Report: Pilots in 2009 Air France flight mishandled system alarms

[News_Editor]

Report: Pilots in 2009 Air France flight mishandled system alarms

2011-05-24 07:14:49 GMT+7 (ICT)

PARIS (BNO NEWS) -- Pilots operating the 2009 Air France flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean during a scheduled flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing 228 people, were distracted by faulty airspeed alarms and mishandled other important systems in the aircraft, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

According to the report, which cited people familiar with preliminary findings from the plane's recorders, turbulence and unexpected heavy icing at 35,000 feet could have made airspeed-indicators and other external sensors unreliable, confusing pilots through their automated flight-control systems alarms.

The three pilots trouble-shooting and dealing with the airspeed sensors experienced difficulty dealing with warning messages displayed by the aircraft's systems, as well as staying alert to important displays showing engine power and aircraft trajectory.

Eventually, the pilots failed to maintain the aircraft's nose level by keeping adequate thrust levels as indicated by the plane's systems, and the jet slowed to dangerous levels after the autopilot disconnected, the report said.

According to France's Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA), Air France pilots were not trained to deal with such emergencies, as the BEA team investigating the case are expected to reveal detailed information regarding the information contained in the aircraft's black boxes.

On May 3, French investigators were able to recover the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) three days after they had located and recovered the aircraft's memory unit of the flight data recorder, or black box.

On June 1, 2009, an Airbus A330-200 jetliner operated by Air France as Flight 447 and on route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris, France crashed near waypoint TASIL in the Atlantic Ocean around three and a half hours after taking off. Five days after the crash, search and rescue teams recovered two bodies and floating debris from the aircraft. Only 51 bodies were recovered after the search was called off on June 27, 2009.

In early April, the aircraft's wreckage was found during the fourth sea search, which was funded by Air France and Airbus. The recovery gave investigative teams renewed hope to understand the causes of the accident.

The crash marked Air France's deadliest, and BEA chief Paul-Louis Arslanian called the incident the worst accident in French aviation history.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-05-24

[JurgenG]

Some people complain sometime about the high salaries of pilots. But when you're stuck in a small metal box at 35,000 ft, you really want the bests in charge.

[Obb]

What is this post doing in a THAILAND bulletin board?

Why waste everyone's time with off-topic posts ...

[fishhooks]

Dear Mr. Poster above this.

When you've been around here a bit longer than your current count, you may understand that anything travel related is often posted for the interest of all.

Seems you have taken the thread title a tad too strictly............Travel to and from this LOS in general and the means of such is also of interest and those posting are doing so in good faith.

Get a few more credentials before too easily and rather foolishly taking a cheap shot at others!

[Crossy]

pprune.org (Professional Pilots Rumour Network) have a good discussion going.

Well worth a look for anyone interested in what goes on (and goes wrong) in that little room closest to the crash.

[rocketmanbkk]

I saw a program on this last year in the UK.

From what I remember the warnings were coming thick and fast and maybe the pilots couldn't keep up.

What was established is that if the airspeed indicators fail there is a simple procedure that should be followed to maintain airspeed and flight control that was not carried out. I cannot for the life of me think what the procedure was but it was simple, something like flying at at certain altitude with the nose pitched at at certain degree or something, can't remember but it was simple and pliots gave a demonstartion of what should have been done following the received fault, which was not done, probably as undedr immense pressure.

I am sure someone may know what the procedure is when all pitot tubes fail.

It was quite interesting.