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.
The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown, for there has been a news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere. Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Moslem Arabs. Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.
I’m sure they can salvage the engines. Remind me never to fly on this carrier.
Found by Trevor Pressman.
This is hilarious!
This is what is called an “Epic Fail” in gaming terms. I hope this isn’t taken as in insult but I agree. Fail.
This is sad. I assume the manufacturer has several check lists for conducting a pre-acceptance ground check?
If not, they should==course, I don’t know about having it translated into Farsi or whatever. It would include what circuit breakers to pop and which not when conducting such tests.
Those circuit breakers can have weird interactions especially when operating on a backup system. Only the very best pilots and technicians are allowed to be such check pilots and as dumb as I have observed the Arabs to be, surely a pilot would have been in the seat at all engine on times?
Lets see, probably cost the shiek 2 minutes of oil revenue?
From Wikipedia entry for A340: (see the final entry):
As of June 13, 2008, the A340 has not had a fatal incident, but there have been five hull-loss accidents:
* 20 January 1994 – Air France, an A340-211 (F-GNIA) was lost to fire during servicing at Charles de Gaulle International Airport.
* 24 July 2001 – SriLankan Airlines, an A340-300 (4R-ADD) was destroyed by an explosive charge. Terrorists of The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam launched a suicide attack at the Bandaranaike International Airport.
* 2 August 2005 – Air France Flight 358, all 297 passengers and 12 crew survived a crash and fire after their A340-300 (F-GLZQ) overshot runway 24L at Toronto Pearson International Airport in a thunderstorm. The aircraft slid into Etobicoke Creek and broke up. Forty-three were injured, 1 seriously, some passengers jumped nearly 20 ft (6 m) to the ground.
* November 9, 2007 – An Iberia Airlines A340-600 was badly damaged after sliding off the runway at Ecuador’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport. The landing gear collapsed and two engines were dislodged. All 333 passengers and crew were evacuated via inflatable slides, but there were no serious injuries.
* 15 November 2007 – An A340-600 was damaged during ground engine testing at Airbus’ facilities at Toulouse Blagnac International Airport. Six days prior to the airplane’s planned delivery to Etihad Airways, the plane pushed itself up a sloped concrete wall, suffering severe fuselage damage. The cockpit section was severed and fell to the ground from a height of about 15m atop the wall. Five people on board were injured, three of them seriously.[27] The aircraft was written off.[28]
They need to buy our Boeing’s. Over and over again! LOL
This is not news.
Sooner or later you’re just going to wake up one day and feel like plowing the plane into something.
Maybe it isn’t being reported because it happened in France and not here? Is every incident with airplanes everywhere around the world supposed to be reported?
Something doesn’t compute here. Why would an airplane have a “safety” feature that inhibits brakes in close proximity to the ground?
I can understand that you don’t want the brakes applied at the point of touchdown, but you are going to want them applied almost immediately thereafter. Or is this some sort of “parking brake”?
Also, why would a saftey system be designed to release previously applied brakes? Seems that the fail safe mechanism if a circuit breaker trips or the ground proximity system fails would be to keep the brakes in the same state they were previously.
Something smells fishy.
Maybe this is a hoax?
if this did truly happen i cannot believe Keith Olbermann would ignore it on Countdown in one of the segments for dumbest screwups. it is totally made for him to show the picture and make some snide remark.
This was actually reported a number of weeks ago when it happened. It’s old news now… However, a few key facts seem to have been left out of this telling of the story:
1) The aircraft had no passengers aboard.
2) It was not a flight crew aboard but rather a maintenance crew.
3) Only one of those aboard had a taxi certificate and he was not at the controls.
Still incredibly stupid, nonetheless.
Tom
COMM/INST
They took lessons at Al-Qaeda Training School Inc. … no need for start or landing.
“If not, they should==course, I don’t know about having it translated into Farsi or whatever. ”
I doubt an Arab maintenance crew would be reading a Farsi (Persian) manual. English also being the lingua franca of aviation, I would think they could read it if they bothered.
I also remember this being reported last year when it happened. Not sure why JCD decided to post it now, but nobody was trying to keep it a secret.
#7 – MikeN
#8 – Cap’nKangaroo
International Herald Tribune.
I would like to hear the full story on this. I fly the 320 and their are some parts of this story that don’t make sense.
If this crew were that retarded to have all four engines at max blast (I think the wheels would have been leaving quite the skid mark) and the shaking must have been incredible not to mention the toconfig (takeoff configuration) warning horn blaring, yet had the sense to find the ground-air sensing cb and pull it (I would have to look up where that is with 6000+ hours in the bus), quite the advanced move.
Rest easy, if John McCain is elected he plans on allowing foreign pilots to fly domestic flights.
You are now free to move about the country. DING
Remember, Arabs don’t want to learn how to take off or land.
Original story here.
Any dead males?…no problem! there will be a hundred virgin flight attendants waiting to be humped. Allah be praised!
#15. Thanks for that. That’s the Airbus factory runway, in Toulouse. The plane was, very literally, brand new, in delivery.
Arabs are backward in just about everything. If it wasn’t for oil, they would be praying to Allah, squatting in the sand and fucking camels [or ugly arab women, who can tell the difference] and no one would care less.
Google: Toulouse a340 – lots of links, including this one from a French news channel:
http://tinyurl.com/5rgys9
In a non-related story, the bodies of seven maintenance crew members were found in a ditch near the airport. Police speculate that it may have been a robbery.
>>Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to
>>Moslem Arabs.
Tee hee! Snicker!!
And “Moslem” Arabs? From Wiki-whatever:
“The ordinary word in English is “Muslim”, pronounced /’mʊs.lɪm/ or /’mʌz.ləm/. The word is pronounced /’mʊslɪm/ in Arabic. It is sometimes spelled “Moslem”, which some regard as offensive.”
Where’s “J” when you need him? This is an outrage!
# 4 jmaren
Good find! Arabs or not… something is wrong with the plane or training or procedures…
And to racists out there… I have nothing to say to you.
It wasn’t a ‘flight crew,’ it was a maintenance crew.
Must have been Allahs will.
Didn’t know Allah was a Cambodian.
I think whoever decided that a computer should have a major say in whether brakes are applied gets most of the credit for this incident. If an aircrew or maintenance crew wants the brakes applied they should be, period.
Something does smelly fishy. I work on aircraft avionics and ground proximity sensors are used to warn for mountains, buildings. If it was on the runway, I would have thought the flight control system should be taking more into account the just the ground proximity sensor, such as gear down, altitude, weight on wheels? If you can pull a single circuit breaker and the avionics can’t figure out if it is on the ground or not then it sounds like a dodgy safety system.
Maybe the crew were ex-nuclear power plant workers?
Something does smelly fishy.
that would be because this bs version of the story is slanted.
11/15/07 – http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20071115-0
Narrative:
An Airbus A340-600 due to be delivered to Etihad Airways as A6-EHG was performing ground tests at the Airbus plant, Toulouse Airport.
The wheels were not chocked. Some engine and brake tests were carried out and all four engines were on 1.24 and 1.26 epr power for about three minutes.
Thirteen seconds before the impact the aircraft started to move. Within 1 or 2 seconds the crew applied brake pedal inputs and selected parking brake off. These actions led the normal brake pressure to increase to its normal value.
Two seconds prior before the impact, all 4 engine thrust levers were selected to idle. The aircraft impacted the containment wall at a ground speed of 30 kts. The nose went up and through the concrete wall. Five persons were injured.