This brand spanking new Airbus
340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sits just outside 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 run-ups, 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 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.
Not one member of the seven-man Arab
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 due to the news blackout in the major media in France and
elsewhere, because........
Coverage of the story was deemed
insulting to Muslim Arabs.
Finally, the photos are starting to
leak out.
One French Airbus: $200 million
dollars
Untrained Arab Flight Crew: $300,000 Yearly Salary
Unread
Operating Manual: $300
Aircraft meets retaining wall and the wall
wins.
PRICELESS!