Embraer 145 air carrier crew reported numerous equipment malfunction alerts including landing gear; autopilot; and terrain warnings during descent. The crew performed a procedure outside of Flight Manual guidance to silence the alarms and landed safely.
Synopsis
Embraer 145 air carrier crew reported numerous equipment malfunction alerts including landing gear; autopilot; and terrain warnings during descent. The crew performed a procedure outside of Flight Manual guidance to silence the alarms and landed safely.
Narrative
Day 1 leg 1 on at XA:00 am Aircraft X had 3 existing MEL's for 5G; FDR and CAT II Downgrade. Looking and reviewing the MEL's; CB B5 was pulled and not collared and the gustlock was disengaged. FA notified us that none of the carts in the galley had bins and the carts were also empty and she needed to be fully stocked. After energizing the aircraft I attempted to use COM 2 to contact ops; ops could not hear me on COM 2; COM 2 was inoperative and communicated on COM 1. I had started the APU and when three minutes have passed to energize the packs and condition the aircraft; Pack 1 was not operating. I contacted maintenance and Person A arrived to work on the COM issue and was unable to resolve it. I talked to him about how we approached the aircraft and the circuit breakers; gustlock and how Pack 1 was not working. He said to call in pack 1. I called in Pack 1 and asked maintenance if they could fix it before we depart since the comms were still being worked on and they said no. We were refiled lower to FL240 to accommodate the single pack and decided it should still cool down enough to operate; it was about XA:30 am at this point. The plane was MEL'd for the pack and Com 2 in addition to the other MEL's and we closed the boarding door and went underway. Right after the door closed an overhead panel fell and landed on XX passengers; nobody was injured. We returned to gate for maintenance to secure it and took up dispatches offer for additional fuel since we were opening the door again. Maintenance came to fix the panel and that went smoothly; however we made the call to request 8.0 on the new PFUEL the fueler loaded 8700 lbs onto the aircraft. The flight; went smoothly up until descent into ZZZ; descending through 10;000 aural warnings started with the following and repeating; autopilot; landing gear warning; don't sink; bank angle; and terrain terrain. They were continuous nuisance; distracting; and erroneous warnings. We were unable to hear each other and approach clearly; and focus. I leveled off the aircraft at 8;000; advised Approach what was going on; request block from 7500 to 8500 and we needed delay vectors to run QRH items; but we did NOT [request priority handling]. Once the aircraft was stable holding altitude and heading I transferred the controls over to FO. With no messages on EICAS other than the FDR Fail; I started in the NAP section and completed the RA failure QRH; and also looked for the EGPWS QRH with the terrain and landing gear warnings. Alerts continued; we contacted company via ACARS about the alerts and they were not stopping. They relayed a message about the RA and EGPWS issue and agreed that the problem. We also had a fellow Company X pilot contact us on frequency at ZZZ and reached out and confirmed they had the same issue on another aircraft and to pull the EGPWS circuit breaker. The QRH did not say to pull the EGPWS circuit breaker but a combination of systems knowledge; VFR weather and winds are calm; no windshear threats; agreement in the flight deck about the scenario; and prior experience of LG Warning in training scenarios with EGPWS I pulled the CB exercising PIC Authority per company Manual AOM 1 General section that 'The procedures in this manual; QRC; and the QRH cannot adequately address every possible combination of failures; [priority handling] situations or flight conditions. As always; the Captain is ultimately responsible for the safety of their passengers and crew; and as such will make decisions based on this manual; QRC; and the QRH; as well as their experience and common sense.' It was approximately 95 degrees trying to assess the problem in combination with Aural Warnings coming in non-stop; it made it difficult to concentrate; communicate and assess. We attempted to utilize the LG (landing gear) Warning cut out and it was not operating as expected and we continued to receive the aural warnings. We originally leveled off at 8;000 feet with approximately 3400 lbs of fuel; and approximately 30 minutes later at 2400 lbs of fuel we made the decision to land at the field with only the landing gear aural warning continuing; and while being vectored back to the field we were approaching 2;000 lbs of FOB and I declared min fuel as a precaution. The landing was normal and the LG aural warning stopped once the gear was down. I was also informed by another pilot the day after; that the LG Warning cut out button installed was nonstandard for Company X and standard for a Company Y aircraft. Furthermore we had learned that this was the first day of revenue service for this aircraft from Location A. Also today; the aircraft was back in service with the RA and EGPWS MEL's cleared; I happened to speak to the pilot who flew it and he said the same exact thing happened to them even though they cleared the MEL's in ZZZ1.Suggestion: Proper maintenance; limit number of MEL's allowed; both packs must be operating in the summer and short flights; better fuel quantity communication requests.
