Narrative:

No working headset at gate. Common in phl. Usually I insist that they get one. Thought that I would be charitable today. Big mistake on my part. There is a procedure for pushing without a headset that's never followed by the ground guys. At any rate; ground guy signaled to release brakes. I did to get an out time but nothing else. Next thing that we know is that we're pushing. No clearance; no nothing. I try flashing my nose light to no avail. Get on the radio to broadcast that we're under an uncontrolled push and I can't communicate with our push crew. Ramp control doesn't seem surprised.the only thing that I can do is be a hard-[profanity] and insist that they find a working headset; as these guys have no clue what our procedures; hand signals; etc.; are. If that creates a large delay; so be it. This won't happen again; at least to me.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A330 flight crew reported inability to communicate with ground crew during pushback; resulting in a pushback without a clearance.

Narrative: No working headset at gate. Common in PHL. Usually I insist that they get one. Thought that I would be charitable today. Big mistake on my part. There is a procedure for pushing without a headset that's NEVER followed by the ground guys. At any rate; ground guy signaled to release brakes. I did to get an out time but nothing else. Next thing that we know is that we're pushing. No clearance; no nothing. I try flashing my nose light to no avail. Get on the radio to broadcast that we're under an uncontrolled push and I can't communicate with our push crew. Ramp control doesn't seem surprised.The only thing that I can do is be a hard-[profanity] and insist that they find a working headset; as these guys have no clue what our procedures; hand signals; etc.; are. If that creates a large delay; so be it. This won't happen again; at least to me.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.