Gatwick tug drivers needing to hear push clearance
 

Did I really here numerous stations requesting a repeat of pushback clearance today for the benefit of the tug drivers? Heard about four of them specifically asking for clearance to be repeated for the benefit of the tug driver....

Similar system now in place at Stansted.

Tug drivers must have headset on if conditional clearance issued.

Too many instances of hand waving from the cockpit windows being not quite good enough

whitelighter that's a point if the headset is u/s. Otherwise is there any reason why the (wo)man trusted to fly the thing is not trusted to correctly hear a pushback clearence and relay same to the groundcrew? What next, carry a baggage handler in the jumpseat to verify the take-off clearence was heard correctly?
Smacks of another manifestation of pointless health and safety nonsense, regrettably epidemic in the UK.

I think it was Malmo or Gothenburg where the flight deck have no involvement in the call or action of the pushback - all done by the tug crew, apart from brakes off.

"Hand waving" is the mot juste, indeed. I wonder how many crews and ground personnel are aware of the standard marshalling signals. Sometimes I believe those signals are virtually unknown to ground staff and pilots have consequently given up using them. Alas, in the days of published ATPL question banks, it might even be the other way around.

A couple of years ago Gatwick identified that it had a (relatively) high number of both unauthorised and incorrect push backs. In order to try to tackle this a two part trial came in where ATC would give the push back direction in every clearance (dealing with incorrect pushes) and tug drivers would be required to be in the tug to hear it (dealing with unauthorised pushes).

When the trial results came back it was apparent that although the instances of incorrect push backs were largely unchanged there was a significant drop in unauthorised pushes. Therefore the requirement to be in the tug was made permanent. It has been suggested here that "the person trusted to fly the thing should be trusted to hear and pass on the instruction" but the evidence tends to suggest that by doing it this way you get a significant improvement.

The incorrect push part is more tricky to challenge as Gatwick has a large number of stands for which the standard push back is runway dependant and a number of instances where ATC will vary the standard push to increase capacity. This is why you will often hear ATC giving a push back direction on certain key stands for a short period after a runway change. Again the statistics seem to suggest that having the push back crew in the tug to hear the clearance reduces the likelyhood of error creeping in to these "non-standard" pushes.

So rather than being a case of "health and safety gone mad" it is actually a tested remedy to an identified problem that has produced good results.

Here in Melbourne we do it differently (of course!). If a domestic flight, the pilot calls for push and will then, depending on which stand the acft is on, either push on the apron (cul de sac) or push to a standard disconnect point (not runway dependent) on a taxiway. Pilot then calls for taxy, with no tug involvement.

If an international flight, the pilot calls to which we would respond "pushback approved", with any condition, then the tug driver calls, and we give pushback instructions to the tug, along with the same condition. The tug then has to call vacated before we can give taxy clearance. This applies even if the same disconnect point is used as for a domestic flight.

Yes, they keep getting it wrong. Why introduce a layer of communication where one is not necessary?

It does indeed have proven results. Further, whilst the captain remains the commander of the aircraft during push back he's not the one actually in control of the aircraft. He's also not the one who may lose his license for one mistake on the ground (the safety culture of handling agents tends to lag a little behind that of ATC and airlines).