Black Boxes

[Guest fountainhall]

With a second major air crash into the sea in a matter of weeks, there has been much comment about the recovery of black boxes and cockpit voice recorders. It would seem that those from the Air France disaster are now irrecoverable, given that the life of the transponders has virtually expired. Fortunately, those from the Yemeni plane seem to have been located.

 

Yet, in this day and age when aircraft are made of the latest materials and represent some of latest advances in technology, why is it that the black boxes seem to be instruments from the age of the dinosaurs? I recall a discussion with a senior pilot from Cathay Pacific some years ago when I learned that the on-board computers transmit real-time information about everything that is happening in the engines to computers at the airline's Hong Kong headquarters which is constantly monitored by engineers. So why is it that there can not be constant real-time communication between the cockpit and an airline's homebase?

 

Why can't information be relayed via satellite? If that's not possible (for whatever reason), why is it that the black boxes only record (on very slow moving audio tape, for goodness sake!) the last 30 minutes prior to a crash and not an entire flight duration? Why is it that there is no automatic flotation device to aid search crews following a crash over water? Why do transponders have a shelf life of only 30 days?

 

Whilst I'm at it, why is it that regulators, insurers, airlines, pilots and passengers have not been screaming for years for vastly improved black box equipment?

 

"I just don't get it!"

 

[Rogie]

You raise some good points.

 

I'm sure most of us would agree it's time to make a few (gross understatement) improvements.

 

I am assuming a black box, when recovered, becomes something of a celebrity and the information it contains enters the public realm. If an airline has something to hide they might wish for it not to be found. On the other hand if the airline are blameless and in truth the airliner were hit by freak atmospheric conditions, then they would be very unhappy not to have this confirmed if the black box went missing.

 

When fish and birds can be tagged to follow their movements it does seem odd something as important as a black box can simply vanish, or its contents decay so rapidly.

 

There is probably an element of pride involved too. All airlines swear they're as safe as houses, when we well know many aren't. It seems (Ok, easy with hindsight to say that) the Yemeni plane was an accident waiting to happen. Now is not the time (is it ever?) with the industry in trouble, but some kind of international team of inspectors with powers to examine aircraft, maintenance logs, interview pilots and maintenance crews, etc might help to stamp out the worst culprits before the plane can take to the skies.

[Guest fountainhall]

some kind of international team of inspectors with powers to examine aircraft, maintenance logs, interview pilots and maintenance crews, etc might help to stamp out the worst culprits before the plane can take to the skies

 

Excellent point. I understand each airline is responsible for its own maintenance and ensuring its own planes are airworthy. Plus national regulators have the power to inspect an airline's fleet if they have concerns about safety. But an international body of inspectors with authority to undertake inspections without warning might uncover some things some airlines and some nations would rather stay under the carpet.

 

if . . . in truth the airliner were hit by freak atmospheric conditions

 

It's again my understanding that the airframes of all modern aircraft are so strong that freak weather conditions alone are unlikely bring a plane down over the ocean as in the Air France case. If the plane is close to the ground, that's a different matter, with windshear and other sorts of other issues. At cruising altitude, though, there would have to be one or several other major factors in addition to weather. That's one reason why failure to find the Air France plane's black boxes could have worrying long-term consequences.

[Gaybutton]

I agree that black box technology can stand a great deal of improvement. For example, if a black box can transmit a radio homing signal, then why can't they be made with computer chips that can record and transmit the information the same way instead of actually having to find the box itself? In this day and age, using recording tape is obsolete, but that's what they use. Even when they find the black boxes, they have to pray that the tape wasn't damaged and was rendered unusable.

 

I don't think the idea of real time transmissions is really so great because that would mean receivers would have to pick up the transmissions from every flight in the air at all times. Considering that there are at least 5000 flights in the air worldwide at any given time of day, that would be a bit much. However, that could work to some degree if the transmissions start going out automatically when alarms are tripped and also if the pilots have a chance to press a button to start sending. Of course, if the aircraft loses its electricity, that wouldn't work so well.

 

The point is that technology certainly exists today that could dramatically improve the way the black box system works.

[Guest fountainhall]

Despite the absence of the black boxes, investigators have determined that the Air France plane was being flown by the pilots at the time of the crash, not the autopilot. Further, it did not break up in mid-air. This from CNN today.

 

 

"The plane went straight down ... towards the surface of the water, very very fast," air accident investigator Alain Bouillard said.

