Narrative:

During our flight we received the following EICAS message: a-i wing fail. We descended into warmer air and began to track down the company communications page. I remember a special tab to help you find it. I finally found it in the QRH. I attempted to establish a phone patch but none of the frequencies worked; even with the squelch on. We were left to communicate by ACARS. With dispatch concurrence; we continued. We were concerned about the morning weather so I asked the dispatcher for tafs and temperatures and I was informed that we would probably not be dispatched the next morning based on them. This same EICAS message occurred on the same aircraft the day prior. While I can't be certain; I'm left wondering if there was only a simple reset performed; and not a maintenance review that was much more in depth. Certainly not every EICAS message that's displayed is the result of wayward electrons. Some can and have been actual system and component failures. Fleet maintenance seems to suffer from the mindset that if a message can be reset then it's ok to go. This could be very dangerous. If we were not able to descend into warmer air; and we subsequently got ice; there would be no way to remove the build-up. The individual who assisted me in clearing the logbook opined that the problem was probably a wiring harness because 3 sensors have failed. Three individual sensors failing at the same time is very unlikely. I understand that some messages are true reset candidates; but they can't all be that way. I call on the fleet captain and his people to set some guidelines that we can use to be certain that potential failures are simply not being reset; but instead are being thoughtfully investigated to determine what is a true failure and what isn't. I was particularly dismayed when we were prevented from ferrying the aircraft out that night by the duty manager; who stated he was not going to give us maintenance permission to ferry; only to be asked to do the same thing the next morning. That request was refused; as we no longer felt we had adequate knowledge as to the true weather conditions enroute.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A chronic failed airfoil anti-ice system; a refusal to allow the flight crew to ferry the aircraft back while the enroute conditions were known; and then a request that they do exactly that the next morning provokes an ERJ-190 Captain to address his concern that the airline is allowing chronic items to be deemed airworthy through computerized button pushing rather than to actually fix the offending system.

Narrative: During our flight we received the following EICAS message: A-I Wing Fail. We descended into warmer air and began to track down the company communications page. I remember a special tab to help you find it. I finally found it in the QRH. I attempted to establish a phone patch but NONE of the frequencies worked; even with the squelch on. We were left to communicate by ACARS. With Dispatch concurrence; we continued. We were concerned about the morning weather so I asked the Dispatcher for TAFs and temperatures and I was informed that we would probably not be dispatched the next morning based on them. This same EICAS message occurred on the same aircraft the day prior. While I can't be certain; I'm left wondering if there was only a simple reset performed; and not a maintenance review that was much more in depth. Certainly not every EICAS message that's displayed is the result of wayward electrons. Some can and have been actual system and component failures. Fleet maintenance seems to suffer from the mindset that if a message can be reset then it's OK to go. This could be very dangerous. If we were not able to descend into warmer air; and we subsequently got ice; there would be no way to remove the build-up. The individual who assisted me in clearing the logbook opined that the problem was probably a wiring harness because 3 sensors have failed. Three individual sensors failing at the same time is very unlikely. I understand that some messages are true reset candidates; but they can't all be that way. I call on the Fleet Captain and his people to set some guidelines that we can use to be certain that potential failures are simply not being reset; but instead are being thoughtfully investigated to determine what is a true failure and what isn't. I was particularly dismayed when we were prevented from ferrying the aircraft out that night by the duty manager; who stated he was not going to give us maintenance permission to ferry; only to be asked to do the same thing the next morning. That request was refused; as we no longer felt we had adequate knowledge as to the TRUE weather conditions enroute.

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.