Murphy's Law!

Last year, a brand new Airbus A340-600 was parked at the Airbus assembly plant ready to be handed over to Etihad. I had just undergone its test flights successfully, when the engineers (either Airbus or Etihad, don't know which) started their tests.

To check the performance of the engines, all the four engines, with the parking brakes applied, are taken to take off power, on a virtually empty aircraft. The flight computer raises an alarm, since the aircraft hasn't been configured (with respect to slats/flaps etc) for take off although the engines are at take off setting.

To silence the nagging alarm, on of the engineers pulls out the circuit breakers for the Ground Proximity Detector. This fools the flight management computer into thinking that the aircraft is airborne. And hence, it releases the brakes. This, in fact, is a safety feature incorporated to prevent the pilots from accidentally landing with the brakes applied. With the engines running at full power, and no brakes, it hardly takes the brand new airplane to transform into a heap of expensive junk.

Just another example of the Murphy's law: If anything can go wrong. It will.