Meh, having flown a fair bit into places like EFRO, EKSN etc I fail to see the big issue. When it gets bad up there, they don't even try with the tug, if you can't move it with the fan's you are staying there. Sure, stuck axle deep in mud is one thing, wheels a couple of feet onto hard grass is nothing to wet your knickers about.

A reportable accident/incident usually implies damage and/or injury, or at least a serious risk thereof.

So, for example, a runway departure on takeoff or landing could well qualify. Pushing an aircraft off the taxiway with a tug, no matter how embarrassing or inconvenient, probably doesn't.

It's a reportable incident, but it's not an accident. Unless it warrants at least being a serious incident, the AAIB won't be involved. ICAO Annex 13 refers.

Gentlemen,

Do look longer than your nose for crying out loud.

So you get pushed into the grass/mud. What do you think this will do to your tires, brakes, engines( or do you really think that throttling up close over unknown state of ground will not risk FOD?!)...indeed. you have NO IDEA what amount of soil is contaminating these surfaces.
Any sane person gets the aircraft pulled "on the dry" in a professional way and gets the aircraft inspected.
But alas, it seems that more and more children of the magenta are becoming Captain without a notion of Airmanship, Captaincy and common sense. And that is not against Easyjet, but a general observation.

Mate: some "gentlemen" here were captains before the magenta line was thought of.
What do you do when there is no "dry" for a thousand miles in any direction?

Icelanta

Couldn't agree more.

It's a very long time since I started flying! A time when Magenta was little more than a character in one of my favourite films!

When faced with attempting something in a jet I have not been trained for nor experienced, I may well take a cautious approach. A risk/benefit analysis! Here I can see one option that carries absolutely no risk. To life, machinery or my career. Against another option that carries an unquantifiable risk. To life, machinery and my career.

And what benefit is there from the second option? Is anyone SERIOUSLY suggesting going flying in these circumstances?

There are old pilots. There are bold pilots. But the only old and bold pilots live here on pprune, and it seems the older they get, the better they were!

What's the big rush to get this flight away? Are we at war? Is there a medical emergency?
Sit on your hands, make some radio calls, keep the pax / crew informed ( there goes 3 minutes) , realise that the sun will still come up if it takes an hour or two to arrive at an engineering fix ( probably different tug or deplaning) and then chuckle to yourself about the story you'l tell on your next overnight.
All you folk who want to rev it up to keep on schedule sure must think your individual flights are critical.

EU 261 for a start

Not me.

My crticism, as at post#21 ref post#10, was against people who hold up a completely imaginary rule book in the hope that it will keep them safe.

As mentioned it looks like stand 555 area and I understand the push back procedure from
these stands for B737/A320 types is straight back towards the grass rather than a turn to
align with the taxiway centreline, maybe so to avoid delay to others on nearby stands.
Once tug disconnects and ground crew are clear the aircraft is then required to make a
sharp turn to pick up the centreline.

OK, so does anyone know how the Engineers got it out of the grass...?


My Guess is that the Engineer sat in the left seat and applied thrust, up to and including, TOGA, to get it moving...
Either that, or he used a Bigger Tug, or maybe two..

The world crumbles around us and we now have 2 pages of mainly rubbish centered around an aircraft pushed back into the grass. The world crumbles even more

https://cdn3.scrvt.com/airportdtm/pu...ane-a320-2.jpg

For some of you drama queens, here is a picture of an A320. Notice how the main gear is behind the engines?

When groundcrew normally pushes you back with the tail sticking far out on to the grass in LGW from these stands, do you really believe that there is constant debris flying backwards? The worrying thing here is that it seems it has become a sport in LGW to pushback aircraft as close as possible to the pavement edge from a mainwheel perspective.

But clearly the engines nor the nosewheel would be over unpaved surface if the main wheels are just over the edge. So all those dramatic videos are completely unrelated.

The plane was disembarked, nobody powered out. What is this thread even about?

I dunno, but this thread may be about, the captain called for 'taxi'? Because the tug had failed to pull him out?

Where was he taxiing to?

His colleague on the adjacent stand, didn't seem to think that was very smart??

Allegedly?:rolleyes:

Your view is unclear.

The posts above are a fascinating cross-section of the way attitudes to a practical job have changed over the years. They are also a sad testament to the apparent inability of the modern generation in general to react correctly to an argument (in the philosophical sense) and who take any statement as a rigid declaration of absolutes, then extrapolate wildly adding further self -generated absolutes completely unmentioned in the original statement and come up - unsurprisingly - with an entirely spurious conclusion.

