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

[forget]

Hmm. Could have come from any direction!

[CEJM]

Thanks Forget, I couldn't get the picture in the reply, hence the link.

By looking at the daylight picture of the incident, the aircraft is facing north. Because you can see the hangar (with the two aircraft in front) on the right hand side of the accident picture.

[Flapping_Madly]

Are you all quite sure the engine test bay involved is the one shown on Google?

I cannot work out the shape of the blast barriers or the whereabouts of the hangers shown in the background in the photo.

Is the Google image 5 years out of date as usual? or has a further length of blast barrier been built? The plane has hit a short section with a long section on its left hand side. The negative can't be reversed unless the aircraft belongs to Dahite airways.

Or am I talking out of my orifice again?

[Magoodotcom]

Something I haven't seen suggested yet...

Notice the snow on the ground in the pics? Could the a/c have hit a patch of ice whilst taxiing in/out, and skidded across it? I know you'd still need to be moving excessively fast in order to end up and over the barriers, but may be a contributing factor?

[akerosid]

I may be wrong, but I don't think it's snow; I assumed it was foam sprayed by the emergency crews?

[forget]

Mag, Toulouse is in the south of France. That 'snow' is foam.

[Admiral346]

I departed toulouse this morning, we had to deice, the cars in the hotel parking lot were covered in rime, though no snow on the ground.
But just being southern france doesn't make it snow free.

Nic

[forget]

The Airliners.net shot was a taken with a very long lens. Checking out the building roof etc (yellow arrow) against Google Earth - aircraft ended up at red line.

[Magoodotcom]

Originally Posted by forget

Mag, Toulouse is in the south of France. That 'snow' is foam.

It may be foam, although it looks to extend quite a long way towards the camera and way beyond the wingtip in the daytime pic.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1293784/L/

Plus, I've been at Toulouse in November when it's snowed quite heavily, so don't discount the snow/ice theory so readily.

[Rwy in Sight]

Anyway we can check the metar at the time of the incidence?


Rwy in Sight

[Profit Max]

Originally Posted by forget

The Airliners.net shot was a taken with a very long lens. Checking out the building roof etc (yellow arrow) against Google Earth - aircraft ended up at red line.

Correct. And if you go further North-East, you will see that the picture was most likely taken from the terminal of TLS airport (or one of the office buildings adjacent to it).

So what happened if this was after the test was completed? One possibility would be that while slowly turning the aircraft towards the exit, thrust was applied too early (either inadvertently by the pilot or due to a technical failure).

Can anybody guess what speed would have been necessary to push the nose over the concrete wall?

[forget]

Here's a same scale shot of the pan with an A-340. Plenty of room to get a few knots on board - depending on where you start from.

[BOAC]

It says a lot for the strength around the nose gear and the keel beam - I would have expected collapse there and concertina-ing rather than 'up-and-over'.

A really frightening experience for those on board, particularly up front.

[bsieker]

Originally Posted by forget

The Airliners.net shot was a taken with a very long lens. Checking out the building roof etc (yellow arrow) against Google Earth - aircraft ended up at red line.

I think it's quite a bit further in. If you look at the way the tele lens "compresses" the depth.

Take a look at how close to the fuselage the the wing tip rests on the ground, compared to the distance from the wing tip to the near edge of the test bay.

Also compare the amount of fence on the barrier in front and behind the aircraft. The width of individual panels of the fence seen in the far end of the bay helps judge the amount of fence that is seen in front of the plane.

So it appears to be closer to the centre of the north-western ("right") barrier, rather than at the near edge.


Bernd

[flt_lt_w_mitty]

It reminds me (NB: NO suggestion this was the cause!) of an engineer who taxied a 727 onto stand in TXL but forgot to put the hydraulic pumps on.......................it took a while to get the jetty out of the wing.

[bsieker]

Originally Posted by Flapping_Madly

[...]
Is the Google image 5 years out of date as usual? or has a further length of blast barrier been built?

Considering that currently google earth images show at least two A380 standing in the open (besides several A340/A330 and countless A320-series), and that the (c) notice says "2007", it can't be more than a few months old.

For scale: the aircraft on forget's screenshots in the top left corner is a "Beluga" Super Transporter.

The plane has hit a short section with a long section on its left hand side.

No. That's the kind of perspective illusion that a long telephoto lens produces. It has hit a long section, with a short section to its left. The long section appears short because it is photographed almost edge-on.

Here's my best estimate as to the photographer's location, this corresponds to a field-of-view of about 2.2 degrees, at a distance of about 1.45 km.


Bernd

[forget]

Here's an aerial shot of the NE corner of thepad. The red arrow is (I think) the orange Ground Services unit shown in the Airliners net photo.

[bsieker]

Originally Posted by forget

Here's an aerial shot of the NE corner of thepad. The red arrow is (I think) the orange Ground Services unit shown in the Airliners net photo.

This is rather academic, since the relevant people already know where exactly it was, but this is an interesting experiment nonetheless.

Look at the telltale markings on the wall, circled in blue and red, respectively, their position relative to the airframe (now permanently a "groundframe"), and their relative position on the wall, seen in the backdrop overview:




Bernd

[Airbubba]

It reminds me (NB: NO suggestion this was the cause!) of an engineer who taxied a 727 onto stand in TXL but forgot to put the hydraulic pumps on.......................it took a while to get the jetty out of the wing.

Was that a -235 model by any chance?

The 727 has a famous design issue where you need to open a hydraulic interconnect under some circumstances to get normal braking. There are pneumatic brakes but by the time you find that yellow handle it's usually all over but the shouting.

[BOAC]

I also remember the (TXL) incident and I think it was a 235.