this brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, one of the largest (in length) passenger airplanes ever built, it sits just outside its hangar in Toulouse, France without a single hour of airtime.
enter the flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies(ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine run-ups prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhab, the ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area, then they took all Four engines to take off power with a virtually empty aircraft, not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is,
the take off warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power, the aircraft computers thought they were trying to take off, but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc..), then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm, this fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air, the computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward, the ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on,
the rest as they say is history, not one member of the seven-man crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $200 million brand-new Aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it,
the extent of injuries to the crew is unknown due to the world wide news blackout,
it is easy to say now, but shouldn't some one have told them to read the instructions first?
if this story is true I just hope it was insured!!!! I have Just found a report about this (in French) here, I wonder why it has taken so long for the story to surface? or did I just miss it the first time round?
more on the story I found this on a blog allegedly written by a trained pilot,
the numbers 3 and 4 engines could not be shut down after impact because the throttle control connection to them had been severed, No. 4 was finally killed over two-and-a-half hours later when enough water and fire-fighting foam had been pumped into it to snuff it out, the No. 3 engine died at 1:25 am the next morning - 9 hrs later - when it ran out of gas: it was too jammed into the wall to get any water/foam into it, not a bad advertisement for Rolls-Royce engines, also on the blog was the fact that in charge of the test and sitting in the captains and co-pilots seats were 2 employee's of Airbus.
2 comments:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/etihad.asp
Dear Jil, many thanks, strange that the story is doing the rounds again, I missed it first time, and that the latest piece of news came out looking at the snopes page on 9th Jan 09, I wonder what else will be confirmed, such as the alleged engines still running, one still going strong for 9 hours if another report is to be believed, still never let the facts get in the way of a good story! best regards, Stan and Diana.
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