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Air France Pilots Flew Blind Before Plunging Into Ocean
May 28, 2011

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Paris. Air France pilots lost vital speed data as their Airbus A330 stalled and began a fatal three-minute plunge into the Atlantic in June 2009 with 228 people aboard, the French aviation safety agency said on Friday.

“We have no valid indications,” one of the pilots of flight AF447 from Rio to Paris said, according to information from the flight data recorders released by the French Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis (BEA).

One of the instruments showed “a sharp fall” in airspeed as the aircraft entered a zone of turbulence, the stall warning sounded and the autopilot disengaged. As the two co-pilots struggled to understand what had happened, the captain, who had left the cockpit to take a rest, returned but did not retake control of the plane.

“There was an inconsistency between the speeds displayed on the left side and the integrated standby instrument system,” the BEA said in a statement following analysis of the black box flight data recorders. “This lasted for less than one minute.”

An interim inquiry, conducted prior to the raising of the data recorders from the ocean floor earlier this month, had pointed to an icing problem with the probes measuring air speed — known as Pitots — but there was no definitive conclusion as to the cause of the crash.

Since the accident, Air France has replaced the Pitots on its Airbus fleet with a newer model.

Both companies are being probed for alleged manslaughter in connection with the crash.

According to the chronology provided by the BEA, the two co-pilots flying the plane decided at two hours and eight minutes into the flight to turn slightly to the left to avoid a zone of turbulence.

Two minutes later the autopilot disengaged, the instruments began showing “a sharp fall” in airspeed and the engine stall warning began to sound.

Low airspeed data can cause the airplane’s computer system to reject as invalid other readings, according to the BAE. “So, we’ve lost the speeds,” it quoted the second of the two co-pilot as saying.

After the captain returned, “all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped,” said the BAE report.

The BAE said “the descent lasted three minutes 30 [seconds], during which the airplane remained stalled.”

The last data on the recorder showed that the plane’s nose was up at a sharp angle as it plunged at 3,300 meters per minute.

 

Agence France-Presse