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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Errors, faulty gear downed plane
LE BOURGET, France -- A combination of faulty sensors and mistakes by inadequately trained pilots caused an Air France jet to plunge into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people aboard in the airline's deadliest crash, French investigators said Thursday.
Investigators are urging better instruction for pilots on flying manually at high altitudes and stricter plane certification rules as a result of a three-year investigation into what happened to Flight 447.
Airbus, manufacturer of the A330 plane, said in a statement it is working to improve speed sensors known as pitot tubes. Air France stressed the equipment troubles and insisted the pilots "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."
But the Bureau for Investigations and Analysis' findings raised broader concerns about training for pilots worldwide flying high-tech planes when confronted with a high-altitude crisis.
The report also could have legal implications: A separate French judicial investigation is still under way, and Air France and Airbus have been handed preliminary manslaughter charges.
The bureau's analysis lists a combination of "human and technical factors" behind the crash. The plane flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris slammed into the sea during a nighttime thunderstorm on June 1, 2009.
Some families of victims felt investigators didn't focus hard enough on the equipment problems, saying the two pilots at the controls were doing what they could while faced with a barrage of inaccurate information.
Ice crystals that blocked the pitot tubes were the "unleashing event" that set off the plane's troubles, chief investigator Alain Bouillard said. The plane's autopilot shut off and the co-pilots had to fly manually, while a succession of alarms were going off. The captain was on a rest break.
In one fatal decision, the report says, one of the co-pilots nosed the Airbus A330 upward during a stall -- instead of downward, as he should have -- because of false data from sensors about the plane's position. Bouillard said that was an "important element" of the cause of the crash.
He said the two pilots at the controls never understood the plane was in a stall.
-- The Associated Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 6, 2012 A17
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Police: 18 injured in crash between shuttle bus, tractor-trailer near Atlanta airport
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