These are pictures of the wreck of a brand new A340-600 in November 2007, that had never flown. (never saw (1) hour in the air) Thank these French and their Arab friends for this bit of "comedy of errors". Nine employees of the Arab airline were in the aircraft, but "no employees" from Airbus were present. (In truth there were 2 members of Airbus present.)

The Arabs taxied out to the run-up area. (These were actually seven employees of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies ADAT). Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with virtually an empty aircraft. (They obvious didn't read the run-up manuals.) No chocks were set, (not that it would have mattered at that power setting) . Brakes will not hold it back at full power anyway.
As it turns out the takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all FOUR engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc, etc).

Then one of these brain surgeons decided to pull the "Ground Sense" circuit breaker to quiet the alarms. This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.

"A big,big mistake"!

As soon as they did that , the computers automaticlly "released" all the brakes. ("this is a Safety feature so that pilots don't land with the brakes on".)

There was No time to stop and no one smart enough thought to reduce the max power setting.....

So the rest is as you see i! t below. No one is talking, so who knows if there were survivors.

AND I'll bet you someone gets promoted because of this

ouch!

From Aircrewbuzz.com:

"A brand new A340-600 aircraft in was badly damaged when it ran through a blast barrier at the Airbus Saint-Martin facility at Toulouse, France. There were no fatalities, but five people were injured. The accident happened late on the afternoon of November 15, 2007.

The aircraft, which was painted in Etihad Airways livery, was undergoing pre-delivery tests on the ground at the Airbus facility at the time of the accident. According to a news release issued today by Airbus, engine-run-ups were being carried out on the A340-600, MSN 856, which was due to be delivered to Etihad in just a few days.

At the time of the accident, there were nine people on board the aircraft, including two Airbus staff, and seven employees of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT). Five of those nine people were injured, but as of today only the two Airbus employees and one ADAT employee remained hospitalized. None of their injuries are reported to be life-threatening. Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies is a maintenance service provider to Etihad Airways. ADAT was formerly known as GAMCO.

Etihad Airways confirms that there were no Etihad staff involved in the accident."

"UPDATE November 19, 2007: FlightGlobal.com is reporting that the A340-600 "had completed its engine test-runs and was exiting the test area at the time of the accident." The same article also mentions confirmation from Etihad that the aircraft was a write-off."

BUGGER.....................OOOPs....................BUGGER

Chris

I think he forgot his brakes

Cheers for posting this - I`ve nearly wet myself laughing.
One question springs to mind,were they playing pass the brain cell BEFORE or AFTER one of the genius`s got behind the controls !!!!!!!

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