A Lufthansa Airbus A340 widebody had its tow bar separate from the aircraft while pushing back from the gate in Munich, Germany. The tug loses control of the plane, and the pilots are rolling backward – unable to see behind them.
Am Münchener Flughafen machte sich ein #Airbus der #Lufthansa selbständig. pic.twitter.com/crcfshFjyY
— Der CrossChecker (@dercrosschecker) January 12, 2024
Airline captain KC-10 Driver explains on Twitter, “you must apply brakes very, very carefully – you don’t want to lock them, just translate the kinetic energy into heat inside the brakes, which it then disperses to the atmosphere.”
The center of gravity is somewhere very close to those wheels, and it’s a carefully balanced thing. Too nose heavy & you won’t get it off the ground. Too tail heavy & it will tip onto the tail…think of it like a see-saw with the kid at the nose just a little heavier than the kid at the tail, and the fulcrum is the main landing gear.
So, what happens if you’re rolling backward at more than a crawl, then jam on the brakes & stop the rotation of the wheels? … [U]nless the amount of kinetic energy is really low, the wheels will stop rotating and the airplane will rotate around the wheels instead.
The tail will quite suddenly & violently go into the ground.
It’s a little like riding a bike & locking up the front wheel only; if your energy is above a certain level, you’re not going to stop or skid, you’re going to rotate around the front wheel. Except here, the center of gravity means that it’s more like a unicycle locking up the wheel.
Between TikTok and Twitter the video has been viewed over half a million times so far. This is a rare occurrence – something well handled by the Lufthansa pilots!
(HT: Golden Rule Travel)
Isn’t that a Towbarless Tug? Cheers!
They don’t normally use towbars at MUC and FRA. They use the tugs that lift the front wheels. I don’t see a towbar in the picture, and the way the tug extends looks like it is the lifting type.
Looks like the problem is that the aircraft didn’t have its brakes engaged when the tug tried to hook up and grab the front wheel.
So the pilots did a genius thing? They put on the brakes?
Really @Gary? 🙂
So, several things:
* The plane was moving all of 5 MPH. Just hit the brakes, and, as usual, don’t jam them, just gently apply them. You know, like every car driver.
* A KC-10 is not an airline aircraft, it is a military tanker. Specifically the military version of the DC-10.
* Even if the A340 pilots did jam on the brakes, at that low speed nothing would have happened other than the plane stopping. No, the plane would not have tipped over.
The ramp, as with most gate ramps, appears to be flat. The Scarebus wasn’t going very far.