THE TALE OF THE ARAB FLIGHT CREW - Where Email, Snopes, Competing Propaganda and Reality Intersect.

Etihad A340 Accident
THE TALE OF THE ARAB FLIGHT CREW

According to Email & According to Snopes

Original Email (~March 2008):

The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sat in 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 runups, 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 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 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, so the $200 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totalling it.

The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown, for there has been a news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere.

Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Muslim Arabs.

Finally, the photos are starting to leak out. Airbus $200 million aircraft meets retaining wall and the wall wins....

SNOPES SAYS:

REAL PHOTOGRAPHS; INACCURATE DESCRIPTION
The photographs displayed above do represent the aftermath an Airbus 340 engine test that ended in a ground collision, but unconfirmed, pejorative information has been added to the accompanying text.

Pejorative: Tending or intending to belittle.

Snopes takes issue with the following points:

>>>not actually "the largest passenger airplane ever built"

JNKish : Ok... Maybe not the largest... But it is a really big, brand-new and very expensive plane. It was built by the Europeans for the Arabs. The European company AirBus competes against North American aircraft companies such as Boeing for multi-billion dollar aircraft contracts. The Arabs and North America compete on many different levels.

>>>It is not true, as claimed, that there was "a news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere" because "coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Moslem Arabs."

JNKish: Snopes, where is your proof that there was not a news blackout? It is now April 2009 and I am just now hearing about this. Where was it reported in March 2008? Most anyone can easily see why AirBus and the Arabs would not want this blunder widely publicised.

>>>a report released by French investigators in December 2008 did not confirm that claim made above that the crash was caused by ADAT technicians who were unfamiliar with the aircraft and overrode a vital safety feature

JNKish: The report neither confirmed nor denied. Again, most anyone can easily see why the Arabs would not want this blunder widely publicised.

JNKish: Snopes, it would be a better representation if you classified this as-

REAL PHOTOGRAPHS; UNVERIFIED BUT PLAUSIBLE DESCRIPTION

Everyone needs to remember that Snopes is NOT necessarily the last word.