The Arab aircrew???? Keep very Quiet???

This is a picture of the wreck of a brand new A340-600, in November 2007, that had never flown. Brand spanking new, right out of the hangar, without a single hour of air time. Enter the Arab flight crew.

Thank the French and their Arab friends for this bit of 'comedy of errors'. Nine employees of the Arab airline were in the aircraft, but not one employee from French Airbus was present. The Arabs taxied out to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with virtually an empty aircraft. This was their first mistake as they obviously didn't read the run-up manuals. They had no clue just how light an empty Airbus really is.

No chocks were set, not that it would have mattered at that power setting. The 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 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 these brain surgeons decided to pull the 'Ground Sense' circuit breaker to silence the alarms. This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.

That was their last mistake. As soon as they did that, the computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward.

They had no idea that this is a Safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on. There was no time to stop and no one smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting. So the rest is as you see on the picture.

Of Note: No one is talking and it didn't make the main stream media so who knows if there were survivors.