March 28th 2009
The Politically Correct Airplane Crash
O
bserve the Airbus 340-600, the second largest airliner in the Airbus fleet, luxurious, large and very, very expensive - $200 million apiece.
My friend Rick sent me an email about an incident that occurred with one of these fantastic planes in November 2007 that was so astonishing that I had to confirm it was true before I wrote about it here. What follows is, in fact, a recounting of an actual event.
This new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sits just outside 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 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. [that's unverified]
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 take off, 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 [also unverified], so the $200 million brand-new Aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it.
If you put “airbus 340-600 crash dubai” into Google, you get a measly 1,160 hits. Why should such a sensational story be so obscure?
There’s just one reason: You can’t report this story without being at least a wee bit derogatory towards Arabs, which is verboten, especially in France. Indeed, one of the few mainstream Euro news reports I could find mentioned only that those on board were “employees of the Abu Dhabi-based carrier” and said that the crash occurred “for reasons yet unknown.”
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Posted in Political Correctness | 10 Comments » | 
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March 31st, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Note to Taliban and others. 1st thing abdulla, get plane in AIR. 2nd Crash into something besides steel stop barrier.
April 1st, 2009 at 2:25 pm
The Airbus A340-600 is not the largest jet Airbus makes, it’s the second largest. The double decker Airbus A380 is the largest jet they make.
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:01 am
Thanks, Capt’n.
April 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
What — No Towers In France?
April 8th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Bet Captain Sully Sullenberger wouldn’t have done that.
Your pal,
Meat.
April 27th, 2009 at 1:03 am
I found this on another website.
jaouad, the accident report, in French. I’ve done a little translating for those who don’t read Francais.
http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2007/f-cj071115/pdf/f-cj071115.pdf
32 stevie Mar 24th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
This is info from the accident investigation report, from the French version of the NTSB (I believe), the BEA:
A. Mixed ground test crew of 9 on board: some from Airbus proper, based there in Toulouse, some from the Abu Dhabi-based contractor working on the airline’s behalf.
3 people in the cockpit for the test: 2 from Airbus, one from the contractor.
Running the test, in the right seat of the cockpit, in charge of the all controls: Airbus technician, 15 yr employee, 9 yrs experience testing these engines. When he was alerted that the aircraft was moving, his only actions were to kill the parking brake while simultaneously stomping on the main brakes.
In the left seat, observing the test: contractor employee, alerted the test tech that the aircraft was moving. Has no specified role in the test other than to observe.
In the “service” seat (like the navigator’s seat, only the A340 ain’t got no navigator, I don’t believe): Airbus-employed test pilot, 9 yrs experience as a professional pilot, 7 as a test pilot, not type rated (i.e., not an A340 pilot), perhaps a manager qualified to supervise such tests. Once again, no specific role other than to observe, but in the end it was him who pulled the throttles back.
B. There were two main causes: 1) no chocks were used to hold the aircraft’s wheels in place during the test. 2) All four engines were brought to full power to test one leaky engine. Procedures required the use of chocks and running up two engines - the one leaking and one on the other wing (to prevent torquing and yawing of the fuselage). These two procedures had been frequently ignored by all Airbus technicians at the test center for some time.
Short answer: the test was done improperly, not in accordance with written procedures and standards. The fault of the Airbus technician.
Contributing causes: 1) the full power of four engines is almost exactly equal to the braking power of the A340s parking brake and the frictional coefficient of the test area’s tarmac, hence the aircraft only moved when shaking of the aircraft and the burning off of fuel lessened the overall braking coefficient. 2) The technician tried to use the brakes alone to stop the aircraft rather than retarding the throttles as well.
C. Fun fact: the numbers 3 and 4 engines could not be shut down after impact because the throttle control connection to them had been severed. No. 4 was finally killed over two-and-a-half hours later when enough water and fire-fighting foam had been pumped into it to snuff it out. The No. 3 engine died at 1:25 am the next morning - 9 hrs later - when it ran out of gas: it was too jammed into the wall to get any water/foam into it. Now THAT’S hi-larious. And not a bad advertisement for Rolls-Royce engines, it seems to me.
May 8th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
You need to research a bit better. There are copies of the incident report on the net. Just google A340 crash. That story is a furphy.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Mal - You miss my point. I wrote specifically about the media’s inattentetion to the incident, not what’s online or not online.
June 30th, 2009 at 5:25 am
I read up on plane crashes on the net every so often. I often find accidents all over the world which didn’t involve loss of life or did not have passengers involved which I’d never heard about in the news. Check in airdisaster.com for eg, there are incidents all the time which I’ll bet you didn’t hear about (recent ones as well).
November 17th, 2009 at 6:46 am
The accident report, in French. Some translating for those who don’t read Francais below.
http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2007/f-cj071115/pdf/f-cj071115.pdf
This is info from the accident investigation report, from the French version of the NTSB (I believe), the BEA:
A. Mixed ground test crew of 9 on board: some from Airbus proper, based there in Toulouse, some from the Abu Dhabi-based contractor working on the airline’s behalf.
3 people in the cockpit for the test: 2 from Airbus, one from the contractor.
Running the test, in the right seat of the cockpit, in charge of the all controls: Airbus technician, 15 yr employee, 9 yrs experience testing these engines. When he was alerted that the aircraft was moving, his only actions were to kill the parking brake while simultaneously stomping on the main brakes.
In the left seat, observing the test: contractor employee, alerted the test tech that the aircraft was moving. Has no specified role in the test other than to observe.
In the “service” seat (like the navigator’s seat, only the A340 ain’t got no navigator, I don’t believe): Airbus-employed test pilot, 9 yrs experience as a professional pilot, 7 as a test pilot, not type rated (i.e., not an A340 pilot), perhaps a manager qualified to supervise such tests. Once again, no specific role other than to observe, but in the end it was him who pulled the throttles back.
B. There were two main causes: 1) no chocks were used to hold the aircraft’s wheels in place during the test. 2) All four engines were brought to full power to test one leaky engine. Procedures required the use of chocks and running up two engines – the one leaking and one on the other wing (to prevent torquing and yawing of the fuselage). These two procedures had been frequently ignored by all Airbus technicians at the test center for some time.
Short answer: the test was done improperly, not in accordance with written procedures and standards. The fault of the Airbus technician.
Contributing causes: 1) the full power of four engines is almost exactly equal to the braking power of the A340s parking brake and the frictional coefficient of the test area’s tarmac, hence the aircraft only moved when shaking of the aircraft and the burning off of fuel lessened the overall braking coefficient. 2) The technician tried to use the brakes alone to stop the aircraft rather than retarding the throttles as well.
C. Fun fact: the numbers 3 and 4 engines could not be shut down after impact because the throttle control connection to them had been severed. No. 4 was finally killed over two-and-a-half hours later when enough water and fire-fighting foam had been pumped into it to snuff it out. The No. 3 engine died at 1:25 am the next morning – 9 hrs later – when it ran out of gas: it was too jammed into the wall to get any water/foam into it.