Brand new Etihad A340-600 damaged in Toulouse; several wounded

[Huck]

All the procedures in the world will not help them if the person that has his hands on the controls is not smart enough to wipe off the power.....

[ChristiaanJ]

Huck,
Grossly unfair remark....
Count off thirteen seconds, and tell me what you would have done in that time.

Twenty-twenty hindsight doesn't count.

Three seconds to get the message the aircraft is moving, after a three-minute engine run.
Two seconds for " oh *****, the brakes ", and starting to stamp on them.

Eight seconds left.

The pit wall looming up, so you try to turn.
Somehow chopping the throttles gets left out....

Read the report for the rest.

CJ

PS: For those with sufficient technical knowledge, the somewhat warped translations being provided by babelfish and similar, should be enough to get the essentials. Others shouldn't be commenting here in the first place.
And no, I'm not going to translate the entire report either, unless somebody pays me.

[captplaystation]

I'm sorry to contradict you but what they did was THICK, plain and simple. If your car is accelerating towards something out of control you are expected to have the presence of mind to take your foot off the accelerator before jamming on the brakes, this is really no different.
If the person(s) in the cockpit didn't appreciate the relationship between the thrust lever position ( that THEY had set ) and the forward motion taking place then they had no bloody business to be sitting there in the first place.

Is that not the crux of the matter ? ?

[CONF iture]

Des traces de freinage symétrique des deux trains principaux sont présentes depuis environ soixante mètres jusqu’au mur.

... Where did I put my glasses ... ?

[Luap]

If your car is accelerating towards something out of control you are expected to have the presence of mind to take your foot off the accelerator before jamming on the brakes, this is really no different.

There is a difference: in a car, you use the same foot for the accelerator and the brakes, so if you brake, you have that foot not on the accelerator. While on the aircraft, braking doesn't cut the throttles.

I think the crew really didn't expect the aircraft to move, so the crew hadn't thougt what to do in case the aircraft would move. If you have to think first, you are too late..............

[HotDog]

Not only did they fail to follow SOPs for ground runs, they were plain stupid and incompetent. Maybe they'll roster a qualified pilot to assist engine runs in future?

[wildadv]

The issue is not about putting a "qualified pilot" at the controls during engine runs, the issue is ensuring that those at the controls have the necessary training to carry out those tasks and that they follow the procedures necessary for the task concerned. Start shortcutting procedures and sooner or later, something will happen. You would be amazed how much different a high power engine run is from an aircraft during a takeoff run. I can't comment on a 340 engine run, but I can assure you 320's and 767's bounce all over the place, and thats only two engines. In a restricted run bay such as at Toulouse (I've been there so I know what it's like) you have very little time to react if something is going wrong.

The biggest problem a lot of engineers face is that a lot of companies don't want to train us in simulators. We learn "on the job". So training to recognise things like brake failure and aircraft movement after jumping chocks may never be carried out. It's always in the back of your mind if you are aware of it's possibility. It all comes down to being competent at what you are doing, following procedures and maintaining situational awareness. Some of these things can never be learnt out of a book.

[whatbolt]

There doesnt seem to be any mention of any ground crew in all this.

[ciampino]

CAPTPLAYSTATION You are right there run procedures were very poor.Engineers running engines can become pretty complacent after doing up-teen runs and nothing ever going wrong and thats when it bites you.

[Swedish Steve]

Maybe they'll roster a qualified pilot to assist engine runs in future?

What a good idea. Next time I need an engine run, I can send the pilots off to do it and they can come back and tell me what needs changing!
I have run engines for 35 years. Small engines are easy. Run a Jt8D in a B732 and its like being in a simulator. No noise or vibration.
But go out and run a B777 Trent up to take off on the brakes. Its mostly guess work with the whole aircraft leaping around. You have to take a print out of the readings because there is no way you can read the figures. Luckily here we can use the runway for engine runs. Feels much safer looking at 8000ft of tarmac. We used to have a run bay where you were 50ft from a wall. I hated it in there, felt very unsafe.

Also running engines for maint, they are usually faulty. There is a reason for running them and it is not like a normal take off, you are on edge looking for a defect. And with todays reliable engines, we don't do it very often.

[Daysleeper]

The biggest problem a lot of engineers face is that a lot of companies don't want to train us in simulators.

EU operator I know does just that, engineers have a sim conversion for ground running, about 4 hours between 3 people, brought up a lot of good issues.
Able to practice things like brake failures and engine fires, helped people understand some of the risks, including using too few people. You really need someone in a front seat who is not doing the test or the readings , just there to be the safety net.

[Silver Spur]

Is everybody OK though??

