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9 July 2009
This story has been withdrawn because it is old and may not be wholly accurate:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/etihad.asp
From: "James M. Atkinson" <jmatk@tscm.com>
Subject: Airbus Update (factual data)
I would like to provide some information about the Airbus information
http://cryptome.org/airbus-fun/airbus-fun.htm
Looks more like it was inferior French engineering, and inferior French testing that caused the accident.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/etihad.asp
It is also why the Airline cancelled the order of all 18 aircraft after the accident that was deemed by the French government to have been the fault of the French test facility, and caused by a faulty aircraft design. The other ultra-luxury airline companies in the gulf area also scuttled their orders, and switched from the Airbus to the 777-300ER instead.
The brakes failed to hold the aircraft, and the wheels were not chocked or locked down (two enormous screw ups). The Arab co-pilot (actually with ADAT and from Singapore, and working as a contractor for acceptance testing) actually first noticed that something was wrong, brought it to the French pilots attention, and it all went down hill from there.
Initial press coverage in France within minutes after the crash blamed the Arab flight crew when in fact most of the people on the aircraft worked for Airbus and were French or were from Singapore and working for ADAT.
The incident also took place almost a week before delivery, and even though the aircraft jumped the wall it still took almost a full day to shutdown the engines (again due to inferior French engineering).
It is pretty ironic when there is no way to shutdown the engines other then to just let them run out of fuel. It should be noted that the engines are Rolls-Royce made in England, originally designed in the United States, and built with a mix U.S. and British components (most of the engine controllers, compressor vanes, are all US made, and the engineer housing and core is British, the rest of the parts are a mixture of both).
Who needs the whole plane, when it was the English and American (non French and non Arab) engines that did all the magic... It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.
Pretty impressive accident.
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