A320
Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 207; Flight Crew Total 16909; Flight Crew Type 4153
Communication Breakdown; Situational Awareness
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Flight Crew Returned To Gate; General Maintenance Action; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed
Company Policy; Human Factors; Aircraft
As we started our taxi-out from our gate approximately halfway through the turnout we lost nose wheel steering. After talking with maintenance it was decided that we were to be towed back in to the gate due to this being the 5th nose wheel event in about the last 3 days. A [maintenance release] was entered and operations was contacted. The First Officer and I both believe that operations heard from maintenance that the fault cleared with a reset and we could taxi back ourselves. The First Officer informed operations two times that we would not taxi the plane due to the maintenance event. After the 3rd time I took the radio and informed ops that we agreed with maintenance that the plane needed to be towed in; a [maintenance release] was entered and we had a broken [electronic logbook]; because of the extensive history we didn't trust the reset and when the Nosewheel Steering failed the nosewheel centered and took us off the tight lead out line and towards another gate and with the tight tolerances we couldn't be sure we would remain clear of the plane at that gate and I finished with I would not move the plane under its own power. The response I got was 'well it will be a while then'. After about 1 hour we got a tug to tow us back. Operations way overstepped their bounds and should never pretend to know how a plane should be operated.
A320 Captain reported after a temporary loss of nose wheel steering company operations requested that the crew taxi back to the gate without a tow.