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Paris (CNN) -- French investigators said Sunday that they have found pieces of the Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people on board.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared after taking off from Rio de Janeiro on its way to Paris.

France's air accident investigation agency, the BEA, said that a team -- led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution -- discovered parts of the aircraft during an underwater search operation conducted within the past 24 hours.

The agency did not immediately say what parts of the jet the team found.

Investigators have not yet established what caused the crash, and large parts of the plane -- including both flight recorders -- have never been located, despite an extensive search operation that included a French navy submarine.

The Air France plane went down in stormy weather, and most of the bodies were never recovered.

Studies of the debris and bodies that were found led the BEA to conclude the plane hit the water belly first, essentially intact. Oxygen masks were not deployed, indicating that the cabin did not depressurize, the BEA said in a 2009 report.

Automated messages sent from the plane in the minutes before the crash showed there were problems measuring air speed, investigators have said, though they said that alone was not enough to cause the disaster.

The area where the plane went down is far out in the Atlantic -- two to four days for ships to reach from the nearest ports in Brazil or Senegal in west Africa. The underwater terrain is rough with underwater mountains and valleys, the BEA has said.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/...f=mrss_igoogle_world
 
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CNN) -- Search teams have found a part of the crucial "data recorders" of the Air France flight which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, says France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA).

The orange-colored recorder 'chassis' was found on Wednesday during the second day of an operation which also hopes to retrieve bodies from the wreckage site.

All 228 people aboard the Airbus A330 Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were killed.

The find - which comes more than three weeks after search teams found the tail section of the aircraft -- does not include the "memory unit" which holds the recorded data that could eventually help investigators determine the cause of the crash.



Air France 447 wreckage



2009: Air France jet fell vertically



2009: Plane's final moments



2009: What caused Air France crash?



Map: Air France Flight 447



RELATED TOPICS
Air France Flight 447

Martine Del Bono, a spokeswoman for the Paris-based BEA says there is a good chance the memory unit, which records any instructions sent to the aircraft's electronic systems, will still hold retrievable data.

Del Bono said: "Our priority is to recover the flight recorder and then we will start to recover bodies. The images are in color the (flight recorders) are orange, it is not black and white, so we are hopeful we can find them. We believe they (flight recorders) are still on the accident site, but it takes times to analyze the photos. We need to be optimistic and confident."

Q&A: Will the mystery of Flight 447 be solved?

Phil Seymour, chief operating officer of the International Bureau of Aviation, a British aviation consultancy, said: "I remain skeptical about how useful this device (memory unit) will be. If you were to throw a computer into the ocean imagine how all the parts would eventually split and you have the corrosive effects of seawater and the depths involved.

"It may be that the more wreckage they find will help them to piece it all together which bit by bit could help them build a picture of what caused the plane to come down."

The Airbus A330's pilots lost contact with air traffic controllers while flying across an area of the Atlantic Ocean known for constant bands of severe turbulence, officials said.

But exactly what caused the plane to plunge into the sea has remained a mystery, with only small portions of the wreckage and a small number of bodies found in the remote area where it went down.

Del Bono said Thursday that weather conditions for the recovery were good and that the operation would continue on a 24-hour basis.

Steve Saint Amour, director of commercial operations, Phoenix International, offered the BEA use of a remote-controlled submarine known as the Remora 6000.

Each round trip for the Remora takes some 14 to 16 hours says Del Bono, taking over two hours to descend to the wreck site, estimated to lie at a depth of between 2,000 to 4,000 meters (6,562 to 13,124 feet).

When asked about the likelihood of finding the crucial part of AF447's data recorders, Amour declined to comment directly but did say "Our past performance has been 100% success."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/...f=mrss_igoogle_world
 
Posts: 2580 | Location: USA | Registered: Sun April 07 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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CNN) -- The memory unit that may tell why an Air France jet plunged into the Atlantic nearly two years ago was recovered from the bottom of the ocean Sunday, France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) said.

A remote-controlled submarine, known as the Remora 6000, located the memory unit Sunday morning and it was lifted on board the search
ship Ile de Sein six hours later, the Paris-based BEA said.


