While I am retired now, and have no intimate knowledge of this incident, I am amazed at some of the responses IF you are in fact Pilots.
I was involved in towing Aircraft all my 40 something year career and in these pushouts from when they started, the ONLY reason things have changed is the usual reason to save money.
We LAMEs and AMEs used to do all the towing too until the TWU wanted to take it from us, the Company agreed to industrial pressure from them and gave them all the pushouts (the driving NOT the headsets) but refused to give them all the towing. A lot of us thought IF you are going to do that let them do ALL the towing, like from the hangar in the middle of the night when it is raining but the Company would NOT. We found out why later when several times the TWU called a snap stoppage leaving Aircraft trapped at the gates. Then the Company said these Aircraft had to go to the hangar for some reason so were towed away by the LAMEs/AMEs for 10 minutes then brought back to the terminal and parked in a way they could just taxi out.
Anyway back to the topic, I am amazed ANY Pilot would be in favour of this idea, surely you would prefer to have an LAME on the headset for departures?
I remember on a contract some 20 years ago pushing back at Taipei I was in the jump seat and there was a minor problem, the Captain started to explain the problem to the Guy on the headset who just ignored him and finished his ONLY job of getting us off the bay.
On another contract after that out of JFKNY, come our first departure and I went to do the headset duties for the pushback we were told that is NOT how it works here, the tug driver does all that. The Driver got the Aircraft away from the terminal okay, but as she disconnected the towbar and backed away the Aircraft followed her, she did NOT even know to ask/tell the Crew to park the brakes. After that the Pilots insisted we LAMEs did all the pushbacks.
Of course nobody is perfect, but when you have LAMEs who have spent their whole Lives looking after Aircraft why on Earth would you NOT use them when they are available?
