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THE TALE OF THE ARAB FLIGHT CREW |
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Written by To The Point News
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Friday, 16 May 2008 |
The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, 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 date was November 15, 2007.
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 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.
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