All 228 people aboard the Air France Flight 447 were killed when the plane fell into the ocean on the way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009.


The submarine found the orange-colored flight data recorder's chassis Wednesday, the second day of an operation that also hopes to retrieve bodies from the wreckage site. The memory unit was part of the recorder, but was not attached when it was found.

The finds come more than three weeks after search teams found the tail section of the
Airbus A330.

Air France, in a written statement Sunday, called the discovery "very significant."

"We hope that the BEA, in charge of the technical investigation, will be able to provide answers to questions that relatives of the victims, Air France and the entire airline industry have been asking for nearly two years as to why this tragic accident occurred," the airline's statement said.

A British aviation consultant said he is skeptical about how useful the memory unit will be to investigators, considering it has been sitting between 2,000 to 4,000 meters (6,562 to 13,124 feet) below the ocean's surface for 23 months.

"If you were to throw a computer into the ocean, imagine how all the parts would eventually split and you have the corrosive effects of seawater and the depths involved," Phil Seymour, chief operating officer of the International Bureau of Aviation, said Thursday.



"It may be that the more wreckage they find will help them to piece it all together, which bit by bit could help them build a picture of what caused the plane to come down," Seymour said.

Martine Del Bono, a spokeswoman for the Paris-based BEA, says there is a good chance the memory unit, which records any instructions sent to the aircraft's electronic systems, will still hold retrievable data.

The Airbus A330's pilots lost contact with air traffic controllers while flying across an area of the Atlantic Ocean known for constant bands of severe turbulence, officials said.


But exactly what caused the plane to plunge into the sea has remained a mystery, with only small portions of the wreckage and a handful of bodies found in the remote area where it went down.

CNN's Ayesha Durgahee contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/...er/index.html?hpt=T2

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Paris (CNN) -- French air accident investigators probing a mysterious crash that killed 228 people will not bring more bodies up from the Atlantic Ocean if they cannot identify the two they already have, they said Thursday.

Those two bodies are being examined to see if there is enough DNA to identify them, investigators said, adding that they hope to have results by Wednesday.

If they can identify the remains, they will consider bringing up other bodies from the wreckage of Air France flight 447, which crashed nearly two years ago off the coast of Brazil.

Only about 50 bodies were recovered in the aftermath of the crash. The bulk of the wreckage was located earlier this year and contains many more human remains, investigators say.

Recovering more bodies will be a difficult task, with miles of cable required to bring each one up over a period of three hours, they said. Relatives of the victims are divided on whether they should be left in place or brought to the surface.



Map: Air France Flight 447



Air France bodies recovered years later



RELATED TOPICS
Air France Flight 447
Air Disasters
France
Brazil

Experts trying to figure out why the plane crashed expect to know Monday whether they will be able to recover information from data recorders found at the bottom of the ocean, they said Thursday.

The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were found almost two weeks ago after an unprecedented series of submarine searches of a mountain range 3,900 meters (12,700 feet) under the ocean. They were brought to the surface and taken to Paris by ship and plane.

Over the next several days, their protective casing will be removed, salt will be cleaned off, and the recorders will be left out to dry, investigators told journalists in Paris Thursday.

Once they are dry, any further salt residue will be removed. Investigators will assess the recorders visually, then check the state of the memory cards and finally make a back-up of the cards.

This could take up to three days, they said. Only then they will begin to analyze what is on the recorders, they added.

Investigators also brought an engine and an avionics bay containing computers to the surface Monday, they said

The pilots of Air France 447 lost contact with air traffic controllers on June 1, 2009, while flying across an area of the Atlantic known for severe turbulence, officials said. But exactly what caused the plane to plunge into the ocean remains a mystery.

The plane belly-flopped into the water while en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, falling so fast that air masks did not have time to deploy.

The fuselage was discovered in April with bodies still inside, investigators said.

A first body was recovered May 3, still buckled into its seat, days after the data recorders were found, the French Interior Ministry said.

The body "appeared degraded," the ministry added in a written statement. Another body was brought up two days later.

