip with glasses. We were doing training to get him re-certified. I called dispatch and voiced my concerns about accepting the airplane with this item deferred and he patched me through to the maintenance controller. I explained my concerns and asked if local maintenance could address the map light. The maintenance controller said he would advise station maintenance and have them address my concerns. About 45 minutes after this initial call; we still had not seen maintenance on the airplane; so I made a call to local maintenance. A mechanic came to the airplane; and told me that he had received a call :30 to :40 minutes earlier; but decided to leave the light deferred since the item had not been assigned to station maintenance for repair. At this point; I refused the aircraft due to concerns about inadequate lighting. In my opinion the local mechanic made his decision to ignore my request to fix the light only because of his concerns over getting the blame for a delayed departure. He stated that once you start into one of these projects you never know how long they will take. He felt that since it was already deferred and assigned to another maintenance station it should be acceptable to the flight crew to take it and there was no reason for him to jeopardize his departments 'on time performance'. He explained that this item had already been assigned to a downline maintenance base for repair. Two MEL items that concerned my crew were: 1. Remaining lighting must be sufficient to clearly illuminate all instruments and switches. (No mention of illumination of the evacuation placard; but this was a consideration we made) 2. Lighting configuration and intensity must be acceptable to pilots.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Captain/Check Airman for an air carrier refused the aircraft assigned to his enroute check ride/passenger flight due to a deferred First Officer's map light which he believed was unsuitable for a nighttime flight. Reporter was particularly concerned that station maintenance was unresponsive to his requests due to concerns about being charged for a delay.

Narrative: During flight planning; I noticed that our aircraft had 11 deferred and one carry forward item which to me was an initial red flag. I'm not used to seeing so many deferred maintenance items. My First Officer voiced a safety concern over a deferred map light on his side. He thought it might be important as we were scheduled for an all night trip coupled with training. He also mentioned that it may be difficult to read the 'Emergency Evacuation Placard' on the window clipboard with the reading light inoperative. An additional consideration was the the First Officer was on his first flight in over three months due to a detached retina and was just coming back from surgery to repair the retina. It was his first trip with glasses. We were doing training to get him re-certified. I called Dispatch and voiced my concerns about accepting the airplane with this item deferred and he patched me through to the Maintenance Controller. I explained my concerns and asked if local maintenance could address the map light. The Maintenance Controller said he would advise station maintenance and have them address my concerns. About 45 minutes after this initial call; we still had not seen maintenance on the airplane; so I made a call to local maintenance. A mechanic came to the airplane; and told me that he had received a call :30 to :40 minutes earlier; but decided to leave the light deferred since the item had not been assigned to station maintenance for repair. At this point; I refused the aircraft due to concerns about inadequate lighting. In my opinion the local mechanic made his decision to ignore my request to fix the light only because of his concerns over getting the blame for a delayed departure. He stated that once you start into one of these projects you never know how long they will take. He felt that since it was already deferred and assigned to another maintenance station it should be acceptable to the flight crew to take it and there was no reason for him to jeopardize his departments 'on time performance'. He explained that this item had already been assigned to a downline maintenance base for repair. Two MEL items that concerned my crew were: 1. Remaining lighting must be sufficient to clearly illuminate all instruments and switches. (no mention of illumination of the Evacuation Placard; but this was a consideration we made) 2. Lighting configuration and intensity must be acceptable to pilots.

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.