 

Based on visual study of the physical remains of the Airbus A330 that have been recovered, "we were able to see that the plane hit the surface of the water flat. Therefore everything was pushed upwards -- everthing was pushed from the bottom to the top" of the plane, he said.

 

The 228 people killed in the crash "had no time to prepare," he said.

 

Bouillard said it was still not clear what caused the crash, the deadliest in Air France's 75-year history.

 

"Today we are very far from establishing the causes of the accident," he said.

 

 

I don't quite understand the first sentence. We know from an earlier A330 incident in which a Canadian A330 to Europe ran out of fuel that the pilots managed a long controlled powerless glide before landing safely at the Azores. With the extreme weather conditions at the time of the Air France crash, clearly gliding was out of the question. But if the plane went straight down "very, very fast", how I wonder did it hit the water belly first. I'd have assumed it went into an uncontrolled dive and hit nose first. Curious!

[Guest laurence]

I don't think the idea of real time transmissions is really so great because that would mean receivers would have to pick up the transmissions from every flight in the air at all times. Considering that there are at least 5000 flights in the air worldwide at any given time of day, that would be a bit much.

 

Considering millions of people are chatting away on cell phones every minute of the day it does seem that real time transmissions are feasible. I understand the pilots union do not want recordings made of their "chatter" between themselves on an airplane which is why the voice recordings are limited to the last 30 minutes (?).

[Gaybutton]

Considering millions of people are chatting away on cell phones every minute of the day it does seem that real time transmissions are feasible.

I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying it's not practical to do it whether it can be done or not. Certainly, as with cell phones, the capability exists, but unlike cell phones, it would all have to be recorded and identifiable.

[Guest fountainhall]

If you leave aside the actual cockpit conversations, I still don't see why it is not possible to have a steady stream of all technical data from every single flight flowing in to the airline's head office computers - all the stuff that is presently captured by one of the black boxes. Since this is already done with all information from each plane's engines, I can't imagine it requires much investment to expand the hardware and provide a couple of engineers monitoring an entire fleet at all times. It would certainly be far less costly than the expense of trying to locate black boxes at thousands of meters below sea level.

[Rogie]

I'm sure most of us are aware the black box from Air France flight AF447 has been located. In view of the very interesting discussion in the Beer Bar nearly 2 years ago I thought it worth linking it up.

 

Air France flight AF447 crashed into the Atlantic at 10,000 feet a minute, black box finds

Flight data has been released from the recently recovered black box of Air France flight AF447, which plunged into the Atlantic two years ago, killing all 228 on board.

 

The fresh data came after the black boxes were recovered from 12,800 feet beneath the waves and returned to Paris this month two years after the jet disappeared into the night on June 1, 2009.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8541703/3.5-minutes-of-terror-Air-France-crash-dropped-at-10000-feet-a-minute.html

[Guest fountainhall]

There is an excellently argued article by a Boeing 747-400 pilot on the aviation website nycaviation.com which I urge everyone interested in this crash to read.

 

http://nycaviation.com/2011/05/initial-air-france-flight-447-black-box-info-raises-more-questions-than-answers-pilot/

 

It is very long, and so I will only make selective quotes from it. After first giving a general summary, the author then stresses that his findings are based on only the small amount of incomplete data already released and on his own personal judgment as a pilot.

 

As the accident regarding AF447 revolves around airspeed fluctuation, I will focus on the equipment responsible for airspeed readouts, otherwise known as the pitot tube.

On the airplane I fly (the Boeing 747-400) the pitot tubes are heated automatically once an engine is running. This is to prevent ice buildup so as to allow a smooth flow air directly into the tube. The airplane

[KhorTose]

If this is the final report or the final report says what this pilot said, then Airbus is in a a slue of lawsuits.

[Guest fountainhall]

The 747 pilot based his comments merely on the first interim report. Several more will come eventually. But I don't read it the same way as KhorTose. As far as the equipment is concerned, icing of the pitot tubes can and does happen in other jets. It's not exclusive to the A330 or Airbus in particular. I recall one 757 crash over the Caribbean quite a few years ago which I believe was also caused by faulty speed indicators, although in that case, icing was not the issue. The clogging was due to other reasons. In this case, as the author states earlier in his comments -

 

One common element of upper level atmospheric conditions in these types of thunderstorms are super-cooled water droplets. These are droplets of water that are in liquid form until the instant they come in contact with anything at which point they immediately freeze. The build up of ice due to super-cooled water droplets happens almost in an instant when flying through them. The best course of action is to exit this area of moisture as it is generally quite localized.

