Air France / Airbus finally on trial

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Yes, I think that stalling a perfectly good airliner into the ocean from over 30k feet is criminal negligence. I will never fly Air France. It is like the one co-pilot missed the private pilot lesson on stalls.

Air France and Airbus on trial 13 years after Atlantic jet disaster

An online publication dedicated to providing the latest news, progress, and market intelligence about the global airliner industry.

www.airlinerwatch.com

 

[TexasTailwheel]

I will never fly Air France.

Uh, how many have they stalled since then???

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Uh, how many have they stalled since then???

None that I know of. My own sense is that one display of such gross incompetence with such disastrous consequences is one too many.

It is sort of interesting to ponder what would happen to a company like this in a complete free market situation. Could they even stay in business after such a loss? Would they be at all insurable? Would their competition eat them for lunch?

 

[Winthrop]

I will never fly Air France.

Air France and Airbus on trial 13 years after Atlantic jet disaster

An online publication dedicated to providing the latest news, progress, and market intelligence about the global airliner industry.

www.airlinerwatch.com

Air France is hardly the first airline to crash a perfectly good aircraft. Indeed, Air France also did it with Air France Flight 296Q back in 1988. However, by this standard you are going to find yourself limited to flying Qantas, Hawaiian and maybe BA. Granted some newer airlines like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar are also accident free.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

And now they are acquitted. Grrr.

Airbus, Air France acquitted over 2009 Rio-Paris crash

A French court has acquitted Airbus and Air France of manslaughter charges over the 2009 crash of Flight 447 from Rio to Paris

abcnews.go.com

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I guess there was never was toxicology on the pilots. I have always wondered if at least the right seat first officer was impaired in some way. I mean holding the stick back through 30k descent with the system periodically telling you there was a stall. Aren’t we all trained that in a stall you put the nose forward?

 

[rotorwrench]

I mean holding the stick back through 30k descent with the system periodically telling you there was a stall.

As I recall, there were conflicting attitude and airspeed data with no outside references so he may have been only responding to what he saw and heard since the stall horn would stop when he increased pitch. However, there is another theory that the pilot may have been centered on trying to counter the roll and level the aircraft vs the stall. But keep in mind from the time autopilot disconnected to out of coordinated flight was less than 2 minutes with the whole sequence over in 4 minutes from FL380 with the engines at TOGA. A very unfortunate event.

I guess there was never was toxicology on the pilots.

I believe there are still over a 100 bodies missing which include all pilots.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Yes, very unfortunate. I would be curious to hear what other pilots of these larger jets think.

The right hand pilot kept the stick back the whole way down until the captain noticed that and told him to put it forward. And then when they saw the ocean, the right hand pilot pulled back again.

It seems like a fundamental failure of training. Who pulls back in a stall to try and fix it? I know there are some videos of pilots giving in to the natural fear of the ground and pulling back - but at 30,000 feet?

Of course there is also the contribution of it being a fly by wire plane so the other pilot had no idea this is what the right hand seat pilot was doing. And the fact that the captain let them both keep flying rather than throwing both our of their seats and taking over. But those are contributing factors in my view.

I really do wonder if they had been drinking too much good French wine or were smoking something.

But hindsight is always 20/20 and we are sitting comfortably on the ground.

 

[rotorwrench]

I would be curious to hear what other pilots of these larger jets think.

Go to pprune and search for AF447. Its been discussed to death by many heavy metal pilots.

The right hand pilot kept the stick back the whole way down until the captain noticed that and told him to put it forward.

FYI: The captain was not in the cockpit when the autopilot disconnected. By the time he was in the cockpit the aircraft was rolling right with many issues. One of the reasons the pilot pulled on the yoke for the entire ride down was when he pushed the yoke forward... the stall warning horn came on and the indicated airspeed bled off. What would you do with no outside reference? There are several transcripts of the CVR if you care to read the reports yourself. Three pilots couldn't figure it out within that short timeframe.

And then when they saw the ocean, the right hand pilot pulled back again.

By the time they "saw" the ocean, if they did, they were traveling at 10,000 feet per minute minus a vertical fin.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

FYI: The captain was not in the cockpit when the autopilot disconnected. By the time he was in the cockpit the aircraft was rolling right with many issues. One of the reasons the pilot pulled on the yoke for the entire ride down was when he pushed the yoke forward... the stall warning horn came on and the indicated airspeed bled off. What would you do with no outside reference? There are several transcripts of the CVR if you care to read the reports yourself. Three pilots couldn't figure it out within that short timeframe.

Actually I did read the CVR and it struck me at the time as gross incompetence on the part of the co-pilots. Per this summary of the transcript the stall warning came on and was on most of the way down The co-pilots initial reaction was just grossly incorrect. That seems to be the opinion of many on pprune.