"The attempts to bring up the bodies were made in particularly complex conditions. Considerable uncertainties still remain regarding the technical feasibility of recovering the bodies," the Interior Ministry statement said.

DNA samples from the remains will be sent to a laboratory for analysis, the statement added.

Some relatives of those who died have expressed reservations about remains being brought to the surface.

Last month Robert Soulas, head of a support group for families of flight victims, said: "For me, personally I would like to leave the bodies of my children, my two children, on the seabed."

Other relatives have called for the bodies to be recovered.

France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) said last week that the external casings of both the flight recorders -- which record data and cockpit voices -- were in good condition and that they had started a "drying" process.

Martine Del Bono, a spokeswoman for the Paris-based BEA, said at the time that even if there was some internal damage to the recorders, some data might still be recoverable.

"We must be very very careful... we are confident but it will take time for us to know whether we can retrieve all the data."

But Phil Seymour, chief operating officer of the International Bureau of Aviation, a British aviation consultancy, said: "I remain skeptical about how useful this device (memory unit) will be. If you were to throw a computer into the ocean, imagine how all the parts would eventually split up. You also have the corrosive effects of seawater and the immense depths involved."

CNN's Thair Shaikh contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/...f=mrss_igoogle_world
 
Posts: 2580 | Location: USA | Registered: Sun April 07 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Paris (CNN) -- Investigators trying to determine why an Air France plane crashed mysteriously two years ago have recovered the complete contents of the flight data recorder and the last two hours of cockpit conversation, they announced Monday.

It will take several weeks to analyze the data, French air accident experts said.

All 228 people aboard Air France 447 were killed when the Airbus A330 belly-flopped into the ocean June 1, 2009, in stormy weather. The cause of the crash is still not known.

Discovering that there was data on the recorders "is excellent news. It is really going to help us work out what happened on that plane," said Martine Del Bono, spokeswoman for France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA).

Q&A: Will the mystery of Flight 447 be solved?



Map: Air France Flight 447



Air France bodies recovered years later



Air France 447 wreckage



2009: Air France jet fell vertically



2009: Plane's final moments



RELATED TOPICS
Air France Flight 447

The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were found at the beginning of May after an unprecedented series of submarine searches of a mountain range 3,900 meters (12,700 feet) under the ocean. They were brought to the surface and taken to Paris by ship and plane.

The investigators also recovered two bodies from the fuselage -- after finding only about 50 bodies in the days immediately after the crash.

They will not bring more bodies up from the ocean if they cannot identify the two they already have, they said Thursday.

Those two bodies are being examined to see if there is enough DNA to identify them, investigators said, adding that they hope to have results by Wednesday.

If they can identify the remains, they will consider bringing up other bodies from the wreckage.

The bulk of the plane was located earlier this year and contains many more human remains, according to investigators.

Recovering more bodies will be a difficult task, with miles of cable required to bring each one up over a period of three hours, they said.

Investigators also brought an engine and an avionics bay containing computers to the surface, they said.

The pilots of Air France 447 lost contact with air traffic controllers on June 1, 2009, while flying across an area of the Atlantic known for severe turbulence, officials said. But exactly what caused the plane to plunge into the ocean remains a mystery.

The plane slammed into the water while en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, falling so fast that air masks did not have time to deploy.

The fuselage was discovered in April with bodies still inside, investigators said.

Some relatives of those who died have expressed reservations about remains being brought to the surface.

Last month Robert Soulas, head of a support group for families of flight victims, said: "For me, personally I would like to leave the bodies of my children, my two children, on the seabed."

Other relatives have called for the bodies to be recovered.

CNN's Ayesha Durgahee, Catherine Clifford and Niki Cook contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/...f=mrss_igoogle_world
 
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Preliminary Findings Suggest Pilot Error in Air France Crash .
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By ANDY PASZTOR And DANIEL MICHAELS
The pilots of an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean two years ago apparently became distracted with faulty airspeed indicators and failed to properly deal with other vital systems, including adjusting engine thrust, according to people familiar with preliminary findings from the plane's recorders.