And it seems that the Air France pilots did indeed change course prior to the specific problems outlined above taking place.

 

What appears much more damaging to me are the reactions of the crew. A long-haul Rio/Paris flight would have had 4 pilots on board. This article and several others I have read suggest that the pilot flying the plane in the absence of the on-duty captain was probably disoriented at first. But thereafter, however many pilots were actually in the cockpit, they seemed to misread the signals they were getting and misinterpreting the stall warnings. Here is another response to the article -

 

I think if you put this flight crew in a simulator then they would have successfully dealt with the situation. In reality though, they were dealing with severe turbulence, multiple alarms, instrument failure and the captain was (albeit initially) absent. Essentially from when the autopilot disconnected to the point they were in a pretty much unrecoverable stall was little more than a minute. Very little time and very little margin for error. It would have been an absolute nightmarish situation and they would have been panicked despite their professionalism and training. By the time they had some idea they were in a stall it would have been too late. I am perplexed by the reports claiming the pilots constantly had the nose up and didn't make any effort to push it down, that does indicate pilot error.

I think pilot error is far more likely than equipment failure. In which case, whilst Airbus may not be totally in the clear, Air France is in for most of the lawsuits.

[Guest]

Rolls Royce monitor the live performance of their engines anywhere in the world from a control centre in the UK.

 

Doing the same for the black box data seems like a sensible upgrade. Perhaps Boeing & Airbus might like to raise their game?

[Bob]

I think pilot error is far more likely than equipment failure. In which case, whilst Airbus may not be totally in the clear, Air France is in for most of the lawsuits.

 

It'll probably be a year or more before the people who allegedly will figure out what happened will issue their report; however, if the air speed indicators were faulty, equipment failure certainly was part of the problem.

[Guest fountainhall]

if the air speed indicators were faulty, equipment failure certainly was part of the problem.

Agreed. But I think that may be extremely hard to prove. That they iced up for a few seconds seems certain. But that would not make it a unique occurrence. Almost any airline passing through that kind of storm system is likely to suffer a similar result. I understand this is one of the procedures practised in flight simulators and covered in the A330 flight manuals. Similarly, you cannot blame the pitot sensors for failing to work properly during a stall of this nature when the air flow into them is severely interrupted due to the angle of flight.

 

The key question is what the crew did. We'll have to wait to find out. Mind you, if Air France is in charge of the investigation, as in the case of the fatal Concorde crash, a number of the facts may never find their way into the final report.

[Guest]

Air France do seem to suffer more crashes than many other Western Airlines.

 

Therefore I prefer not to use them, in the same way that I would avoid some third world airlines with a poor reputation.

[Guest fountainhall]

Re the crash of the Air France Airbus A330 over the Atlantic 2 years ago, French investigators have given a rather horrifying preliminary finding that the pilots lacked adequate training.

 

France's BEA authority said pilots had failed to discuss repeated stall warnings and did not have the training to deal with the hazard . . .

 

Investigators said an account of the final minutes of the flight, captured on flight recorders, concluded that the crew had failed to "formally identify the loss of altitude" despite an alarm ringing for nearly a minute.

 

The pilot then responded by pointing the nose upwards, instead of downwards . . .

 

The authority issued 10 new safety recommendations, including mandatory training for all pilots in France to ensure they could handle a high-altitude stall.

WIth lawsuits in the offing, naturally Air France rejected the BEA's findings. It has issued a statement saying -

 

"nothing at this stage can allow the crew's technical competence to be blamed" for the crash.

 

"The crew on duty showed professionalism and stayed committed until the end to operating the flight. Air France salutes their courage and determination in these extreme conditions," it said.

 

"The altitude-loss alarm was activated and deactivated several times, contradicting the real status of the aircraft, which contributed strongly to the crew's difficulty in analysing the situation," Air France said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14342877

 

But that's enough to make me heed z909's concerns about flying with Air France. Pilot error also played its part in the Concorde crash in 2000, as I believe it did in others - like the A340 crashing off the runway at Toronto in 2005.

[Bob]

I'm still at a loss to understand why, when they've known it for damn near 20 years, the pilot tubes aren't heated. We're in teh 21st century now and it would seem somebody could figure out how to heat the tubes for a few thousand dollars (or a cost that is far less than the loss of an airplane not to mention a few hundred lives).