I remember being incredulous when I first read this that two pilots could have the plane screaming at them "stall" "stall" and continue to hold the stick back.

Why the captain didn't force these two clowns out of their seat immediately is beyond me.

Also per pprune there appears to be some debate over whether the tail was missing before colliding with the ocean.

Air France 447 CVR Transcript

Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript of Air France 447, an A330 that crashed into the Atlantic after losing airspeed information.

tailstrike.com

 

[rotorwrench]

Why the captain didn't force these two clowns out of their seat immediately is beyond me.

Well there was a lot more going on in that cockpit that didn't leave much choice for the captain as he got sucked into the confusion himself. Without going into the many discussions on this, the additional issues included crew training, CRM deficiencies, aircraft system failures, aircraft system design issues, and several other quirks. 4 out of those 5 items were changed by Air France and Airbus after this accident which shows the root causes were well beyond simple "gross incompetence." Bottomline, the aircraft pitot system failed of which there were 40 previous instances that were successfully recovered, the fact the captain put the junior pilot in charge of which the senior co-pilot failed to correct, the fact the basic control logic did not allow the senior pilot to correct the junior pilots inputs, there was no AF training for high altitude stalls which is different than the low altitude stall training pilots received (and which the junior pilot followed), and so on. However, probably the biggest factor was the stall warning did not stay activated for the whole event. The best reason determined that I read, was the AoA was so extreme that the stall sensors would not work and the reason when the pilot pushed the controls forward the stall sensors would start working again thus giving a false indication. If they had just held the nose down longer through the stall alert, the warning alert would have stopped once the proper AoA was achieved. As they say, the Swiss cheese effect of safety.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Interesting I read just a bit about this low altitude stall training. What is that training? That you should pull the stick back when you stall? Why would that work? It is of course the complete opposite of what one does in GA and seems bizarre.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I am also wondering what the actual training of these co-pilots in actually hand flying an airplane was? Did they have anything beyond the few hours of solo they get these days? Any aerobatic training? Or was it just the crew flying like ATP provides?

 

[Winthrop]

Given the relative size of the French Air Force and the relatively smaller size of the French commercial airline fleet I would not be surprised if they have an higher ratio of military trained pilots than US airlines do.

 

[rotorwrench]

Interesting I read just a bit about this low altitude stall training. What is that training? That you should pull the stick back when you stall? Why would that work?

This is outside my skill set, but as I recall low level stall recovery is at the onset of the stall they apply TOGA and pull up the nose which is exactly what the Jr. pilot did. Unfortunately at high altitudes there is basically no extra thrust available and this maneuver aggravates the situation. But they had no high altitude training which I believe is to immediately lower the nose, etc.

I am also wondering what the actual training of these co-pilots in actually hand flying an airplane was?

There's a training syllabus posted somewhere in the volumes of discussion on this but I dont recall where. However, I do believe there were comments by experienced crews that Air France relied heavily on the aircraft automation vs training.

 

[Richard_Allred]

Have you seen this video on the accident?
I imagine that the pilots were so overloaded and confused that they couldn't make sense of the situation until it was too late. By the time they passed through 10,000 feet they were falling so fast it wasn't recoverable.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I have read the cockpit transcripts. It strikes me that these junior pilots were not very well trained and were basically clueless about what was going on. Are we not all taught that if the plane is stalling you lower the angle of attack to get the wing flying from about lesson 3 or so?

Then the captain came in and made a serious error by not throwing both of them out of their seats and taking control. Instead he stood behind them debating.

Though see other different opinions above.

 

[Richard_Allred]

What I am wondering is in the heat of the situation did they even recognize they were stalled? Did the captain barely wake up when he came into the cockpit?
I agree the captain should have taken control of the aircraft but it seems like he was confused as he came into the cockpit after the situation was out of control, and he didn't see how it all started. In my opinion he was lacking situational awareness.
I have never been in such a situation where I couldn't make sense of anything, but in the accident videos made by Mentour Pilot I have seen many accidents where the pilot did something really stupid and killed everyone when he became overwhelmed by stress. FlyDubai flight 981 is a similar accident in a way because the pilot nosed a perfectly good aircraft into the ground killing everyone and making a big crater in the runway.
I am referring to Mentour Pilot's videos because I think he explains things well because of his experience as an airline pilot for over 20 years, and his experience as a training and line check captain, training in new 737 pilots for his airline.
I know that I don't have much room to say anything for myself as I am just a student pilot. I have studied a lot of accidents though because I want to learn from other people's mistakes so I can be a safer pilot. I can say it is easy for me to say the mistakes different pilots made, but I am saying it from the comfort of my home and not in the situation they were in.
Below is the video on the FlyDubai flight 981 accident that I am talking about. It was also a perfectly good aircraft that was lost because of terrible mistakes made by the pilot.