The final moments inside the cockpit of the twin-engine Airbus A330, these people said, indicates the pilots seemingly were confused by alarms they received from various automated flight-control systems as the plane bucked through some turbulence expected on the route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris but also faced unexpectedly heavy icing at 35,000 feet. Such icing is renowned for making airspeed-indicators and other external sensors unreliable.

Ultimately, the crew failed to follow standard procedures to maintain or increase thrust and keep the aircraft's nose level, while trouble-shooting and waiting for the airspeed sensors and related functions to return to normal, according to these people.

Slated to be disclosed by investigators on Friday, the sequence of events captured on the recorders is expected to highlight that the twin-engine jet slowed dangerously shortly after the autopilot disconnected. The pilots almost immediately faced the beginning of what became a series of automation failures or disconnects related to problems with the plane's airspeed sensors, these people said. The crew apparently had difficulty sorting out the warning messages, chimes and other cues, while monitoring essential displays showing engine power and aircraft trajectory.

The pilots were never trained to handle precisely such an emergency at high altitude, according to safety experts and a previous report by France's Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, which is heading up the investigation. All 228 people aboard died in the accident.

The senior captain, Marc Dubois, appears to have been out of the cockpit for a routine rest break when the fatal chain of events started, according to safety experts familiar with the details. But according to one person close to the probe, the cockpit-voice recorder suggests that once problems cropped up, he may have rushed back to the cockpit to join the other two pilots of Air France Flight 447.

Though Friday's announcement won't provide final conclusions or specific causes, investigators believe Air France never trained its pilots to cope with such automation problems in conjunction with a high-altitude aerodynamic stall, an emergency when the wings lose lift and the plane quickly becomes uncontrollable.

Spokesmen for Air France, a unit of Air France-KLM, and Airbus, a unit of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., have declined to comment on any details of the investigation. Airbus last week, however, issued a bulletin reassuring airlines that the preliminary readout of the recorders hasn't prompted any "immediate recommendation" regarding the safety of the global A330 fleet. French investigators, who gave the green light for that statement, also have said their preliminary findings don't highlight any major system failures or malfunctions that could have caused the fatal dive.

According to a report issued by French investigators in November 2009, Airbus identified 32 instances involving similar model jetliners between 2003 and 2009 in which external speed probes, known as pitot tubes, suffered ice buildup at high altitude and caused "erroneous air speed indications."

Most of the incidents involved probes similar to those on the A330 that crashed. Many were on Air France planes, according to the BEA report.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/...SJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
 
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PARIS (AP) -- Confronted with faulty instrument readings and alarms going off in the cockpit, the pilots of an Air France jetliner struggled to tame the aircraft as it went into an aerodynamic stall, rolled, and finally plunged 38,000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean in just 3 1/2 minutes.

But the passengers on that doomed Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight were probably asleep or nodding off and didn't realize what was going on as the aircraft fell nose-up toward the sea, the director of the French accident investigating bureau said after releasing preliminary black-box data on the June 1, 2009, disaster.

All 228 people aboard the Airbus A330 died.

The brief, highly technical report by the BEA contains only selective remarks from the cockpit recorder, offers no analysis and assigns no blame. It also does not answer the key question: What caused the crash?

But several experts familiar with the report said the co-pilot at the controls, at 32 the youngest of the three-man cockpit crew, Cedric Bonin, may have responded incorrectly to the emergency by pointing the nose upward, perhaps because he was confused by the incorrect readings.

The plane's external speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, have long been considered a likely culprit in the disaster, with experts suggesting they may have been iced over. And the BEA investigators found that two sets of instruments on the plane gave different speed readings, with the discrepancies lasting less than a minute.

Since the accident, Air France has replaced the speed monitors on all its Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft.

An official at Airbus said the aircraft's nose should have been pointed slightly downward to enable the plane to regain lift after it had gone into an aerodynamic stall.

"This is part of the general pilot training for any aircraft," said the official. He was not authorized to speak on that subject and asked not to be identified by name.

Other aviation experts concurred. In an aerodynamic stall, a plane most often loses lift because it is traveling too slowly, and begins to fall out of the sky. Pointing the nose downward enables the aircraft to pick up speed, gain lift and pull out of the stall.

