737-300 NLG collapse - PIT
 

During pushback

Makes you wonder how thorough the ground crew and FO pre flights were......

Examination of the gear revealed that the lower drag brace was fractured at its center, and the flanges at the break were twisted. One fracture surface was sectioned from the brace, and forwarded to the Safety Board Materials Laboratory in Washington, D.C., for examination. The other fractured section of the brace remained attached to the airplane for future examination.

Depending on the type of fracture, it can be really hard to detect visual. Also with a bend -I guess- it depends under which angle you are looking at it.

There but for the grace of God, go I.
 

My friend:

If I've learned one thing in 21 years of flying airplanes it's that Kharma has a funny way of paying us back.

Don't be so quick to judge.

Just because you haven't experienced a gear failure on pushback doesn't mean that your airplane is defect free.

We're not meant to be Supermen with x-ray vision. We're just there to keep all the pieces moving in the same direction.

Good luck.

AMEN, brother zerozero!

Considering how often the gears are cleaned on our 737's - I can almost guarantee that nobody would be able to see whether the drag brace is cracked or not on a walkround.

Two questions here as I don't know the 737 in any detail.

."--- but the nose gear migrated to the airplane's right, with no steering forces applied."

Should that have happened?

Should the pushback have been stopped at this point?

Clicker

Flown-it

i have to agree with zerozero. Your post is just looking for someone to blame. Sometimes things break and it's nobodys fault. The link to blame can be so tenuous that it's not reasonable to make the connection. For example, in this incident, can we blame the man in the smelting plant who made the gear brace for having the smelter set at 650 degress F instead of 660 degrees which caused the brace to fail, no, maybe we should blame the guy who put the oven together which was used!!! Eventually you will be pointing the finger at the bus driver taking the F/O to work for not smiling at her and putting her in the wrong frame of mind to do a walkaround!!!

Maybe there was something the F/O could have seen, but the reality is that a thousand other F/O's would have seen the same thing.....nothing (including me).

Oh Dear ruffled a few feathers. :*
In the interests of harmony I withdraw the word thorough and apologise to anyone involved.
Now can we think about preflights and how on occasion we do less than a perfect job.
Over the decades as a pilot and as a 737 check airman I've looked at a fair few aeroplanes and also watched pilots on IOE doing the same. Occasionally I've found things. Indeed found items which from the grime had been thus for some flights. I have also doubtless missed many items. Fortunately none of which came back to bite me. It's not that we are not trying but...Complacency Kills.

Flown-it

Try doing an external check in pitch black in a tropical thunderstorm in 35 kt winds on a B747, an dthen tell me what you think.

Yes, vigilance is required, but to be honest picking any other than the obvious re tyres, engines and general structure is nigh on impossible.

In this case it's fortunate that the landing gear failed when it did. Imagine the catastrophe that would have resulted if the gear had failed under landing/take-off conditions?

As for the thoroughness or otherwise of the walkaround, I don't think we can really comment as we weren't there, but I know it's possible for a crack to propogate very quickly so there might not have been anything to see!