Incident
On 27 January 2009 at 19:05 UTC, an ATR 42-500 registered F-GPYD operated by Airlinair was positioned at stand A36 of Lyon Saint-Exupéry airport. The crew, consisting of two pilots, one cabin crew member, and 35 passengers, was preparing for a flight to Rouen. During pushback, the captain requested to start engine 1. Two ground agents were performing the pushback: one on the tug and the other using a headset to guide and communicate with the crew. As the aircraft was pushed back, the tail cone struck a blast fence. The collision was not immediately recognized by the crew or ground agents. The crew felt a slight jolt, which the captain associated with a shear pin breakage experienced earlier that day. An agent from another company alerted them. The tail cone dome was destroyed over approximately 50 centimeters, and the aircraft was replaced.
Ground Personnel
The tug driver had been working at the airport for two years and was familiar with stand A36 but had never pushed back a propeller aircraft with an engine starting during the maneuver. He stated he was disturbed by the request and felt his assistant focused on the propellers instead of the surroundings. He also noted the absence of the white circle marking the pushback limit. The headset agent had been performing this task for only about 1.5 months and was participating in a pushback from stand A36 for the first time. He had difficulty assessing distances due to the ATR's low ground clearance and was surprised by the engine start request, as it had not been covered in his training.
Stand Configuration
Stand A36 was bordered by a building and a taxiway protected by a blast fence. The pushback trajectory was marked by a white dashed line. Ground agents typically used the intersection of this white line and the red departure line as a stop reference. However, the white circle indicating the stop point for the nose gear had been erased during resurfacing. The tug driver pushed the nose gear about two meters beyond the end of the white dashed line, which equated to approximately twenty meters beyond the usual stop point. The blast fence had been installed the previous December; it was taller than others due to building proximity and had no lighting at the time of the incident.
Previous Similar Event
On 28 October 2008, a CRJ 700 operated by Brit Air struck a lighting mast during pushback from stand A27. That event highlighted the absence of the white circle marking and insufficient marking of the mast. After that event, airport stakeholders noted the missing white circles on several stands, including A36.
Regulations
The French civil aviation technical instruction (ITAC) stated that small obstacles like barriers must be marked day and night. No mandatory standards for apron lighting existed, and no regulatory reference specified a pushback stop point.