I think Hay had a neutral intent, but the story itself had an agenda:

Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT)

and

Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is.

These comments seem to indicate that the ADAT flight crew was incompetent. The Snopes article made the point that the plane was still in the hands of an Airbus employee. That doesn't seem like a small detail to me.

The bigger issue to me was the lack of following checklists. What little I know about flight procedures is nothing gets done without a checklist. They did one test (of the emergency brake, which required no wheel chocks) but didn't go back to the start and follow procedure for a full power test, which would (or should) have included making sure the wheels were chocked.