Regional Pilots Kill 228 People by Pulling up After Stall Warning

[General Lee]

Congress has to act on this now! 10,000 hrs to be a 121 FO. Anyone with less than 15,000 hrs is on the low time pilot observation program!

Hi, you're an idiot. First of all, Airbus has had this problem before, with the pitot tubes. A DL A330 had a failure flying from HKG to NRT, but it was day VFR and they landed safely, even though the indications were all screwed up. This Air France plane was flying at night, around thunderstorms in the ITCZ. If the pitot tubes had problems, and showed a high speed problem, then most pilots would decrease the thrust or pitch up, and unfortunately it did stall, even though they thought is might overspeed. You need to worry more about your own upgrade on the RJ and not about coming up with jokes that aren't funny.


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[bri5150]

Hi, you're an idiot. First of all, Airbus has had this problem before, with the pitot tubes. A DL A330 had a failure flying from HKG to NRT, but it was day VFR and they landed safely, even with the indications were all screwed up. This Air France plane was flying at night, around thunderstorms in the ITCZ. If the pitot tubes had problems, and showed almost a high speed problem, then most pilots would decrease the thrust or pitch up, and unfortunately it did stall, even though they thought is might overspeed. You're a genius, and probably never will reach a Major, let alone upgrade on your RJ.


Bye Bye---General Lee

General, switch your sarcasm filter back on. I am pretty sure he was joking.

 

[General Lee]

General, switch your sarcasm filter back on. I am pretty sure he was joking.

He's trying to compare the problems between the Colgan crash and the Air France crash, and equate them. Our Regional airlines in the US do need better training oversight, and higher minimums to hire, rather than hiring 200 hour wonders from Riddle. The Air France crew probably didn't know what they were dealing with, and if the pitot tubes were the problem, it could have distracted them and maybe they did fly into bad weather. But, those crashes were caused by different problems, and should not be equated by this guy. And, I didn't really think it was that funny.


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[dojetdriver]

Sigh.........the old glass houses thing.

Anybody wanna bet how long it takes for the other username to chime in?

 

[General Lee]

Sigh.........the old glass houses thing.

Anybody wanna bet how long it takes for the other username to chime in?

You're cool! The original poster has it all wrong, and needs to know it. Riddle guys right out of college don't need to be flying jets yet. You can't compare that to getting bad info from pitot tubes flying at night near thunderstorms. But you knew that! I think it's more likely you live in a glass apartment.


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[kf4amu]

You're cool! The original poster has it all wrong, and needs to know it. Riddle guys right out of college don't need to be flying jets yet. You can't compare that to getting bad info from pitot tubes flying at night near thunderstorms. But you knew that! I think it's more likely you live in a glass apartment.


Bye Bye---General Lee

Well this PF had 3000 hours...it can be reasonably assumed he was hired at very low time as well and had not developed the airmanship and intuition that highly experienced pilots get prior to flying automated aircraft in straight lines for 10-12 hours at a time.

That's the commonality, it doesnt matter regional vs major when it comes to lack of experience. Flight time does not equal experience, but you only get experience from flight time.

 

[dojetdriver]

You're cool! The original poster has it all wrong, and needs to know it. Riddle guys right out of college don't need to be flying jets yet. You can't compare that to getting bad info from pitot tubes flying at night near thunderstorms. But you knew that! I think it's more likely you live in a glass apartment.


Bye Bye---General Lee

Well, I guess I'd agree with the first part of that. Should 767 pilots be allowed to fly int ATL in VFR conditions and allowed to land?

I'll bet the General gets himself a set of these when he upgrades;

That's the commonality, it doesnt matter regional vs major when it comes to lack of experience. Flight time does not equal experience, but you only get experience from flight time.

Excellent point. But sadly it's been proven that at the end of the day, it can happen to ANYBODY. The highly experienced/high flight time pilots can kill people with the same speed and efficiency that the inexperienced/low time ones can. To prove the point, pick your favorites where there were people killed, LIT, Columbia etc. Or pick you favorite where they were just plain lucky DAL at ATL, CAL at EWR, UAL at SFO, etc.

 

[General Lee]

Well this PF had 3000 hours...it can be reasonably assumed he was hired at very low time as well and had not developed the airmanship and intuition that highly experienced pilots get prior to flying automated aircraft in straight lines for 10-12 hours at a time.

That's the commonality, it doesnt matter regional vs major when it comes to lack of experience. Flight time does not equal experience, but you only get experience from flight time.

