Airbus Industrie Undifferentiated or Other Model
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Maintenance
Flight Crew Returned To Gate
Company Policy; Human Factors
Just after pushback at LAX we started both engines and as soon as the second engine was started we had multiple triple chimes on the ECAM with warnings of all flight control loss along with all Hydraulics loss and many other warnings going off to the point we had to emergency cancel the aural warnings for me to be able to communicate with the First Officer (FO). We started looking at every switch and circuit breaker to see if we could find the source of the problem and all switches and circuit breakers look normal. I was unable to steer the aircraft when turning the tiller and we also were concerned about the loss of brake pressure so we immediately started the APU and shut down the engines. After being towed back onto the gate a maintenance person came onto the aircraft and stated he had never seen this before on the Airbus. After several minutes he found the three Hydraulics switches (these are maintenance switches not air crew) had been pushed off and left off by someone. He left to find out why. After approximately 20-30 min. he returned to tell us that 'as of right now no one knows who or why those switches were turned off and left off'. I asked several more questions and he didn't have any answers so I told him without those answers I would not take the aircraft and he said he completely understood and that there would be an investigation as to who and why the switches were left off. My concern was why they were left off and what else on the aircraft was left in an unsafe position. Without these answers there was no way for us to determine that the aircraft was airworthy.
After engine start following pushback; crew of an Airbus experienced the loss of all three hydraulic systems. The crew started the APU; shut down both engines; and had the aircraft towed back into the gate. Maintenance personnel discovered that all three maintenance hydraulic system switches had been left in the OFF position.