Originally Posted by
daveh03
Hi and thanks for the responses so far!
Going back to the MEL and deferred items for maintenance. Are there any dependencies in what can/cannot be deferred? For example, item X not working (and that's the only issue) is okay, item Y not working (and that's the only issue) is okay, but X & Y not working and you don't fly?
There are so many accident reports where it is the swiss cheese effect of many small holes (each in themselves not likely to cause an incident) all lining up together that it seems that the more things are less than 100% working (even if each of those things in itself adds negligible risk) the overall combined risk increases very quickly.
Dave
To expend on AD's answer, yes, there are also times when two things that can be inop individually can't be inop at the same time. I fly for a different airline, but the concepts are all the same...
As an example, we can have our nosewheel steering inoperative, meaning that we can't turn the nosewheel, and have to steer on the ground with differential thrust and differential braking. We can also have our anti-skid system inoperative, which is the equivalent of anti-lock brakes on the car. We can not, however, have both inop at the same time.