A brand new Airbus A340-600 was involved in a ground crash during testing of its engines at the Airbus facility in Toulouse, France. The accident occurred 15 November, hurtling the 472-passenger plane into a blast wall. The A340-600 was only eight days away from being delivered to Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways.

All nine people aboard the airplane were injured, and one person on the ground was injured as well. Three of the injured are still in the hospital at the time of publication, with non-life threatening fractures and bruises. The airplane was badly damaged, particularly in the cockpit area. Airbus is now faced with several options. The airplane may be a write off, with Airbus electing to salvage engines, wings, empennage and interior furnishings. It may be possible to repair the airplane, which would entail replacing the nose. This has been done before on other damaged aircraft. For example, in the early 1970s a Boeing B707 that had its nose blown off on the ground in Lebanon by a terrorist bomb was repaired and flew for many years thereafter.

Details are sketchy, but according to an Airbus statement, “The aircraft involved in the incident … had completed final engine run and was exiting the engine run zone at the time of the incident.” It is interesting to note that the stationary engine run was completed.

An unconfirmed account has it that a person in the cockpit fell onto the pedestal; in a 16 November press release, Etihad maintained that none of its staff were involved in the accident. The investigation is centered around the nose wheel steering, which was reportedly unlocked in order for the airplane to move out of the area after the tests had been conducted. It was apparently locked again for an unknown reason, putting the aircraft in front of the wall with engines running. The accident site makes sense if someone forgot to re-engage the nose wheel steering before heading to the exit taxiway. Then, the person lunging for the switch (to help the apparent lack of directional control) fell across the throttles – this at least is a reasonable scenario.

A few years ago there was a similar accident at Vancouver, Canada involving an engine test run on the ground of an Airbus A310. In that case, only line maintenance chocks were used during the engine run (as opposed to Airbus special ground run chocks that cannot be jumped). In the Vancouver case, avionics technicians pulled a circuit breaker that put the aircraft’s computers into flight mode. Presto! The engines went to flight idle, there was no reverse thrust, brakes or nose-wheel steering. The airplane jumped its chocks so fast the mechanics in the left and right cockpit seats did not know what happened (and they were not aware of avionics technicians fiddling with the circuit breakers). The airplane basically was on an uncontrolled taxi, right into a ground equipment building, and with enough force to shear off 6-inch steel I-beams.

The Vancouver mishap caused over $1 million damage.

As one pilot said, “If I were a betting man, I’d guess something similar happened at Toulouse.”

The airplane’s flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR), obviously recoverable from the minimally-damaged tail, should reveal much to investigators from the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA), the French equivalent of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. The Quick Access Recorder (QAR) should also have something to offer in the way of data. The BEA reported 16 November that its investigators were on the scene; the BEA posted a short factual report on 20 November (see Figure A).

The accident occurred when the airplane’s four engines were throttled up and brakes were applied, according to one of the sketchy accounts. Airbus Chief Operating Officer Fabrice Bregier said the plane lurched into the barrier and wall “for reasons still unknown.” However, throttle up for taxi-back would involve no more than idle power on the four engines, and little more than idle power if taxiing on the inboard engines only.

We await the BEA report.