B767-300 and 300 ER
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 200; Flight Crew Total 16000; Flight Crew Type 3000
Confusion
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Other / Unknown
Flight Crew Returned To Gate; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed; General Maintenance Action
Equipment / Tooling; Procedure
We were cleared by Ground to push; but the push crew had some difficulty and ended up breaking the tow bar. We wrote-up the break and eventually were towed forward towards the gate; both to clear the taxiway we were blocking and for the mechanics to inspect the nose gear. Inspection complete we made sure we had the new Maintenance release prior to pushback. On taxi out we also received an updated final weight manifest. All as it should be. There appeared to be some confusion about out and in times. Airborne it became apparent that someone had adjusted our original out time; closer to the time we taxied the second time. This was a surprise as we never opened a cabin door during the nose gear inspection; even though we had pulled back towards the gate. Times in the ACARS reflected such. We had a discussion via ACARS/SATCOM with Dispatch and Maintenance over an unrelated airborne write up; and brought up the discrepancy with the times. Dispatch claimed an adjustment would be made to address our concerns that pay and Flight-Time legality for the crew might be affected. A short time later; and likely due to that adjustment; or maybe the airborne write up; we started getting multiple messages over ACARS claiming our current Release was invalid for takeoff. Further discussions had Dispatch first agree with this assessment; but upon further investigation realize that we did in fact have the proper paperwork for departure. I'll wager that the discrepancy between the manually adjusted out/in times and what the plane was thinking (never blocked in) precipitated this issue. Dispatch claimed it might be due to a glitch in the maintenance computer.
Tow driver put unusual (excessive) angles on tow bar (approaching ninety degrees) during push to try and avoid a B757 at the top of the alley. The tow bar broke on pushback. After a preliminary inspection and a new tow bar we were towed forward back to the gate. We waited for a full maintenance inspection to include removing the tow bar and manually turning nose wheel steering full left and right by the Captain.
B767 flight crew experiences a tow bar break during push back and is pulled back to the gate for maintenance inspection. The Out time is manually adjusted; which produces a discrepancy in the release document and a great deal of message traffic once airborne.