Air France 447 Transcript.

Good article.

If you speak French, there's a long report here (PDF), including the technical details of recovery. From page 74 it discusses what was going on in the cabin during the critical period, giving a little extra information.

Strikes me as incredibly odd that the Captain would cede control to the least experienced officer knowing that the aircraft was routed into a serious weather system.

Then again I have no idea how it works in practice; that scenario might play out just the same everyday without the fatal consequences.

Jesus. That makes for some chilling reading.

RIP to all who met their maker, especially to the Irish girls on board.

Happyman42 wrote: »

A 'fully trained professional' was pulling back on the stick throughout the situation, two other 'fully trained professionals' where unaware of this fact until it was too late....which for me indicates that they weren't 'fully' trained.

Please don't do the usual spinning which 'professionals' (doctors, lawyers etc) indulge in. I.E.: Shy away from laying the blame/responsibility where it belongs. Your death, however tragic and unfortunate doesn't absolve you of culpability. Lessons need to be learned here.

While I agree with what you're saying, that just because the situation was tragic and fatal, there still needs to be blame apportioned if indeed that it is possible to lay blame somewhere.
However, I kind of disagree that it's the captain's fault. However, I'd like to hear from any captain of an Airbus that if they arrived back into the cockpit when two fully trained pilots are flying, would the first instinct be to ask "OK, you're not pulling back on the stick, are you?"
It was really panic on behalf of the most junior crew member that caused the whole thing, and maybe operating procedure that caused the failure to notice what he was doing.
Maybe there should be a warning light when both control sticks are not being operated in the same direction. Surely any situation that results in both pilots doing opposite things should trigger a warning?

There is a priority button on the airbus sidestick,to allow either pilot full control,with an arrow dictating which side has priority on the glareshield,as for the captain not jumping back in the seat,airbus seats are electric motors,slow movement,there is manual override handle,however I dont think your going to be looking at that when your plane is dropping out of the sky at 10,000ft min,in the middle of a storm,at night and in the early hours of the morning,this flight did not crash just to the one f/o pulling back on the sidestick,its the swiss cheese model,all the holes sadly lined up,if the capt hadnt of left,if it hadnt off been nighttime,if the pitot heaters had of been good enough,all if's and buts now sadly!I cant even begin to imagine the horror going on in that FLT Deck at the time,look out your window,u cant see a thing,constant chimes going off with endless faults appearing on the ECAM,thoughts with the families of those Irish girls,RIP

homerjay2005 wrote: »

can anybody sum up the cause of the accident in a few sentances or is it not that simple?

This paragraph sums it up pretty well;

AF447 passed into clouds associated with a large system of thunderstorms, its speed sensors became iced over, and the autopilot disengaged. In the ensuing confusion, the pilots lost control of the airplane because they reacted incorrectly to the loss of instrumentation and then seemed unable to comprehend the nature of the problems they had caused. Neither weather nor malfunction doomed AF447, nor a complex chain of error, but a simple but persistent mistake on the part of one of the pilots.

So lets play devils advocate here.

Say the pilot flying had pushed the nose down 5-10 degrees and gone against his instincts, would the aircraft have gained enough speed to come out of the stall and fly again given the already massive rate of descent?

I say instinct because I feel given the aural and visual stall and ECAM warnings, the lack of "belly feeling" of a massive rate of descent, no visual cues and a distrust in the instrumentation, he was at the time flying on instinct alone becuase nothing else around him (or them) made any sense. They had never seen or felt this before.

I read the article. I think it's quite poor. Lots of dramatic language in something that is purported to be a factual representation of what is a tragedy.

Mr. Wise [sic] is obviously not aware of the training programme implemented by all manufacturers (not just Airbus) following this accident in relation to stalls at typical cruise altitudes. A fundamental rethink of the actions required meant that we have all been trained to react differently.

He is obviously not also aware that in the circumstances that the crew of AF447 found themselves in, the application of TOGA thrust at such high altitude meant that there could have been insufficient elevator authority to counteract the pitch-up effect caused by the engines. They probably could not have physically pushed the nose over. So the question is why didn't the crew reduce the thrust? The simple answer is the pilots were reacting exactly as they were trained. Given the high stress situation, the reliance on basic motor skills and memory items comes to the fore and the capacity for further interpretation is compromised. Therefore you react as trained.

It is quite possible that the pilots at the controls could not "understand" what was going on as they had just received a deluge of warnings, reacted as trained and the result did not meet their expectations, in a situation where it is likely the stress level prevented further analysis.

Does this mean "pilot error"? Given that the pitch couple/lack of elevator authority potential exists in many aircraft, is it a problem with the A330/Airbus design....?

Had the crew deviated off course earlier would this have happened? Was the ice accretion on the probes beyond what the probe manufacturer had thought of in design/certification? Was the storm system they encountered exceptional? Had they reduced thrust and applied nose down elevator would they have recovered the situation?

The answer is we don't actually know. What we have to say is the pilots endeavoured to recover the aircraft and those of us who are still around have to ensure that the safeguards/training/design/certification exist to minimise the risk of the same happening again.