Date: 201512
Local time of day: 0601-1200
Location: ZZZ.Airport, US
Flight conditions: VMC
Light: Night
Aircraft: B737 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Operator: Air Carrier
Operating under: Part 121
Flight plan: IFR
Mission: Passenger
Flight phase: Parked
Reporter organization: Air Carrier
Reporter function: First Officer
Reporter qualification: Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Human factors: Time Pressure; Confusion
Second reporter function: Captain
Anomaly: Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Detector: Person Flight Crew
When detected: Aircraft In Service At Gate
Result: Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Contributing factors: Company Policy; Human Factors
Primary problem: Human Factors

Narrative: During the originating preflight; the First Officer seat is saturated with tasks that prevent a thorough examination of the logbook. If there are discrepancies the Captain's seat many times becomes saturated. There is a level of trust that has to be maintained between the crew members that tasks are being accomplished. Often various tasks are not verified between the crew members that tasks due to lack of time. We both missed an open writeup left from the terminating Crew the night before. Apparently there was no Maintenance available when the writeup was made and also the Captain who wrote up the discrepancy never followed through with Maintenance Control after writing up the discrepancy. We failed to catch the open writeup during our preflight.I feel like there could be a better distribution of preflight tasks divided between Crew Members to facilitate better checks and balances of tasks.


Second narrative: We flew the aircraft with an open write-up in logbook. It was the originating flight. Terminating Captain from the night before wrote up an issue with the APU and contacted Dispatch and MX Control. MX Control advised the Captain to call local MX to take care of the issue. Captain was unable to contact local MX on the radio or by phone. Terminating Captain wrote up the intermittent light on APU; but did not coordinate with local MX and left. There was no MEL; tracking number; or corrective action documented. Local MX was not aware of the issue. We showed up the next morning on the aircraft with four MELs. Reviewing the MEL restrictions on these MELs took extra time during preflight duties. My FO and I both commented about the APU write-up; but did not catch the fact it was not MEL'd or fixed. The Crew taking the aircraft from us caught the error.I need to carefully look through all write-ups in the logbook. They might have been written up weeks or months earlier and not been caught by anyone's review. Captains writing up an aircraft MUST complete the loop. If at a MX Station; MX should be contacted. If at a Contract Location; Contract MX should be contacted. If you can't contact Local or Contract MX; the write-up MUST be coordinated with MX Control. If not; no one will work the issue and the flight will probably be delayed or taken out of service later. MX Control will be unaware of the problem. Worse yet; the outbound Crew and subsequent Crews may fly the aircraft without catching the write-up; and there is no one to back them up. Bottom line; my fault; I should have caught the open write-up and did not.


Synopsis: B737 crew flew with an open maintenance write-up left from the terminating crew the night before.