Posted by Jack
TALE OF THE ARAB FLIGHT CREW Written by “To The Point News”
A brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, one of 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. The yet to be offical story is when 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 allegedly 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 quick enough to think 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, for there has been very little news about this in France. Alegedly, the coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Arabs, but the story and the photos are starting to leak out.
Don’t have my Kelley Blue Book handy – but I’m guessing it’s totalled!