Question...

Something looks funny on the nose wheel on the Delta plane??? I don’t know if it is the camera, or what?

flightaware.com/photos/view/5356 … ate/page/1

Not entirely sure what it is, so I’ll defer that to some of the other pilots here.

But what you’re looking at is actually on every MD80 and MD90 that I’ve seen. It might even be on the B717. But it is definitely not a camera, but is more than likely part of the breaking system for the nose gear.

BL.

[quote=“will744”]
Something looks funny on the nose wheel on the Delta plane??? I don’t know if it is the camera, or what?

flightaware.com/photos/view/5356 … ate/page/1[/quote]

Most MD-80’s have that. Not sure what it does.

Huh. Thanks for the info!

That is a splashguard, to keep water and slush away as much as possibe. On the mains, there is a T looking peice that comes out from the gear strut and T’s out behind both main tires at about 1/2 height of the tire.

Edit " because I just thought about it, those things suck when it comes to chocks. In fact you’re not supposed to chock the nose gear on the DC-9 family because of them. We had a 717 divert one time, and the CAPT was in a hurry. With a 3 man ramp crew, we also had about 4 other MD-80s and a handful of Jetstreams of our own that were here before the 717 and thus they were supposed to be kicked out first. Well Captain Fastpants decided to go ahead and go, he jumped the chocks. The gear retracted fine on departure, but on approach the nose gear did not come down, and he ended up diverting to Belleville/Scott AFB nose gear up. Seach the NTSB records for a TWA 717 at Belleville and that’ll give you better details that I can remember, I was wrking another red and white beauty at the time (dang you AA and your blue white and red)

it might deflect water and slush from being injected by the engines, we have a chine on the front tire of the lear to prevent that.

Ohhh, OK. :slight_smile:

I beleive the MD-80 also had that on the tire. I know the DC-9’s did, although there were some without. I can remember some 737-200’s with and some without.

Here’s the report

Of course the probable cause list the ground crews failure to remove the chocks.

[quote=“SPI RAMP”]Ground personnel at SPI received the diverted flight 519. One of the ground personnel stated:
There was no ground crew free at the time to flag out FLT 519 as I was busy
and the other two agents were getting FLT 7637 boarded and it departed at
635P. After flagging out FLT 533 I went over to where FLT 519 had been
sitting and discovered the chocks lying on the ramp
[/quote]

it states in the report, something to the effect of a large amount of thrust was needed to start taxiing. After the bump from taxiing over the chock, I would think the CAPT would stop the aircraft, look at the damage and have a little chat with the marshaller.

I guess it doesn’t do much good if there are some on some planes, and none on other planes?

Well the plastic splash guards you are speaking of are on all MD-80, DC-9, 717s that I am aware of. I think the thing flyboy was talking about is a lip that comes off of the side of the tire, that stops splash as well. That was what I was referring to on the 737s, and DC-9s, some of the tires had it some didn’t. I noticed today the EMB-145 also has tires like that.

[quote="jhwenger]Of course the probable cause list the ground crews failure to remove the chocks.
[/quote]

Nowhere do I see the ground crew listed as “probable cause”. I see “wheel chocks- not removed-ground crew” listed as an occurence, but the probal cause is:

“The malfunction of the nose gear…which resulted from a previous ground collision with a wheel chock. A factor was the wheel chock.”

Ground crew wasn’t blamed, and the pilot is just plain stupid for jumping a chock.

The Concorde also had these mud/splash guards on the main gears…

LINK TO PHOTO

I call shinanigans!! You had an aircraft sitting with its wheels still chocked and the capt decided to give enough throttle to jump the chocks…NO WAY do NOT believe it. For multiple reasons I question this. Where was this a/c parked? The way you paint it, at a hard stand…nothing in front of the aircraft as it sat parked. Nothing around he might have blown to hell when he had to give what probably amounted to t/o thrust to jump the chocks…I find this fishy. ALSO, I think the B717 came into being LONG after TWA had gone bye bye…Not sure on this one…I may just have to look at this report…but I am still not sure I believe this.

Oh yeah? :laughing: Fair enough, but if you read the incident report above, you’ll find that indeed TWA DID fly the 717, it was introduced to TW in 1999 if I recall correctly, and TW flew them until the demise, in which they were painted in the hybrid AA colors until AA got rid of them to Hawaiian and Air Tran, and some far eastern airline to which I cannot recall the name, and that the Captain jumped the chocks. I’m not going to argue. To “paint the picture” better for you, these were diversions. SPI has a ramp, it has 1 jetway, but at the time did not. The aircraft were always parked parallel to the buildings on a ramp, much like those at a general aviation ramp. We had multiple TW aircraft on the ramp including our own Express aircraft. He was tired of waiting, and jumped the chocks. In the words of Ripley, Beleive it or not.

TWA 717
Delivery date FEB17 2000

Ok, with a slightly better idea of the ramp…I think I got ya now. Tks for the better pic. :wink: I am going on a limb here…the chocks were small for a Junkstream? If they were normal size, like I said it would have been a LOT of thrust to go over the chocks. Did you all normally get MD’s and the like? Yes, I did read diversion central on the day in question. I would have just stood there thinking “Wow…what an ass that capt. is” Tks again!

I didn’t really explain the airport that well I guess. We are different from larger airports in the fact that we only had ramp and walked out to the a/c as opposed to jetways and gates to pull into etc. Chocks, we had wooden and rubber ‘jet’ chocks. I honestly don’t remember the type we used, but it’s possible with the other MD’s on the ramp the jet ones were taken and the smaller wooden ones were used. I was working our planes trying to get them out so I really didn’t recall for sure.

This one incident was it though. MAny of my co-workers didn’t like the extra work, but I lived for diversion days! Made the day go by and , come on, workin J31s J41’s and an occasional ATR, when you had an MD80, or 727 (got to work the Rams one a couple times) or even those real odd days when you’d get a 75 or 76 in, that was what the $8.50 /hr was all about :smiley: !. Plus the TW crews were great, and with exception of this one case, very patient as it was usually only 2 rampers on duty, a third if we could get someone called in. We systematically got their paperwork to them, fueled and sent back out on their way. Good times for sure! It isn’t the same any more!

You would be surprised, I have seen aircraft jump chocks before, and often with little extra power. It all depends on the chock size vs. tire size, and it takes a decent size set of chocks for something the size of a 717, 737, etc. Put those same chocks on a Saab 340 and watch the pilot try to get away.