An A319 flight crew was unable to communicate with dispatch or maintenance to resolve a pressurizati...

Narrative:

[During initial climb we received an] ECAM for a skin vent fault (which was a deferred item). Lots of noise created by the wired open outflow valve. On climbout; we were unable to control cabin altitude. The first officer worked through the ECAM and tried to get control of the cabin with manual pressurization control. Both auto and manual controllers were unable to keep cabin altitude below 9;000 feet. Leveled aircraft off at 10;000 feet to work the problem. Was unable to reach dispatch throughout this process. This created the most concern of the whole event. This is the second event this month that; when trying to work through a problem with dispatch; I was unable to reach them. I feel this is unacceptable.we requested frequencies to talk with maintenance control but never received a frequency. We never were able to talk with maintenance. As we could not troubleshoot the problem; and could not reach company or maintenance; we opted to land overweight. We ran the overweight landing checklist. We did send an [ACARS] message to dispatch that we were diverting and had them provide performance data for [the overweight landing].landing uneventful. Less that 100 fpm down on touchdown.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An A319 flight crew was unable to communicate with Dispatch or Maintenance to resolve a pressurization problem and ultimately diverted to an enroute station.

Narrative: [During initial climb we received an] ECAM for a skin vent fault (which was a deferred item). Lots of noise created by the wired open outflow valve. On climbout; we were unable to control cabin altitude. The First Officer worked through the ECAM and tried to get control of the cabin with manual pressurization control. Both auto and manual controllers were unable to keep cabin altitude below 9;000 feet. Leveled aircraft off at 10;000 feet to work the problem. Was unable to reach Dispatch throughout this process. This created the most concern of the whole event. This is the second event this month that; when trying to work through a problem with Dispatch; I was unable to reach them. I feel this is unacceptable.We requested frequencies to talk with Maintenance Control but never received a frequency. We never were able to talk with Maintenance. As we could not troubleshoot the problem; and could not reach Company or Maintenance; we opted to land overweight. We ran the overweight landing checklist. We did send an [ACARS] message to Dispatch that we were diverting and had them provide performance data for [the overweight landing].Landing uneventful. Less that 100 fpm down on touchdown.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 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	1125541
Time
Date	201310
Local Time Of Day	0001-0600
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.TRACON
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	A319
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Takeoff
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	Pressurization System
Person 1
Function	Captain Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 150 Flight Crew Type 3000
Events
Anomaly	Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy

An A319 flight crew was unable to communicate with dispatch or maintenance to resolve a pressurization problem and ultimately diverted to an enroute station.