Editors Note: This is from one of those cheesy chain emails that made its way to the Manolith office. Like most things you find in such emails, please take this with a grain of salt. This event did happen, it may just be a tad embellished for the sake of your Aunts AOL inbox.
This brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sits just outside it’s hangar in Toulouse,
France, without a single hour of airtime on the clock….
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.
The take-off 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 !! With the following result……….
The Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technology crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can’t land with the brakes on.
The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown due to the news blackout in the major media.
Safe to say this plane didn’t even get to serve its first peanuts. Not that they offer those anymore anyway.
(Via a chain email)
Comments
Mike Macadaan
May 18th, 2009 - 5:02:28 PM
that sucks! great pix to tell this story.
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Matt
May 19th, 2009 - 12:33:16 PM
This is old news: http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/blog_entry/redplate_special/2008/07/22/redplate_special_exclusive Why don't you check your facts before posting?
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Mattisadick
May 19th, 2009 - 2:39:02 PM
Hey matt, you're a tard. Why don't you urinate up a rope?
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Michael
May 19th, 2009 - 3:00:24 PM
Is it just me, or is this written exactly like it is in the link Matt provided there. Must be nice to not have to do any work to make content on you site. To lazy to even say that someone else wrote your story.
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Sean Percival
May 19th, 2009 - 6:19:41 PM
As it said in the bottom of the post, this came from a chain email we received. I'll make that more clear.
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Mark
May 19th, 2009 - 11:41:11 PM
Has anyone ever noticed that the plane shown at the top has no stripes and the one that crashed has two? Ever make you wonder?
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Akai
May 26th, 2009 - 6:35:12 PM
Erm.. did it occur to you that nobody bothers taking pictures of every new aircraft that arrives at an airport? They had to show what an airbus looks like before people act like idiots, so they used a stock photo. Big deal. You can clearly see not only the stripes are missing, but also that there are big giant letters in the first photo that aren't in the rest.
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Dan
June 23rd, 2009 - 2:48:42 PM
Now for the actual story: http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/etihad.asp
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