 

As Fountainhill noted, the preliminary report out today wasn't very nice to the pilots. Air France is going to pay bigtime for this one, I'd suspect.

[Guest fountainhall]

I'm still at a loss to understand why, when they've known it for damn near 20 years, the pilot tubes aren't heated. We're in teh 21st century now and it would seem somebody could figure out how to heat the tubes for a few thousand dollars (or a cost that is far less than the loss of an airplane not to mention a few hundred lives)

Seems like Air France were warned about the pilot tubes' liability to icing and did not change them -

 

their replacement was recommended by Airbus months before the crash of the Air France airplane.

http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=228454

 

But even more scary, it seems the pilot tubes attract wasps which then nest in them. This caused at least one fatal crash - a Dominican Airlines 757 in 1996 - and came close to another -

 

Investigators concluded that wasps might have nested in the pitot tubes as the plane . . . sat grounded for several days.

 

Wasp nesting in pitot tubes was again the culprit in a March 2006 incident, where the crew of a Qantas Airways Ltd. Airbus A330 slammed on the brakes during takeoff.

http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.cfm?Section=Technology_Update1&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=77990

 

The pilot tube is a very small and probably inexpensive device. As Bob said, in this day and age you'd think manufacturers would come up with something far more reliable.

[Guest buckbee]

pilots lacked adequate training

 

Im an amateur but have an interest in aviation and know that standard procedures for loss of correct air speed readings etc on an Airbus is 80% power settings and 15% up angle to avoid a stall. Shouldn't the copilots in charge have know this, or didn't they recognize the irregular readings?

[Guest fountainhall]

My understanding of what is likely to have happened is exclusively from the article by a 747 pilot I quoted above (post #10) and the summaries from the BEA findings.

 

If you read the full article above (and not just my summary), his theory is that in the extreme weather conditions, the buildup of ice on the pilot tubes resulting from the super-cooled water droplets in the air was so fast that the heaters could not “keep up”. Consequently, the autopilot incorrectly detected warnings of a very rapid loss of airspeed and “kicked off”.

 

As he says, “In most modern jets, some times severe turbulence will exceed the capabilities of the autopilot resulting in it disconnecting.” He adds that the airspeed indicator had dropped from 275 knots to a frightening 60 knots very quickly – an unheard of rate.

 

Within moments, the cockpit was so awash with distractions with “warning horns and ECAM indications going off, the turbulence, the airspeed excursion, the heading diversion, the potential lightning (my imagination at work), that it is entirely possible that there was an inadvertent nose-up attitude established in the heat of the moment.” Over the ensuing 30 seconds or so, the angle of attack kept increasing. Presumably speed was also being increased to compensate for that massively inaccurate reading from the speed sensors.

 

In most aircraft, the writer does not agree that the way to handle a stall is reduced speed and nose up – but he agrees with you that the an Airbus is “no typical airplane.” To requote from the article -

 

. . . in any typical airplane, in a stall you release back pressure and lower the nose, break the stall and recover. An Airbus is no typical airplane, though. There are times when you can haul all the way back on the sidestick and not only not enter a stall but fly at an optimum rate of descent. Anyone here heard of Chesley Sullenberger? He did exactly that on January 15, 2009 when he greased an A320 into the Hudson River.

From the BEA findings, it seems clear that Air France pilots were not fully trained to handle one or more aspects of that particular type of emergency. So we can only guess that whilst they were disorientated, they thought they were flying the plane correctly under those circumstances.

 

But one matter I fail to understand. The aircraft was falling to the ocean in a forward facing attitude at around 2 miles per minute. It was not diving head first. In such an attitude, the speed of the air would once again not be accurately reflected in the speed readings. Yet the stall warnings were going off and the altitude indicators must have made the rate of descent horribly obvious. There was a famous incident of a China Airlines 747 nearing the US West Coast when it dived more than 2 miles before the pilots just managed to bring it under control and land it safely. Surely a pilot can 'feel' the effects of a stall resulting in a free fall in a horizontal attitude?

 

As with all accidents, let’s hope that lessons are quickly learned and no more people have to lose their lives in similar situations in future.

[Guest buckbee]

ok thanks for the explanation fountainhall, I should have read your previous posts. Although pitot tubes have caused other accidents lets hope that the aviation industry learns from this tragedy to avoid future accidents, as you just mentioned

[Guest fountainhall]

. . . in this day and age when aircraft are made of the latest materials and represent some of latest advances in technology, why is it that the black boxes seem to be instruments from the age of the dinosaurs? . . . Whilst I'm at it, why is it that regulators, insurers, airlines, pilots and passengers have not been screaming for years for vastly improved black box equipment?