[cockney steve]

[QUOTEQuote:Activating the nose-wheel steering inhibits braking on the central bogie, becoming completely ineffective past 20° of steering.

Another little "gotcha". Presumably a good reason for this in normal ops...but when the proverbial hits the fan surely you want all stopping capabilities..... usually if you are swerving to avoid something that would be an indication you need a large stopping force....

A lot of these Airbus features which generally are pretty good seem to have major ramifications at rather inconvenient times.][/QUOTE]
above from post #414.

Have you considered that there would be an enormous side-thrust generated on the leg?....Perhaps the design enginers decided there was a better chance of control without the tyres rolled off the rims /sidethrust exceeding structural strength of wheels/sidewalls being ripped through by tarmac.

It's unrealistic to expect a/c landing-gear to be designed to take stresses beyond the max sustainable by the airframe......in this case, the limiting-factor is the friction between tyre and runway...unless you propose "grooves" for the bogies to slot in and treat grounded a/c as trams!


wonder if the company will give the crew a christmas bonus this year

[ChristiaanJ]

Originally Posted by whatbolt

There doesnt seem to be any mention of any ground crew in all this.

There is a mention in the report, but they had moved well out of the way of the jetblast and the dust blowing about.
Not that they could have done anything to prevent it happening, actually.

They did manage to stop one of the engines after the crash, though, by smothering it with water and foam. Two engines had already stopped by themselves (damaged). The remaining one was up against the blast wall, and thet couldn't get enough water and foam in to stop it, so it ran on until the feeder tank was empty.

[lomapaseo]

They did manage to stop one of the engines after the crash, though, by smothering it with water and foam. Two engines had already stopped by themselves (damaged). The remaining one was up against the blast wall, and thet couldn't get enough water and foam in to stop it, so it ran on until the feeder tank was empty.

Presumably the engines were at idle at this point, else it would be difficult to get enough water/foam inside the engine compressors to stop it.

[nuclear weapon]

Is this aircraft insured? Does Ethiad get a replacement without paying anything from airbus? And who takes the fall for this?

[Smilin_Ed]

Hands On The Throttles?

It's hard to understand why the person who put the throttles forward didn't KEEP HIS HAND THERE, ready to pull the power back in the event of a problem.

[Huck]

Huck,
Grossly unfair remark....
Count off thirteen seconds, and tell me what you would have done in that time.

I am a maintenance test pilot on MD-11F aircraft. I execute max power ground runs about twice a month.

What would I have done? Same thing I always plan on doing - Throttles idle, max manual braking, shut down one or more engines if things don't get better.

If you're cinched down hard in your seat with your hands and feet on the controls (and you damn well should be) I can do all that in a second or two.

In other words, if you're not a pilot, you better be prepared to act like one if you ever start moving during a high power ground run.

I have absolutely no concept of what distraction or thought process could delay these vital reactions. I could give the same scenario to a 10-hour private pilot student in a Cessna 150 and his/her reaction would be the same - wipe off power, max braking.

What happened here? I have no concept whatsoever. Unless both front-enders fell out of their seats, somebody should have been on the throttles within 2 seconds. If not them, the jumpseater.

[bvcu]

Simple basics need to be applied . Ignore the rubbish spouted about Boeing V Airbus in previous posts ref chocks , both manufacturers procedures specify chocks for high power runs . The difference is you leave a gap on Boeings as you have full parking brake pressure and if the aircraft moves it will slide into the chocks and enable them to grip properly . Because all the Airbus widebodies use a lower park brake pressure you have specialist large chocks which are used differently. And basically commercial pressure is the biggest problem as you need a heavy a/c with ballast or fuel which makes the job much easier as the aircraft doesnt bounce around and you can read the gauges !! The basics of high power runs as i was taught and insist on when running is the guy in the left seat has his hands on throttles any time power above idle. Man in right seat is experienced and when at high power keeps lookout for a/c moving and feet ready on pedals. If you're on a type with complex figure recording to be done then you need someone on the jumpseat to assist with that. This incident had diferent people from diferent companies , how comprehensive a brief was given before?

[ChristiaanJ]

Smilin_Ed, Huck,
Have you read the report?
If not I can try and pull out the relevant bits and translate them.

In brief, they had been running all four engines for about three minutes already, waiting for the oil to get warm enough to check for a leak.
So by that time their hands would have come off the throttles, thinking the parking brake was holding the aircraft adequately.
In reality, the engine thrust equated almost exactly the holding power of the brakes for those three minutes, and then (possibly because the fuel burned, hence a/c becoming lighter) overcame the brakes.

CJ