This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/05/air-france-crash-ruling-pilots

The article has changed 8 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Air France crash ruling: pilots 'lost control' Air France crash ruling: pilots 'lost control'
(about 2 hours later)
French air accident investigators say that pilot errors and faulty speed readings led to the crash of an Air France jet over the Atlantic in 2009. A combination of faulty sensors and mistakes by inadequately trained pilots caused an Air France jet to plunge into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people aboard, according to French investigators.
The BEA air accident investigation agency has released its final report on the crash, which killed all 228 people on board and was the airline's deadliest accident. The damning report into the 2009 crash involving flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris was carried out by the Bureau of Investigations and Analysis (BEA), which has called for pilots to have better instruction on flying manually at high altitudes and stricter plane certification rules.
Chief investigator Alain Bouillard said the two pilots at the controls never understood that the plane was in a stall and "were in a situation of near-total loss of control." Airbus, manufacturer of the A330 plane, said it was working to improve speed sensors, known as pilot tubes, and making other efforts to avoid future accidents.
The report lists a combination of "human and technical factors" behind the crash. Air France said the pilots had "acted in line with the information provided by the cockpit instruments and systems ... The reading of the various data did not enable them to apply the appropriate action."
The BEA said it has made many safety recommendations, including better training for pilots, based on the Flight 447 probe. But the BEA's findings have raised wider concerns about training for pilots flying hi-tech planes when confronted with a high-altitude crisis. The report could also have legal implications: a separate French judicial investigation is under way, and Air France and Airbus have been handed preliminary manslaughter charges.
Families of the victims were briefed on the findings before their public release. Barbara Crolow, a German who lost her son in the crash, said she was "disappointed" because she felt the report focuses too much on pilot error. The BEA said "human and technical factors" had caused the crash, which occurred during a stormy night flight on 1 June 2009.
"I think this is not enough ... There have been other reasons as well and they ignored them," she said. Some victims' families said investigators had not paid enough attention to equipment problems during the flight, saying the pilots had struggled to cope with a barrage of inaccurate information.
A preliminary report released last July described a confused Air France cockpit crew getting incoherent speed readings from faulty sensors, but it didn't draw a conclusion on what caused the crash. Ice crystals, which blocked the pilot tubes, were the "unleashing event" that set off the plane's troubles, the chief investigator, Alain Bouillard, said. The autopilot shut down and the co-pilots were forced to fly manually while a succession of alarms went off. The captain was on a rest break.
The BEA's findings last year raised questions about the reactions of the two co-pilots as the A330 went into an aerodynamic stall, and their ability to fly manually as the autopilot disengaged. Broader concerns were raised about training for pilots flying hi-tech planes when confronted with a high-altitude crisis. In one fatal decision, the report says, one of the co-pilots nosed the Airbus A330 upward during a stall, instead of downward, because of false data from sensors about the plane's position. Bouillard said that was an "important element" in the crash. He said the pilots had not understood the plane was experiencing a stall, as only an experienced crew with a clear understanding of the situation could have stabilised the aircraft in those conditions. "The crew was in a state of near-total loss of control," Bouillard said.
Robert Soulas, whose daughter and son-in-law were killed in the crash, said investigators had explained that the flight director system indicated the "erroneous information" that the plane was diving downward, "and therefore to compensate, the pilot had a tendency to pull on the throttle to make it rise up".
However, the plane was in a stall instead. A basic manoeuvre for stall recovery, which pilots are taught at the outset of their flight training, is to push the yoke forward and apply full throttle to lower the nose of the plane and build up speed. But because the pilot thought the plane was diving, he nosed up.
A French pilot, Gerard Arnoux, defended the pilots. He said: "A normal pilot on a normal airliner follows" the signals on the flight director system, which tells them to go left, right, up or down.
Central to this accident is the fact that when the automation failed, the pilots were presented with conflicting information which was obviously incorrect, said William Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia. But they were unable to look through this and understand what the aircraft was actually doing.
"Pilots a generation ago would have done that and understand what was going on, but (the AF447 pilots) were so conditioned to rely on the automation that they were unable to do this," he said. "This is a problem not just limited to Air France or Airbus, it's a problem we're seeing around the world because pilots are being conditioned to treat automated processed data as truth, and not compare it with the raw information that lies underneath."
Lais Seba, whose daughter Luciana Clarkson Seba, 31, was killed in the crash, said: "It's going to be for ever difficult for survivors to deal with the loss of their loved ones. We are surviving. We live one day at a time, with lots of pain."
The final report included a study of the plane's black-box flight recorders, uncovered in a costly and complex search of the ocean.