Re-reading the 747 pilot's article before replying to buckbee's comment, I just realised that the article generated a very long list of responses. One touches on the very point raised at the start of this thread: why is it that black boxes and cockpit voice recorders use vastly out of date technology?

 

I'll quote from one correspondent using the name sylevine who said this a month ago -

 

For the last ten years there hasn’t been a technical reason why the digital flight recorder data isn't securely sent in real-time to the ground for storage . . . During this ten year interval both the US and Europe have had the capability of implementing remote aircraft flight recording if only they had the will to do so. Using a remote aircraft flight recorder, within a couple of seconds, you have the planes position/location, its attitude, velocity, etc. safely stored on the ground and used for flight safety, aviation security and cost reduction. The data used in real-time could have also prevented 9/11.

Another correspondent, an airline engineer named gaelliott, wrote 2 months ago his view that one of the many causes of the Air France accident is a fuselage design fault found on the vertical fins on all Airbus widebody jets. He believes the aircraft did not impact the water in one piece - it had broken up during descent. This quote is somewhat technical, but well worth a read.

 

The primary cause of this disaster was iced up pitot tubes, just one more of many cases reported in recent years. However, Airbus looked the other way and did not require replacement of the tubes until after this accident. The reason Airbus is lying about the fuselage is because they don't want to pay over $1 billion to replace all the vertical fins on all their flying widebodies worldwide. It would cost over $1 million per plane to install a beefed up fin with metallic, instead of plastic, attachment fittings.The ACARS reports (a digital datalink system used for the transmission of messages between aircraft and ground stations, using telex formats) showed that all the primary and secondary flight control systems had faulted and that the Rudder Trim Limiter (RTL) had quit. Without an RTL, it would have taken only about 20 lbs. of rudder pedal force to break the fin off at high airspeeds. Without a fin, this plane would tend to turn into a giant frisbee, spinning out of control. The would have broken up the fuselage because it is not designed to fly sideways. This would explain why the forward fuselage and 51 bodies were not found in the same general area as the rear fuselage that was just found. It would explain also the sudden depressurization of the fuselage which was the last failure indicated by the ACARS report while electrical power was still available.

[Guest fountainhall]

Two months ago, accident investigators released the voice recordings from the cockpit of the doomed Air France flight which crashed over the Atlantic in June 2009. But - they only released part of the recordings. Investigators said they did not release the rest as they did not want to upset families of the pilots lost in the worst crash in Air France history.

 

Now Jean-Pierre Otelli, a veteran French flying instructor with contacts in the industry, has written a book in which he "lays the whole scandal bare." Rio-Paris Crash: A Collection of Pilot Errors makes it clear that there was massive confusion in the cockpit. It also suggests that the two pilots flying the plane at the time of the emergency - both co-pilots whilst the pilot, Captain Marc Dubois, was having a rest - had insufficient training in dealing with the problems the plane was encountering at that high altitude.

 

Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32, was actually flying the plane in the right-hand seat, whilst 37-year-old David Robert was seated on the left. According to the Official Report, Dubois had left the cockpit without giving the two co-pilots definite instructions as to how to work together - a violation of Air France regulations. Another violation was the lack of instructions about the circumstances under which he should be called back to the cockpit. Accordingly, after the pitot tubes iced up and the automatic pilot disengaged, when neither of those in the cockpit realised what was happening, Captain Dubois was not recalled.

 

Eventually, with stall warnings going off, his presence was requested.

 

"So is he coming?", Robert, is heard to mutter, swearing in frustration as Dubois takes a full minute to get back to the cockpit.

 

"Hey what are you ...", Dubois is heard to say when he gets back, to which Robert replies: "What's happening? I don't know, I don't know what's happening."

 

The plane was suffering from a loss of lift – or a 'stall' – and its airspeed sensors had malfunctioned.

 

But instead of lowering the plane's nose to deal with the stall, as they should have done according to normal procedures, they raised it.

 

"I've got a problem I don't have vertical speed. I don't have any indication," says Bonin, before his captain says: "I don't know, but right now we're descending."

 

Air France argues that the pilots were confused by numerous confusing signals from the Airbus, while the plane manufacturer insists that it was responding properly.

 

As the plane approaches the sea, the crew began conversing in short, panicked questions. "What do you think? What do you think? What should we do?" said Robert, while the Airbus rocked from side-to-side.

