Middle East Airlines
Airbus grounded on maiden flight
This new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built,
sits just outside it's hangar in Toulouse, France,
without a single hour of airtime on the clock...
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 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 the flaps/slats had not been configured properly...
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 - with the following result...
The Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technology 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 thought to throttle back
the engines from their max power setting, so the £200 million
aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totalling it.
The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown due to the
news blackout in the local media.
Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.
£200 million aircraft meets wall. Wall wins.
(But your secret is safe with joe-ks.com ...)
Fact or Fiction?