Sorry I forgot to quote my post in #8972. This is the explanation of the events leading up to the A319 Taxi incident in that post.
Long post, sorry in advance.
I will leave out names of those involved. The Taxi crew consisted of two Northwest employee's, a 25+ year Lead Mechanic that was Taxi qualified in A320-A319 models, a junior mechanic that was taxi qualified on 1 other type (DC-9's) working the radio's. Also in the plane were the Lead Mechanic's new Girlfriend and her Father. Neither employee's of the company, and neither having an AOA badge (Airport ID Badge that allows access to the ramp areas)
I was told the the Lead Mechanic was recently divorced and that his girlfriend (about 20 younger than him) wanted to ride in the cockpit of a plane. Her Father was invited to come along. He was a Private Pilot with multi engine and instrument ratings. It was her father sitting in the left seat of the A319 actually taxing the A/C, the junior mechanic was in the right seat operating the radios, the Lead mechanic was in the jump seat behind the center console, and the girlfriend's exact location was not revealed (I suspect she was on the lead mechanic's lap in the jump seat, but I do not know that to be a fact.)
So before they taxied the A319 from the hangar someone unseated the cockpit voice recorder from the rack. It was found to still be in place but inoperable as the electrical connections were not seated. So no voice recordings of the event. I was told that both Mechanic's thought there was no problem, as the A319 has a nose wheel steering handle on both sides, so either Pilot can operate the steering. So if the father had an issue controlling the A/C the junior mechanic could take over the steering brakes and throttles.
Everything went OK until they had to stop short of the gate waiting for a ground employee to marshal them into the gate. The father had no issue controlling the A/C, stopping it, or setting the parking brake. The problem occurred when the marshaler showed up and directed them to move forward. The Parking brake on a A319 is set by using the toe brake pedals to stop the A/C and them set the parking brake by rotating a T-handle 90 degrees counter clockwise from the 12:00 position to 9:00. No problem to set it. Now to release the parking brake on most A/C I have taxied you depress the toe pedals fully to release, this is what the father did while moving both throttles slightly forward. But this has no effect on the parking brake on this aircraft type, you have to rotate the T-handle clockwise back to the 12:00 position to release the parking brake.
So now the condition is the engines are spooling up (it takes a few seconds for high bypass engines to spool up 3-5 seconds in this case) the parking brake is still set as the father did not rotate the barking brake handle, he just depressed the toe pedals fully. So when the A/C did not start moving forward he advanced the throttles more so now we have the engines spooling up for 10-15 seconds with the brakes set, the aircraft is very light, no passengers or cargo, very light fuel load. When the junior mechanic noticed that the parking brake handle was still set, and he released the parking brake!
The result was the A/C lurching forward and accelerating rapidly into both the jet way, the pushback tug, and the 757 parked at the gate to the left (the 757 was in the process of boarding passengers, and bags into the aft cargo compartment.) The throttles where returned to idle before impact with the ground equipment, but the brakes were never reapplied. No video showed the impact. According to the ground employee's that witnessed it, the nose wheels were at least 12" (300mm) off the ground when the plane impacted the pushback tug ripping the nose gear off the plane, and deflecting it to the left into both the jetway, and the left wingtip into the 757.
No members of the Taxi crew were belted into their seats. and all 4 were thrown forward by the impact. The Girlfriend and father quickly exited the airport and were not available for interviews. But the ground crew does remember seeing 4 people exit the aircraft when the door was opened. Remember that this was several years after the September 11th attacks, and that airport security was and still is a much bigger deal than before those events. Federal charges were not filed as there was no video of the 2 unauthorized crew members in the A/C, and there was no cockpit voice recording of the event. No unauthorized voices could be heard on the FAA control tower tapes. And both unauthorized crew members were able to walk away from the scene before the authorities arrived.
The junior mechanic reveled to me what occurred over a few beers a couple of days later. I felt bad for him as his lead mechanic put him in a bad position that he should have refused to go along with, but I know it is tough to say no to a superior. And apparently this was not the 1st joyride event that had taken place, but I think it was the first time a joyrider was actually in control of the A/C. Both mechanic's lost their jobs over this, I do not know if it had any effect on their licenses. No Federal or local charges were filed. I think they both got off easy for their conduct.
That is how the events were related to me, the official report is the same except for the extra 2 taxi crew members. I hope I explained it well.