i was on a northwest flight out of memphis last week waiting for the plane to backed out from the gate. as always, you expect to feel a jolt when the the groundcrew begins pushing the plane with the truck.

instead, the pilot increased power to the engines, and we began backing out. he braked after we backed out, and we immediately began moving forward. he had used reverse-thrust to back out -- something i had never experienced before, and wrote a note to him requesting some information on why this isn't done more often.

from capt. doug anderson:

just curious if any other ft's have seen this maneuver performed on a regular basis on other airlines?

AA does this often with their Super 80's.

Been on many AA MadDogs and 727's that powered back as well as a CO 727

Do they do this on AA F-100?

someone correct me on this if I'm wrong, but I don't beleive that the F100 has thrust reversers. It uses a clamshell type air/speed break instead. (Therefore it can't power back under it's own power.)

BurkeyII,

F100s do have thrust reversers (clamshell-type, like on the DC-9 series). They also have the speedbrake, which is one of the easy ways to identify the Fokker twinjets.

CO used to do the thrust-reverse pushback from gates much more than they do now. Based on lots of circumstantial evidence (for another day, if you're interested), I'd say they stopped doing it because it's not a great thing to do to the engines. They tend to kick up a lot of dirt and such, which then gets sucked into the intakes. I haven't had a CO thrust-reverse pushback in two or three years.

NW does it at their hubs with all of the DC-9s, AFAIK.

My recollection of the event is not too sharp, but a plane crashed shortly after take off some years ago. The cause was partly attributed to the use of thrust reversers to back away from the gate. It seems that some debris was blown into the jet intakes, but the problem did not manifest itself until after the plane left the runway.

Perhaps someone has better memory or more details?

Regards,

Ken Hamer

mweiss -- thanks for the clarification, re-reading my previous post, it sounded like it came from a politician

btw that last push-back on the CO 727 was in '97 on an IAH-ACA flight (was reticketed from AA due to ice at DFW - that's how I remember)

[This message has been edited by burkeyII (edited 05-24-99).]

About 10 years ago I was stuck in the Atlanta airport for about 10 hours. Since I was bored, I spent a lot of time watching the planes at the gates. As I recall (maybe my memory isn't so good) all of the 757's backed away from the gate under their own power. I remember being impressed as I had never seen that before.

I saw an AA plane do this at DFW one time, and I could have sworn it was an F-100, though it might have been an MD-80.

I guess it depends on the airline's operational policy. Delta doesn't do reverse-thrust pushbacks (though I do remember in the old days Eastern did it quite often at ATL).

I do remember one time riding on an American 757 at DFW where it performed a reverse-thrust pushback. Certain gates are authorized for use of reverse-thrust pushback where it is safe to do so.

------------------
AlphaSigOU
Causa latet vis est notissima - the cause is hidden, the results are well-known.

arturo seen lots plains do thes. arturo themk et rilly es gate thet maters, knot aerplain.

I recall something about this in a history of Eastern Airlines--Frank Borman's autobiography. They determined that they didn't need to have pushers out from the gates and were really proud that they could save that money as long as they had the wing-walkers.

KenHamer:

You are talking about an Air Florida 737 that crashed into the Potomac after takeoff from DCA. There was a snowstorm, and the captain had used reverse thrust to back-out the aircraft-something which is grossly illegal with the 737 under those conditions. The engine thrust controls malfunctioned, and the plane stalled and crashed after takeoff.

So if the pilot uses reverse thrust in a snowstorm--beware!!!

avek and KenHammer,

The AirFlorida situation was a strange one. The pilot TRIED to push back using thrust-reverse, but actually was unable to. Nevertheless, it sure kicked up a huge amount of snow, which covered the pitot tubes in the intake nacelles. As a result, they weren't registering the correct thrust values. The pilot took off with too little thrust. That, combined with icing on the upper surface of the wings, did them in.

Thrust-reverse pushback wasn't used much at all until after deregulation, when airlines were looking for ways to cut costs. I'm strongly inclined to believe that it shows up as a short-term cost savings, but a long-term money drain.

Engine maintenance is expensive just in terms of parts and labor, not to mention the fact that a plane in the shop is earning $0 for the airline. The cost of a ramper and tug is relatively low, even when you factor in the benefits package.

For this very reason, I've taken to using thrust-reverse pushback as a gauge of how well the airline is being run. Thrust reverse = short-term management; tugs = long-term management. That's diminishing in usefulness as the number of fuselage-mounted-engine aircraft decrease, but it still is useful for those airlines flying DC-9 series and Fokker twinjets.

Granted, this is only my opinion, but I'd be happy to share the information I've collected over the years that back up that opinion.