Who, anywhere, has suggested that high power was suggested as a means as getting off the grass? No one. Yet most of the anti posts seem to have assumed this with lurid assumptions of airframe damage due to flying mud and debris and apparently from the vast amounts of power being applied...
Well, it wasn't. Not by anyone, yet those who sensibly suggested trying to drive out of the mire are lambasted for just this.

Then the naysayers rant on about damage to engines and airframe by flying mud once taxiing and t/o recommences. Who, exactly, suggested high speed taxi and t/o after this event? No one. Even so, is this actually a realistic as opposed to web-theatrical scenario? I doubt it.

The assumption made by so many that trying to move it by judicious use of thrust (as any judicious Captain might - or might not do, having first ascertained the nature/depth of his being stuck) is not addressed, it being merely assumed that vast amounts of thrust would immediately be brutally and unthinkingly applied. Do these people not know the meaning of "Professionalism"? "Judgement"? "Scale"? I gather not.

And then they go on to assume that having got unstuck, if indeed that was the result taxi would be commenced at injudicious speeds risking debris ingestion (another unlikely assumption) and airframe damage (yet another...) And then try a t/o on gear "damaged" by sitting in some mud... Did they do a technical course on airframes? Do they have any idea what it takes to damage tough stuff like undercarriage? We know they did, but they hardly seem to appreciate the physical properties of their machines to the n'th degree that they can repeat the books, verbatim.

No one who suggested trying to drive out mentioned unthinking amounts of power, even less of taxiing and taking off before an inspection. Yet this is the universal assumption by those decrying the "power out" suggestion. Where do you all get these wild assumptions? After all, aren't Professional pilots supposed to work from facts, not assumptions?

Are there really no variations of grey in the rigidly black and white minds of the magenta liners (if I may be allowed such a complex metaphor)? Just because your gear is off the hard is not necessarily a reason to throw all common sense recovery methods out of the window, any more than it is a reason to assume the guy who does is going to unthinkingly apply TOGA power to achieve it.

Nor is it a reason to assume that he then canters down the taxiway and gets airborne. Perhaps he uses a judicious amount of power and if freed gets an inspection done first, but just about every post above decrying the "power-outers" seems to have assumed just this.

Where has common sense gone? Where has Airmanship gone?

Is it really the case that once the figurative magenta taxiway centreline has been missed the whole shebang comes to a complete and automatic "nuffink more to do wiv me mate" jobsworth handswashing, cancellation and "let the office get us out of this one now"?

Nary a recognition that a smidge of grey might just exist in the rigid black and white responses above.

What do these people do if the tug pushes their tyres back into 10' deep soft snow at Prague and then loses traction? Do you call the "office" 800 miles away for the girls there to come out with shovels because there is no magenta line visible or do you first see if it is possible to taxi out?

Heavens!

I weep for this industry.

That makes no sense at all.

The only possible reason for a captain to even contemplate powering the aircraft back off the grass onto the taxiway would be that he/she intended to go flying.

If I had been a passenger on board during that manoeuvre, I'd have been heading for the exit PDQ.

noflynomore (good name!)

There is one undeniably safe course of action here. There is another course with unquantifiable risks.

Modern aviators are trained to use airmanship (along with new fangled CRM!) to minimise risk.

I accept previous generations were more gung ho.

Well if you're still on the apron in Prague, then "powering out" through the tracks made in the snow during push would be a non-event. You're not comparing like with like.

Dave R. On the contrary, it makes perfect sense. If you can drive out of it with judicious use of power, having ascertained the extent of the bog-down why on earth not?
Your utterly unwarranted assumption re heading straight for t/o is exactly the irrational reaction I was trying to illustrate - I explained this quite clearly and despite that you have just jumped straight into accusatory remarks utterly contrary to any suggestion of mine and exactly as I was trying to illustrate!
That just isn't rational, if I may say so.

I was an aeronautical engineer before I was a pilot.

You have very little understanding of design loads versus experimental. Hopping up out of a muddy rut onto a reinforced concrete ramp is not analyzed or tested in any way. Not to mention certification. In essence the crew would be test pilots. Good luck justifying that. Stand before the Chief Pilot and point out that, you know, the loads on landing are pretty high too, so we thought......