It happened. A good friend of mine who works for the FAA sent me those pictures years ago when it happened, and from what he told me, it happened just like the scenario that Karl posted, ie. they were doing an engine run for an accpetance flight of the brand new airplane, and someone pulled the ground sensor CB, and voilla...no brakes!
I have never liked Airbus products, their design philosophy is that their airplane is 'smarter' than the pilots and it won't let you do things if it doesn't agree to what you are trying to do.
If you really want to see some scary sh!t, go watch some You Tube videos titled "Scary Crosswind Landings", you will notice that most of those 'scary landings' are in Airbus products...
What does that tell you?
We have a saying in professional aviation:
If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going.
I will leave you with this other Airbus incident. It was the unveiling of the (then) new Airbus A320, at the (huge) Paris Air Show, it is being flown by the Number One Airbus A320 Demo pilot. Not an average schmuck, but one of the guys who HELPED DESIGN IT! If he can't fly it, what chance does an average schmuck have?
He was doing a 'low pass' demo for the crowd of prospective buyers, with about 20 prospective buyers on board the airplane as well. At the end of the low pass, when he tried to pull up to go around the pattern and come back to land, the 'smart' airplane said, "Nope, we are going to land now..." And it did...in the trees, off the far end of the runway. Unbelieveably, only 3 were killed.
Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEH7OpnA-I4 You Tube is loaded with other Airbus crash videos. They are much cheaper than a similar Boeing, but you get what you pay for.
Part of the problem is, they sell to the third world, and their pilot don't get as much -hands on- training as we do over here in the USA. They don't train their copilots very much at all, and they are taught to just push the buttons, and let the (Smart) Airplane do everything, complete to the auto-landings. They are not allowed to land the airplane at a lot of Asian carriers. Every landing is an auto land.
Thats all good, until the Autopilot drops out...then what? You've got a couple pilots up front who have not made a manual landing in years.
Good luck!
