Strangest/funny reason's you have refused an aircraft

[Headfake14]

All this funk in the industry lately...thought we could use a break.

So...many moons ago. I was an ATR-72 captain at ASA.

FO says there is lav juice all over the rear of the underside. I take a look, sure enough, from the aft nav light it a light/dark blue color all the way to the gear bay...which is highly unusual for the lav stains to be that far fwd. FAs, at the same time, tell me of a strong bad smell in the cabin.

Enter MTC...we open some access panels on the gear bay and about vomited instaneously...the smell was SO strong. After catching our breath and allowing the bay to vent...we could see where about a 5 inch deep pool of lav fluid had been due to the dry "water line" all over the inside belly.

NO WAY was I flying this thing...it was rancid. The Deltamatic showed reason for A/C refusal was "BAD ODOR". haha. It didn't fly for days except to MCN to get cleaned out...bad possibility of corrosion from the lav fluid. A seal on the blue juice tank failed.

 

[cargoflyr69]

Had the same thing happen to me in a Saab circa 2004. The lav service peeps refilled with waaay too much blue juice and it overflowed everywhere. into the belly, soaked carpet around lav, etc. took a while for MX to rinse her out...

 

[brokeflyer]

I was given a 727 once that had a removed engine. Nothing in the logs about it. It was just not on the plane. So i wrote it up "left engine missing". It took 2 days for mx to figure out why and where the engine is.

 

[ImbracableCrunk]

The SF-340 Emergency Exits over the wings will fit in either L or R window, but the handles point the wrong way - and the paint doesn't match. Supposedly the handles could try to weathervane open.

Refused two planes for that li'l gotcha.

 

[ACL65PILOT]

One thrust lever missing.

 

[CA1900]

On a Beech 1900, maintenance had swapped the knobs on the ends of the prop and condition levers. Did the whole run-up, but couldn't figure out for a few minutes why the throttle quadrant didn't seem "right."

Whoops...

 

[A-V-8]

From CLT to LGA in a CRJ 900. No FD, No auto pilot, one radio MELed, Vertical speed mode inop, FMS inop, GPWS inop. But hey it was airworthy according to the regs. The next crew also refused the bird. In the ultimate game of pass the buck dispatch switched us into theirs and vice versa. The CP called the next crew and said why did you refuse to fly an airworthy plane? Turns out that he had also refused the same bird 3 days earlier and sent it to the hangar. He didn’t realize that it was the same bird until they started discussing the problems. He called maintenance and it went back to the hangar.

 

[jetflier]

We refused an aircraft because the F/O saw a mouse in the cockpit during preflight. Upon closer inspection by maint, the mouse family was found to be living in the rear E&E compartment, along with a few kids and peanuts.

 

[shearedshaft]

Just a relayed story I was told by the guy who was a captain on the flight. A B747 in Hawaii (cargo) was getting ready for its flight to the East.

They notice a quick movement down on the floor and damn if it wasn't a tarantula scurrying. They beat feet and called Mx. Maintenance came out and chased it up the footwell, where it disappeared.

Now it's time to go. They had an eight or ten hour flight ahead of them and no sign of the spider. They ended up going back and forth with Mx control, but finally sucked it up and headed out across the ocean, probably with their feet suspended in the air the whole way.

 

[tathagatha]

Crash Axe not sharp enough!!!

 

[stall022]

Summer time Kansas City Air Midwest Beech 1900D + cargo load of fish that leaked badly into the belly of the airplane = uke:

It was finally taken out of service and power washed out.

 

[chqflyer]

Rampers pumped about 15 gallons of blue juice into a emb 140 lav without even dumping it first. Capacity is about 4 gallons if memory serves. The whole rear of the airplane was flooded, complete with turds sailing down the aisle!! uke:

 

[Volasl]

Tiller installed backwards. took me 30 minutes to figure out what was wrong with it. My hand felt very funny on it. Finally had to go look at another airplane to make sure i wasnt crazy

 

[Lear70]

Got in a CRJ in the summer of '04, my F/O is a 20-something girl, somewhat quiet but pleasant, flew with her before. Suddenly she SHRIEKS and is out of the cockpit faster than I knew was possible without an ejection handle on the seat.

I'm freaking, looking for the poisonous snake or other equally offensive item, poised to bolt myself, and I see...

A bumblebee.

She's allergic. Deathly allergic. I kill the stupid thing with the QRH, she comes back in after I promise it's dead... and ANOTHER one crawls out of the space in between her rear window and the overhead.

Reason for refused plane: unknown numbers of bumblebees making home behind overhead panel.

Base manager calls, "You're refusing the plane for WHAT?" After I explain to him the allergy issues of my F/O and the consequences of having 3 or 4 bumblebees starting to attack you 20 kts prior to V1, he backed off. Maintenance took 3 hours to come out, pull the entire upper panel down, and killed almost a dozen of the little suckers...

 

[Coool Hand Luke]

From CLT to LGA in a CRJ 900. No FD, No auto pilot, one radio MELed, Vertical speed mode inop, FMS inop, GPWS inop. But hey it was airworthy according to the regs. The next crew also refused the bird. In the ultimate game of pass the buck dispatch switched us into theirs and vice versa. The CP called the next crew and said why did you refuse to fly an airworthy plane? Turns out that he had also refused the same bird 3 days earlier and sent it to the hangar. He didn’t realize that it was the same bird until they started discussing the problems. He called maintenance and it went back to the hangar.

That's classic.