Are you talking about the Air France pilot? The Captain was on break, it was a long flight, and the two FOs were flying. That is common practice at all INTL airlines. What was the experience of the other FO? The PF was probably the younger pilot, but there are usually more senior FOs in the other seat. The floating FO sits in the Capt's seat when he is on break, and the FO's during his break. There still was someone else there that had more experience most likely, that could hold the FO position on the trip. The Capt and original FO probably were senior, they were laying over in Rio de Janero.

I would think the hiring practices at AF are probably strict than most US Regionals. There are plenty of French Regional airlines too, so the hiring pool was probably experienced wanting a shot at the national airline (AF). 3000 hours for Air France could have involved Military time, or Regional time. He could have been hired at AF with 1000 hours, but had 2000 hours on the A320 before going to the A330.


And, if the pitot tubes were the problem, it would have been tough to recover in the dark, with thunderstorms around. As I stated, a DL A330 had the same problem and landed safely, but the difference was it was day and VFR. Your comments about lack of experience don't matter here, and even great pilots would have had a tough time with this problem if it popped up at night in the weather. It was a combination of problems, not just one, and it was unfortunate.



Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[General Lee]

Well, I guess I'd agree with the first part of that. Should 767 pilots be allowed to fly int ATL in VFR conditions and allowed to land?

I'll bet the General gets himself a set of these when he upgrades;

Excellent point. But sadly it's been proven that at the end of the day, it can happen to ANYBODY. The highly experienced/high flight time pilots can kill people with the same speed and efficiency that the inexperienced/low time ones can. To prove the point, pick your favorites where there were people killed, LIT, Columbia etc. Or pick you favorite where they were just plain lucky DAL at ATL, CAL at EWR, UAL at SFO, etc.

After all of the recent RJ crashes, I wouldn't be bragging. There is a reason Congress is looking into changing hiring practices and min hiring qualifications. As far as this particular crash, you're right, it could have happened to anyone, and some people can react better, but if you are flying at night and in thunderstorms while this problem occurred, it makes it a lot more difficult.


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[General Lee]

So the Captain was in the cockpit after it started

Two co-pilots facing faulty instrument readings and a stall fought to regain control of an Air France flight before the plane slammed into the Atlantic in a 3 1/2 minute fall, killing all 228 people aboard, accident investigators said Friday.

A preliminary report into the crash of Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris also revealed the captain was on a routine rest break when the trouble began on June 1, 2009 and he never retook the controls. The new information came from data gleaned from the Airbus 330's black boxes, which were recovered in early May.

But the report does not answer the key question: what caused the crash and who the third voice is?

Asked whether faulty sensors, other mechanical issues or the crew's actions were responsible for the disaster, air accident investigation agency director Jean-Paul Troadec said: "It's a combination of all of this."
Friday's report by the French air accident investigation agency BEA was a factual description of the chain of events beginning with takeoff in Rio de Janeiro until recordings fell dead nearly four hours later.

Some families of victims who said they were given information in a meeting with the agency said it was possible their loved ones went to their deaths unaware of what was happening because there was apparently no contact between the cockpit and cabin crew in the 3 1/2 minutes.


'They did not suffer'

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

The report revealed that the plane's captain, Marc Dubois, was out of the cockpit on a routine rest break when the problems began.
The data flight recorder and cockpit recorder were dredged from the ocean in April, along with some bodies, in the latest effort by investigators to explain the disaster. Both of the boxes were readable.

They show inconsistent speed readings, two co-pilots working methodically to right the plane manually and a resting captain returning to the cockpit amid what moments later became an irretrievably catastrophic situation. The data also showed that the plane went into an aerodynamic stall — a loss of lift brought on by too little speed. Investigators only provided partial quotes from the voice recorder in Friday's report.


The report confirmed that two sets of instruments on the plane were giving conflicting speed readings. On the voice recorder, one co-pilot is heard to say "so we've lost the speeds" about four minutes before the crash.

Experts have suggested external monitoring instruments iced over. Air France has now replaced the monitors, called Pitot tubes, on all its Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft. The plane was passing through ominous weather in mid-Atlantic, about three and a half hours after taking off, when the problems began.

Co-pilots in control

More than eight minutes before the crash the co-pilot at the controls, one of three members of the flight crew, 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 negotiate a normal path — passing through a heavy layer of clouds. Four minutes later, the plane's autopilot and auto-thrust shut off, the stall alarm sounded twice and the co-pilot at the controls, 32-year-old Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 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. Dubois returned to the cockpit about a minute and a half after the problems started but 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."
The interim report by accident investigation agency BEA did not analyze the data or cockpit conversations or assign blame. A full report on the crash is not due until next year.

More questions than answers

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. 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."

The flight recorders were found along with bodies in early May in the latest in a series of meticulous searches using small submarines and robots to comb the ocean depths.



Bye Bye---General Lee