The Politically Correct Airplane Crash - Oops!

March 28th 2009

From Cheat-Seeking Missiles
Posted by: Laer

Observe the Airbus 340-600, the largest airliner ever built, luxurious, double-decker 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.

Click to Go to Cheat-Seeking Missiles to view the crash picture

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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