AirBus 340 Ground Accident
This is the text of an email that I received from an old Navy buddy. (Dare I say Shipmate?
) I searched and did not find any hits in the forum which, given the circumstances, is hard to believe.I am not including pictures from the email due to copyright concerns but pictures can be found online here and here. I could not find any links that gave an explanation of the cause. Most were of the "It just jumped the chocks..." variety. Although I, of course, can't vouch for the validity of any of the "Facts", it sure sounds plausible. Perhaps some of the cognoscenti here would care to chime in...
Mods: If this is a repost please feel free to delete
These are pictures of the wreck of a brand new A340-00 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.
The Arabs taxied out to the run-up area.
Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with virtually an empty aircraft. (They obviously 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 automatically '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.....
This is the text of an email that I received from an old Navy buddy. (Dare I say Shipmate?
) I searched and did not find any hits in the forum which, given the circumstances, is hard to believe.I am not including pictures from the email due to copyright concerns but pictures can be found online here and here. I could not find any links that gave an explanation of the cause. Most were of the "It just jumped the chocks..." variety. Although I, of course, can't vouch for the validity of any of the "Facts", it sure sounds plausible. Perhaps some of the cognoscenti here would care to chime in...Mods: If this is a repost please feel free to delete
These are pictures of the wreck of a brand new A340-00 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.
The Arabs taxied out to the run-up area.
Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with virtually an empty aircraft. (They obviously 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 automatically '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.....
