Narrative:

The first officer commented how difficult the main cabin door was to open. Upon my return I noticed the same difficulty and we began to investigate further and reported the event as an aircraft mechanical discrepancy to maintenance control. When mechanics arrived we pointed out the issue that the door appeared out of alignment and showed them how the more of the door was impacting the aft frame then the forward frame and this seem to cause the door to be extremely difficult to open from the outside.mechanics worked on the aircraft for awhile and eventually signed it off. Statements were made by the mechanics that the door was 'messed up' and 'needed to go to another airport because it needed parts'. An additional comment was made by one of the mechanics that the company needed to learn to start stocking parts. The mechanic stated this was the best they could do.at this point; I tested the door operation to verify they had fixed the issue. My inspection clearly showed the door problem had not been fixed. While the door handle was slightly easier to manipulate (but not every time) the door was still extremely difficult to open from the outside. It would take 4 or 5 aggressive pulls by doing multiple tugs (literally doing pull ups on door handle from outside) to get the door open. At this point I refused the aircraft and again wrote up the same discrepancy. This resulted in 5 or 6 different mechanics at different intervals over the next hour looking at the door.I finally timed out and would not be able to proceed to our destination as scheduled. My safety concern is over why mechanics sign off discrepancies knowing full well the issue is not fixed. This is unacceptable. The mechanic made statements after signing it off that indicated the door needed additional maintenance and was not fixed.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An EMB-145 Captain reported maintenance technicians had signed off a passenger door as serviceable despite advising that they were unable to successfully resolve the difficulty in opening it.

Narrative: The First Officer commented how difficult the main cabin door was to open. Upon my return I noticed the same difficulty and we began to investigate further and reported the event as an aircraft mechanical discrepancy to Maintenance Control. When Mechanics arrived we pointed out the issue that the door appeared out of alignment and showed them how the more of the door was impacting the aft frame then the forward frame and this seem to cause the door to be extremely difficult to open from the outside.Mechanics worked on the aircraft for awhile and eventually signed it off. Statements were made by the Mechanics that the door was 'messed up' and 'needed to go to another airport because it needed parts'. An additional comment was made by one of the mechanics that the company needed to learn to start stocking parts. The mechanic stated this was the best they could do.At this point; I tested the door operation to verify they had fixed the issue. My inspection clearly showed the door problem had not been fixed. While the door handle was slightly easier to manipulate (but not every time) the door was still extremely difficult to open from the outside. It would take 4 or 5 aggressive pulls by doing multiple tugs (literally doing pull ups on door handle from outside) to get the door open. At this point I refused the aircraft and again wrote up the same discrepancy. This resulted in 5 or 6 different mechanics at different intervals over the next hour looking at the door.I finally timed out and would not be able to proceed to our destination as scheduled. My safety concern is over why mechanics sign off discrepancies knowing full well the issue is not fixed. This is unacceptable. The mechanic made statements after signing it off that indicated the door needed additional maintenance and was not fixed.

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.