An A320 was forced to refuse to accept an aircraft with a chronic adr failure history in order to ge...

Narrative:

While still at the gate the first officer noticed his pfd was not receiving any altitude information from adr 2. This was a chronic write up with the fix in the past being to reset the circuit breakers and when the altitude data returned sign off the write up. The technician came up to the plane and did just that and was ready to release the plane. I stated that I was not satisfied with the fix; since this was a repetitive problem that resetting the circuit breakers was not fixing the actual problem. If the adr 2 on this aircraft is inoperative you cannot enter rvsm airspace and you are left with a single channel feeding the aircraft barometric information. I was not comfortable with those situations. I wanted a new adr installed. To do this I had to refuse the aircraft. I believe this situation; which is now common at our airline; is unsafe. Making the captain refuse an aircraft just to have it properly repaired leads to undue pressure on the captain to fly an aircraft with known unresolved problems. If I took my car into the shop and week after week was told it was fixed after the shop reset the module; only to have the same problem occur again and again I would certainly not consider the car actually fixed. So why does our maintenance at times operate that way? The adr was replaced and no problems were noted during the flight.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An A320 was forced to refuse to accept an aircraft with a chronic ADR failure history in order to get maintenance to anything other than 'reset' it; as had been done with the previous writeups; and write it off as fixed.

Narrative: While still at the gate the First Officer noticed his PFD was not receiving any altitude information from ADR 2. This was a chronic write up with the fix in the past being to reset the circuit breakers and when the altitude data returned sign off the write up. The technician came up to the plane and did just that and was ready to release the plane. I stated that I was not satisfied with the fix; since this was a repetitive problem that resetting the circuit breakers was not fixing the actual problem. If the ADR 2 on this aircraft is inoperative you cannot enter RVSM airspace and you are left with a single channel feeding the aircraft barometric information. I was not comfortable with those situations. I wanted a new ADR installed. To do this I had to refuse the aircraft. I believe this situation; which is now common at our airline; is unsafe. Making the Captain refuse an aircraft just to have it properly repaired leads to undue pressure on the Captain to fly an aircraft with known unresolved problems. If I took my car into the shop and week after week was told it was fixed after the shop reset the module; only to have the same problem occur again and again I would certainly not consider the car actually fixed. So why does our Maintenance at times operate that way? The ADR was replaced and no problems were noted during the flight.

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.

Attributes
ACN	977067
Time
Date	201110
Local Time Of Day	0001-0600
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	A320
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Parked
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	Air Data Computer
Person 1
Function	Captain Pilot Not Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 130 Flight Crew Total 10000 Flight Crew Type 6700
Events
Anomaly	Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical Deviation - Procedural Maintenance

An A320 was forced to refuse to accept an aircraft with a chronic adr failure history in order to get maintenance to anything other than 'reset' it; as had been done with the previous writeups; and write it off as fixed.