Tractors Don’t Hurt Airplanes; People Do! “Same day, same two tractors”
By AT2 Adam White
Photo by Senior Airman River Bruce
How do you prevent a tractor from driving into the wing of an airplane and causing $1.5 million worth of damage?
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The obvious answer is, don’t drive a The assistant tractor towards crew chief helps an airplane. Now align the tractor I didn’t directly drive this tractor on the flightline. into an aircraft, but my actions, or lack thereof, directly contributed to this event happening in my command. So let’s dive into this event and see where everything went wrong. It was our first day back at work after having three weeks of post-deployment leave from what many of you have heard was a “not so fun” ten months onboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72). After our morning maintenance meeting, we (the line shack) had many airplanes to shuffle around between the line, the hangar and the wash rack. I knew that my work center did not have custody of a tractor, so I went to the shop that always does, airframes. I went to airframes and asked the supervisor if they had a tractor that I could borrow for the plane moves that I needed to complete. I was told that they did, but also that the QA from the squadron next to us had found a spring during their FOD walk down, and once that squadron realized it didn’t belong to them, they came over and brought it to our QA. Now, this wasn’t just any normal spring. This spring was larger than most and resembled one that would be attached to a throttle assembly. Our QA conducted their search of the tractors in our command’s custody and found that it came off of the tractor that belonged to airframes. During this
conversation, I was informed that the throttle did not completely return to its idle position. Now, let’s pause right there. When someone tells you that the throttle, an essential part of a tow tractor does not come back to its idle position, I believe that nowadays, the majority of the people would say, “OK, your tractor is broken. Got it.” But this did not cross into my mind. My immediate thought was, “OK, so I’m going to have to use the side of my boot to return the throttle to idle.” And I also believe that many people have been there. I did not slow down and take the time to think about the what if’s in this scenario. I was still in the mindset of ‘go, go, go’! Had I stopped and taken the time to ask the next question that most people would now ask, “Does your tractor pass preop?” the story would stop here, but it doesn’t. So let’s continue. So since I never asked the question, I was never told that the tractor could not be operated. So I proceeded out to the flight line, where I was told the tractor would be since the ATs checked it out from them earlier. Why was the tractor checked out to the AT’s, you ask? I can’t answer that at this juncture of the story. Upon walking outside of the hangar, I found myself standing next to the tractor that was “checked out” by the ATs. There were no ATs present because they had a different tractor hooked up to the power cart on the line working on one of our jets. I conducted my walk around the tractor that I was now standing next to. When I got to the point where I was verifying the throttle, which is at the end of the pre-op, I noticed that it did not fully return to its idle position.
