Expectations from a steering control transfer to cockpit crews for aircraft pushback

Currently, the aircraft pushback process does not comply with the envisaged seamless, weather independent "gate-to-gate" business trajectory concept as set out in SESAR or NextGen. As new technologies for aircraft taxiing or pushback such as electrically powered nose and/or main gear show up, a paradigm shift becomes possible, heading for more automated pushback operations under aircraft cockpit crew's physical control. The papers elaborates, how such new concept can contribute to pushback taxi-out time savings of about 5%-20% combined with significantly less personnel needed to perform all relevant tasks. This conceptual and technological change effectively provides also a potential to mitigate known risks for the ground handling staff and so to increase safety on the apron area as an empirical hazard-cause analysis could show. The paper also lays the framework for a cockpit steering support system to minimize collision risk during pushback due to a limited pilot's surround view, a concept which has also been developed by the authors and will be subject for validation as next steps of this research.