Late last year, Etihad lost a brand new A340 with zero hours of airtime when the Abu Dhabi Aviation Technologies crew sent to ground test it ran it through a wall. The story and all the pictures can be found here. Highly recommended reading.
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 Arab crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $80 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it.
4 comments:
what do u mean by saying that :
Not one member of the seven-man ARAB crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting.
u have something against arabs ???
Leo, WHat's your source on this? I receivedsomething Similar as an email attachment, but couldn't find anything to corraborate the story on the internet at the time.
Arab: According to the report, the crew was entirely Made up of Arabs, thus the seven man Arab crew was not smart enough.
Had the incedent happened in dubai, and been reported in the enlightened media there, the nationalities or races of the crew would have been included in the report. EX: Pakistani, Asian, Eastern European.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess.
Probably the most authoritative international reports are from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7098547.stm) and the International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/16/africa/ME-GEN-Emirates-Airbus-Accident.php ) .
Airbus (http://www.airbus.com/en/presscentre/pressreleases/pressreleases_items/07_11_16_accident_airbus_facility.html ) reported that of 3 people remaining in hospital 2 were from Airbus.
Etihad (http://www.etihadairways.com/etihadairways/global/en/aboutetihad/mediacenter/newslisting/newsdetails/AirbusIncidentNovThird.htm ) covered similar ground.
Flight Global (http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/11/19/219705/toulouse-accident-occurred-as-airbus-a340-was-exiting-engine-test-pen.html ) covered similar ground .
Gulf News also covered similar areas (http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/11/22/10169476.html )
None of the above news reports mention nationality of ANY person involved. Though ADAT is a semi government body; most people working in the Gulf would be surprised if ALL the people from ADAT were Arab – many would assume that they probably would be non-local from various countries.
What were the Airbus staff on that plane responsible for ?
What could have prompted the reporting by the “ To the Point News“ web-site that all the people were Arab ?
The owner of “ To the Point News“ - “Dr Jack Wheeler” accused Sen. John McCain of collaborating with Communists in Vietnam http://www.modernconservative.com/metablog_single.php?p=1422 the Modern Conservatives state that it was a lie.
I will give “Dr Jack Wheeler” the benefit of the doubt about his Airbus article and say that his WebSite assumed they were Arab rather than deliberately writing a lie .
Suburban,
I checked other sources to confirm the story, to include some press releases and news stories online, some of which ynotoman has provided links to, but the "To the Point News" story that I linked is the only one that I found that had the details of how the run-up went wrong.
Arab, I didn't write it, the indent is supposed to show that it was quoted from the news-source which reported that it was an Arab crew. If you live your life looking for things to get offended over, you really aren't going to do much except be offended. And stop writing like u r sending a txt msg.
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