The remove before flight pins or are a distinctive and very important element of the aircraft pushback procedure.
It’s usually red because it should be highly visible. The main purpose of the remove before flight pin is to serve as a reminder pilots, maintenance crew and ground staff that certain items or devices should be removed before the aircraft takes off. The role of this items is to protect the aircraft while it’s on the ground.
The bigger part of the remove before flight pin of World Aviation Solutions (WAS) is in red because it should be easily readable.
There is different remove before flight pins that assure the safety performance of aircraft pushback. Its role is also to ensure smoothly pre-flight checks. It’s usually coated in PVC to assure enough strength. It features a brass grommet for quick and easy attachment to a bypass pin or other accessory.
These flags can add to your pre-flight safety when secured to nose & landing gear steering bypass pins, wheel chocks, and gear covers (such as pitot tube covers, intake or engine covers, cowl plugs, and wheel covers).
The remove before flight pin of WAS has found a home outside the aircraft industry – they can be used as a reminder to remove a wheel lock from a motorcycle, to remind drivers to disconnect an engine block heater from their car or truck, as a gun chamber flag, or for any object that should not be forgotten. If the remove before flight pin is not removed, it disables the nose gear steering.
The importance of disabling the nose wheel steering could be described in two ways. First, it allows the hydraulic fluid to bypass the main nose wheel control valve, allowing the tow truck operator to steer the nose wheel with no restrictions. The other reason is directly related to the safety of the operation. This is because most of the times, during the push back, the aircraft engines are started. This powers up the hydraulic systems of the aircraft. When hydraulics are powered, the nose wheel steering is also supplied with pressure. And as the steering is designed to center the nose gear when there is no input from the pilot, and if at that point of time, the tug operator is making a turn, the nose wheel steering can over power the tow bar and break it. This can damage the nose landing gear and can even throw the tow truck out of control.
The consequences of leaving the pin in a heavy aircraft is only that the nose wheel steering will be disabled. There is a separate pin which locks the gear to prevent it from retracting. We only use the bypass pin for push back and that is what the engineers show us after completing the push back procedure. In some smaller aircraft, there is only one nose wheel pin and that does both the job of locking the gear and disabling the steering. Once the push back is over and the parking brake set the captain calls the engineer on the intercom and says, ‘Two good starts, clear to disconnect. Hand signals from Left or Right.’ If the engineer opts to show the pin from the left side, the captain gives a thumbs up and a wave and if it from the right, the first officer gives a thumbs and waves the engineer off.
Also, at the end of the pushback procedure, the ground personnel should lift his/her arm and show the remove before flight pin to the pilots. This guarantees that the pushback procedure is completed safely.
To guarantee aircraft safety, you should change the remove before flight pins in some periods. You could find remove before flight pins produced with a world standard checking our web site here.
