Attached are 4 photographs of a recent Indian Airlines A300 accident, details of which are as follows:
On 8 March at 0315 hours IAL’s maintenance crew prepared to taxi. From the voice recorder we know that at the time of taxi there were 5 people in the cockpit talking. The A300 is a three man cockpit and it appears that there was a lot of activity just prior to engine start up.
After engine start up both engines went to flight idle. This was due to someone inadvertently pulling the flight idle circuit breaker. Apart from having too much power, being in flight idle also means that you lose nose wheel steering and brakes as they are inhibited. As the aircraft moved off the chocks it started heading directly for the A320 hangars.
On attempting to make the 180 degree turn to the taxi way the crew discovered that they had no steering, they then soon discovered that they had no brakes (the CVR is interesting at this point!).
The A300 had 12 tonnes of fuel on board and with two A320’s in the hangar they decided to take action to avoid the hangars. This they did by trying to reduce power on the number 1 engine (they couldn’t) while increasing power to 90% on the number 2.
The aircraft started to turn and after turning approx.80 degrees they lost control of the aircraft and it went straight through the airport perimeter wall next to the hangars.
The nose wheel collapsed and the aircraft nose dived (with both engines still at flight idle) into the ground. As you can see from the photographs the engines ingested a large amount of rock and soil. Also on impact both pylons buckled at the rear mount position. The aircraft belly has also been ripped away.
Airbus have sent a team to Delhi, their preliminary assessment is that it will cost $13 million to repair not counting the two engines and two complete nacelles. Given that the residual value of a 20 plus year old Indian Airlines A300 is close to zero it is highly likely it will be declared beyond economical repair.
By all accounts the cockpit voice recording for the event is quite comical and will soon be available on the internet joke circuit.
There but for the grace of God go I...
