Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
A towbar incorporates a shear pin designed to ensure that should anything go wrong it will, at worst, be the towbar that gets damaged and not the aircraft's landing gear.
And if the towbar pin doesn't shear, there is something in the nosegear that will, at least I've had it happen on a Boeing that was forced past the nosewheel steering limit. Not sure what maintenance has to do to fix it but for us it was an aircraft swap on an outbound pushback.
If the towbar comes off the plane you need to get back on the brakes lest you roll into the tug or something else. We had the towbar come loose in Cairo on a slope, by the time we realized what had happened and put on the binders we were inches from a piece of ground equipment. Many planes now have cameras to see the nosewheel area during pushback but on the legacy aircraft you need to really be careful when coordinating the brakes and taxi during the pushback procedure. I've found some of my ground colleagues in the U.S. to be very casual about standard voice calls over the interphone during the push and disconnect. Gotta sound cool I guess...
For the non-towbar aircraft positioning discussion, does anybody know where this widely published Caravelle picture was taken? India or Thailand perhaps?