Pulling the nose up is "an inappropriate way to respond" to an aerodynamic stall, said Paul Hayes, director of air safety for aviation consulting firm Ascend Worldwide Ltd. "He either misidentified what was happening or became confused."

He cautioned that Friday's report was brief and that it was still unclear how the series of events started.

The flight data recorder and cockpit recorder were dredged from the ocean in early May, along with some bodies.

They showed, in addition to inconsistent speed readings, two co-pilots working methodically to right the plane manually after autopilot stopped. Captain Marc Dubois returned from a routine rest to the cockpit amid what moments later became an irretrievably catastrophic situation.

After the plane went into a stall, warnings sounded, the autopilot and autothrust shut off as designed, and the co-pilot not at the controls "tried several times to call the captain back," the BEA report said. The captain returned one minute and 10 seconds later, when the plane had climbed to 38,000 feet.

"During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped," the report said, but added that the plane never came out of its aerodynamic stall.

"The airplane was subject to roll oscillations that sometimes reached 40 degrees," the report said. The engines never stopped operating and "always responded to crew commands," the BEA said.

"The pilots never panicked," BEA director Jean-Paul Troadec said on RTL radio, adding that they maintained professionalism throughout.

The passengers, he suggested, probably fell to their deaths without knowing they were doomed.

Dinner had been served and "you can imagine that most passengers were already asleep or nodding off," Troadec said. He said the cabin crew never contacted the cockpit to see what might be wrong.

"It seems they didn't feel more movements and turbulence than you generally feel in storms, so we think that till impact they did not realize the situation," said Jean-Baptiste Audousset, president of a victims' solidarity association, "which for the family is what they want to hear, they did not suffer."

He was among a group of representatives of families who met with BEA officials to be briefed on their findings.

At least one expert disagreed with the theory of a soft descent.

Data from the flight recorders shows the plane was falling almost 11,000 feet per minute (124 mph, or 200 kilometers per hour), its nose slightly tilted upward.

"Eleven-thousand feet a minute is a huge rate of descent," said Ronan Hubert, who runs the Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva. "I would say some of the people on board would have lost consciousness."

The crew had feared turbulence, and more than eight minutes before the crash the co-pilot at the controls advised the cabin crew "you should watch out" for turbulence ahead. He said the plane could not climb out of the cloud layer where the turbulence was happening because it was not cold enough.

Turbulence caused the pilots to make a slight change of course, but was not excessive as the plane tried to pass through the clouds.

Four minutes later, the plane's autopilot and autothrust shut off, the stall alarm sounded twice and the co-pilot at the controls took over manual control. A second co-pilot, David Robert, 37, was also in the cockpit.

Pilots on long-haul flights often take turns resting to remain alert. After Dubois returned to the cockpit, he did not take back the controls.

Just over two minutes before the crash, Bonin is heard to say, "I don't have any more indications." Robert says: "We have no valid indications."

Michael Barr, who teaches aviation safety at the University of Southern California, said the atmosphere in the darkened cockpit would have been chaotic: lights flashing, loud alarms, frequent messages.

He compared the pilots to emergency-room doctors struggling with a sudden influx of seriously injured patients: They were bombarded with problems that they had to quickly prioritize.

On top of that, they were completely dependent on the information the plane's computers gave them.

"You have to rely on your instruments," Barr said. "That's why when the instruments aren't telling you the truth, you have a hard time deciding what to do. Which ones are right and which ones are wrong?"

Air France said in a statement that, based on the report, it appears "the initial problem was the failure of the speed probes which led to the disconnection of the autopilot" and loss of pilot protection systems.

The airline defended the captain, saying he "quickly interrupted his rest period to regain the cockpit."

Independent aviation analyst Chris Yates said the report appears "to raise more questions than it answers."

"It would seem to me, reading between the lines, that the cockpit crew weren't confident of the information that was being presented to them on the data displays," Yates said. "Maybe -- and it's only a maybe -- they took some action that led to the stall warning, and the plane stalling and then being unable to correct it."

A new, but not final, report with some analysis is to be issued in July.