Second reporter narrative
The following occurred on Day 1 on flight XXXX service from ZZZ1 to ZZZ in Aircraft X. I walked into the flight deck to greet my captain to start our trip when I noticed he was on the phone with maintenance. He told me that he was unable to properly communicate with ops to request bins and the carts needed to be restocked. My captain notified maintenance to fix the comm but could not find a solution. Pack 1 was also broken (the cockpit later reached temperatures of 104° F; and it was not once below 90° inside of the cockpit). We also contacted maintenance regarding the pack 1 issue. My captain MEL'd the Pack and the comm. We closed the cabin door and our flight attendant; FA told us that one of the overhead compartments had fallen down on a passenger; nobody was injured. We had to call for a gate agent to extend the jet bridge so maintenance could come out and secure it. Because pack 1 was broken we would be limited to FL250 (we ended up flying at FL240); our original altitude was 30;000+ feet. This eventually led to us requesting more fuel due to lower cruising altitude. My captain told me to contact ops and request 8;000 pounds of fuel. We noticed they had put 700 pounds of extra fuel than what we had asked for so I confronted the fueler. I told him that we did not request the amount he put in; and in response he showed me on his phone that said 8;700 pounds". He told me his phone must not have updated and that he later got the actual request of 8;000 pounds. He apologized and said that he did not have the proper truck to remove fuel. Now that we are 700 pounds heavy we decide to start both engines and let the APU run. When we descending through 9;000 or 10;000 feet; we got an alert for the landing gear and the autopilot failed. The associated alerts we got were autopilot; landing gear; don't sink; bank angle and a few terrain warnings. Both Person B and I tried to silence them so we could hear each other talking but that didn't do much. We realized that once we had the n1 set above ~61% the alerts would silence. So Captain transferred the controls to me and I aimed for a higher power setting so we could talk about things. I notified atc about what was happening and we got delayed vectors. I had the airplane at 8;000 feet and at one point reengaged the autopilot which seemed to work fine for the time being. Captain referenced the RA fail QRH procedure. We were in contact with company/maintenance during this as well and they told us that it was likely the RA that had failed. The alerts persisted. While in contact with ATC we had another Company X crew say on the radios that they had a similar experience; and to fix this they pulled the circuit breaker J8 for the EGPWS and suggested that we do the same. My captain did not instantly pull the circuit breaker but after some thought we did end up pulling it. While we were troubleshooting the issue we ended up declaring minimum fuel with roughly 2;000 pounds of fuel remaining. I remembered in training that we utilized the LG cutout button so we did try using that. After receiving a message from company and Captain's decision to make a landing; that's what we did. We contacted approach and told them we were ready to shoot the approach. The landing gear alert was going off until we got the gear down and then we made a safe landing. It was my understanding that this aircraft had just come out of the desert and came with many maintenance issues. In addition; another crew told us that Aircraft X had the respective MELs cleared on Day 2 and they had the same alerts that we did. So this clearly was not fixed.Suggestion: Properly inspected aircraft. Correct amount of fuel. Properly maintaining aircraft (had 5 or more MELs)."
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.