 

"I don't have control of the plane, I don't have control of the plane at all," Bonin replied, as a stall alarm sounded for the sixth time in two minutes.

 

According to an official report released earlier this year, the last words were from Captain Dubois, who said: "Ten degrees pitch".

 

But in fact, the final exchange Robert says: "Damn-it! We're going to crash. It can't be true!"

 

Bonin's last words are: "But what's happening?"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8825264/Final-words-of-Air-France-passenger-jet-emerge-whats-happening.html

 

The more detailed Accident Investigator's report is highly technical and quite complicated to read. But it makes it clear that the Captain was only out of the cockpit for less than 12 minutes. The plane crashed about 2'30" following the Captain's return.

 

The following are short excerpts - not all taken in sequence -

 

At 2 h 11 min 06, after several attempts to call, the PNF (pilot not flying) was anxious again about the absence of the Captain. This anxiety probably increased the stress for the PNF who was faced with a situation that he didn’t understand.

 

A little after 2 h 11 min 30, the PF (pilot flying) said twice that he had lost control of the airplane.

 

At around 2 h 11 min 42, the Captain came back into the cockpit, a very short time before the stall warning stopped . . . Neither of the two copilots gave him a precise summary of the problems encountered nor of the actions undertaken, except that they had lost control of the airplane and that they had tried everything . . . In the absence of relevant information from the copilots, reading the information available on the screens (pitch attitude, roll, thrust, vertical speed, altitude, etc...) was not sufficient in itself for the Captain to become rapidly aware of the airplane’s situation. He did not then ask questions that could have helped him to understand the sequence of events.

AT 2:12:26, there is a bizarre sequence -

 

Pilot Not Flying: "The speed? You’re climbing"

Stall Warning : “Stall, stall”

Pilot Not Flying: "You’re going down down down"

Pilot Flying: "Am I going down now?"

Pilot Not Flying: "Go down"

Captain: "No you climb there"

Pilot Flying: "I'm climbing okay so we're going down"

. . . and at 2:13:39

 

Pilot Not Flying: "Climb climb climb climb"

Pilot Flying: "But I've been at maxi nose-up for a while"

Captain: "No no no don't climb"

Pilot Not Flying: "So go down. So give me the controls the controls to me."

Pilot Flying: "Go ahead you have the controls . . . "

Captain: "Watch out you're pitching up there"

Pilot Not Flying: "I'm pitching up?"

Pilot Flying: "Well we need to we are at four thousand feet."

Captain: "Go on pull"

Pilot Flying: "Let's go pull up pull up pull up."

Captain: "(Ten) degrees pitch up."

And there Official Report of the voice recordings ends.

 

http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601e3.en/pdf/f-cp090601e3.en.pdf

[Guest fountainhall]

Well, now we know the findings of the Investigators' Report - a combination of technical issues with the aircraft (the freezing up of the pitot tubes leading to loss of vital information) and pilot error (virtual chaos in the cockpit). The earlier posts in this thread have been through the sequence of events.

 

Yet, investigators found evidence of three dozen instances of pitot tubes freezing up without loss of pilot control. The tragedy for the Air France passengers and crew is summed up in these brief paragraphs from the Toronto Globe and Mail -

 

When everything else is stripped away, three highly paid, supposedly highly trained pilots, flying a modern, well-maintained aircraft for a major Western carrier on a routine transatlantic night flight completely overreacted to a minor instrument failure, and then for a nightmarishly long three minutes thirty seconds failed to cope with the upset they had created.

 

“The crew never grasped that they had stalled,” Alain Bouillard, the lead investigator for France’s Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses, said at Thursday’s briefing before the long-awaited release of the probe’s final report. “They failed to understand the stall and they failed to recover from it.”

http://www.theglobea...article4391437/

 

Equally frightening is a more general comment from an aviation expert in the New York Times –

 

William R. Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va., said: “We are seeing a situation where we have pilots that can’t understand what the airplane is doing unless a computer interprets it for them. This isn’t a problem that is unique to Airbus or unique to Air France. It’s a new training challenge that the whole industry has to face.”

http://www.nytimes.c...ref=global-home

 

And from another expert in today's Independent -

 

"Modern pilots are not trained for crises like this," (American Aviation expert Roger) Rapoport said. They are not trained to fly at high altitude. An experienced military pilot might have known what to do in a situation like this, but not these pilots."

http://www.independe...ss-7917949.html