Major A340-600 Accident Today

It gets worse for the mechanics. Complete and total failure to follow anything resembling Airbus policy for engine runs. Airbus policy is to chock the wheels, and run one engine at high power, with the corresponding engine on the other wing at idle for balance. The mechanics ran all four engines at high power for 3 minutes with nothing but the parking brake to hold the aircraft. After it began to slide, they disengaged the parking brakes and applied the foot brakes, which have more pressure to them. They failed to take the engines back to idle for another 11 seconds, and only pulled the throttles back two seconds before impact with the wall.

Pics from the other side of the wall:

www.flightglobal.com...

reply to post by Zaphod58

From what I heard the crew pulled a breaker to silence a warning horn and that made the computer think the aircraft was in flight. It then released the brakes.

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


Heard about the crash last year shortly after it happen, I' think the photos were up on .Airliners.net fairly quickly. More recently I had this emailed to me (along with the photo's). I'm inclined to believe this angle is one of the' 'made up stories to fit the facts' we unfortunately get in British tabloids.

I was trawling the internet trying to find further verification of the cause of the crash. This is the first thread in an hour that begins to tally with the email I received.

I should mention that I am a white, very lapsed christian, and would like to be clear I'm not pushing any racist or anti muslim point of view. If anything I get fed up with ALL these conspiracy theories (Loose change etc).

My point is can anyone add substance to this story?

Here is the original (dated 5 November 2008):

The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane
ever built, sat in its hangar in Toulouse, France without a single hour of
airtime. Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies
(ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine
runups, prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi .

The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all
four engines to takeoff 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 takeoff 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 takeoff 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.
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, totalling it. The extent of injuries
to the crew is unknown, for there has been a news blackout in the major
media in France and elsewhere. Coverage of the story was deemed insulting
to Moslem Arabs.

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
reply to post by Anonymous ATS

 

My point is can anyone add substance to this story?

*snip*

Well, the basic facts of what happened are there, but other than that its just the same old rubbish - ADAT does all of Etihads delivery acceptance ground runs, and a lot of their regular maintenance as well, so their crews know what to do.

Airbus would not have released the aircraft to an incompetent crew, so you can be assured that the airplane was in proper hands during the test. Also Airbus personnel were onboard the aircraft throughout the test.

There is no 'take off warning' horn, that part of the entire email is rubbish - the aircraft would never have 'thought it was trying to take off but was in an incorrect configuration', it is quite normal to apply full power on the ground in many situations.

You also can't turn off the ground proximity limiters by pulling one breaker, or even a simple series of them.

That email is coming across as blatantly racist, several times highlighting the fact that Arabs were involved, and despite its final statement regarding reporting in France, this incident was heavily reported by French media.

Put simply, the fact that it is now coming up to a year since the incident and there has yet to even be a preliminary report published suggests that this was anything but an easy case.