Cecile Brisson and Frank Jordans and APTN in Paris, Joan Lowy in Washington and David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...-3082917519.html?x=0
 
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(CNN) -- Investigators on Thursday will release the final report into the crash of Air France Flight 447, which plunged into the Atlantic Ocean more than three years ago.

More than 200 people died in the June 1, 2009, crash of the Brazil-to-France flight.

It took four searches over the course of nearly two years to locate the bulk of the wreckage and the majority of the bodies in a mountain range deep under the ocean.




Air France accident report due out



What caused Air France 447 crash
The aircraft's voice recorder and flight data recorder were found on the ocean floor in May 2011 after an extensive search using miniature submersible vehicles.

France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis said the data indicated that Flight 447 crashed because the aircraft's speed sensors gave invalid readings.

Last year's report from the bureau said the airplane climbed to 38,000 feet when "the stall warning was triggered and the airplane stalled." It then descended, crashing into the Atlantic. The descent lasted three minutes and 30 seconds, and the engines remained operational, the report said.

Studies of the debris and bodies found soon after the crash led the French agency to conclude the plane hit the water belly first, essentially intact. Oxygen masks were not deployed, indicating that the cabin did not depressurize, the bureau said in a 2009 report.

Flight 447 was passing through an area prone to volatile and dangerous weather known as the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone when it went down. The zone is a belt of low pressure that wraps around the planet. Clouds and storms form along it because it is literally where the winds of the world's hemispheres meet.

The Bureau of Investigation and Analysis' previous report also raised questions about the training of the pilots on that flight.

The recorders revealed the pilots had failed to discuss repeated stall warnings and "had received no high altitude training" to deal with the situation, the bureau said.

The pilots got conflicting air speed readings in the minutes leading up to the crash and, after the stall, responded by pointing the nose upward, rather than downward, to recover.

They failed to regain control of the aircraft, and no announcement was made to the passengers before it plummeted from the sky.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/05/...sh-report/index.html
 
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Air France 447 Crash: Final Report Points to Pilot Error, Confusion


In the final report issued Thursday on the Air France 447 crash that killed 228 people in May 2009, investigators said the pilots were “completely surprised” by technical problems experienced at high altitude and engaged in increasingly de-structured actions until suffering “the total loss of cognitive control of the situation.”

The report, issued by the BEA – France’s aviation accident investigative authority – paints a picture of profound confusion and poor task sharing between the two copilots as events leading to the crash rapidly unfolded.

The Airbus A330, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, was flying over the mid-Atlantic at 35,000 feet when the pitot tubes iced over, triggering the aircraft’s autopilot and autothrust to disengage and causing a loss of accurate airspeed information.

As the captain rested outside of the cockpit, one of the two remaining copilots took manual control of the aircraft and made nose-up inputs that caused the aircraft to exit the flight envelope less than one minute later and enter a stall that caused it to lose altitude at a rate greater than 10,000 fpm.

Despite multiple stall warnings, including one that lasted continuously for 54 seconds, neither of the copilots acknowledged them nor the appearance of stall buffet.

The fly-by-wire A330 incorporates envelope protection technology that prevents the airplane from entering a stall in most cases. During a complete loss of airspeed information, however, that system reverts to manual control, and the airplane behaves much like a conventional airliner.

The report maintains that the pilots’ actions indicate they perhaps believed they were in an overspeed situation as opposed to a stall. According to investigators, the training likely undergone by the A330 pilots associated buffet with a potential overspeed situation, despite the fact that on the aircraft buffet is actually only experienced when approaching a stall.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that the stall warning, by design, turned on and off as the aircraft fluctuated amid very low airspeed levels.

In the wake of the crash, authorities put forth a number of changes and recommendations, included among them the requirement for additional airspeed training, better relief crew instructions and a shorter time period between pitot tube maintenance checks. Air France has also replaced pitot tubes in its fleet made by Thales with a different version from Goodrich.

The BEA also recommended that authorities enact training dedicated to high altitude stall approach and recovery and suggested that authorities review the possibility of adding an angle of attack indicator in the cockpit.


http://www.flyingmag.com/techn...ilot-error-confusion
 
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