What happened to Air France Flight 447

[anonymous-user]

Simpo Two said:

The only thing that went wrong on the aircraft was iced-up pitot heads. I find it hard to believe that such an obvious and possible event is not catered for either in aircraft design or pilot training.

Have you experienced an event like this?

It's very unpleasant. You are presented not with just a lack of information but with conflicting information. The autopilots is useless. You have to quickly decide which set of instruments is showing the correct information. You have to be able to ignore the ones in front of you which are likely showing the wrong information. There is probably a long list of warning and caution messages in front of you and audible warnings going off too.

Can you imagine that happening at night time when you are knackered. Over the sea with no visible horizon in thunderstorms. Horrendous.

[Simpo Two]

el stovey said:

Simpo Two said:

The only thing that went wrong on the aircraft was iced-up pitot heads. I find it hard to believe that such an obvious and possible event is not catered for either in aircraft design or pilot training.

Have you experienced an event like this?

It's very unpleasant. You are presented not with just a lack of information but with conflicting information. The autopilots is useless. You have to quickly decide which set of instruments is showing the correct information. You have to be able to ignore the ones in front of you which are likely showing the wrong information. There is probably a long list of warning and caution messages in front of you and audible warnings going off too.

Can you imagine that happening at night time when you are knackered. Over the sea with no visible horizon in thunderstorms. Horrendous.

Yes, I'm sure it is horrendous and frightening. It sounds as though you have experienced this situation - and appear to have survived it

According to JW911 the icing of pitot heads is catered for in pilot training. So where does the fault lie?

One thing that wasn't mentioned was whether the scenario had been tried on other crews. If they all crashed then I'll agree.



I'd also like to make a suggestion that might be stupid because it seems so obvious - NVGs. Stick 'em on and once you're out of cloud you can go 'Duh, horizon'.

Edited by Simpo Two on Thursday 8th December 18:02

[AndyACB]

Reading that it amazes me that people still fly with Air France.

Unfortunately all the holes lined up, the pitots freezing started the chain of events that the inexperienced crew couldn't handle. Had the Captain been at the controls during this critical part of the flight and not in his bunk no doubt they wouldn't have crashed.

I wonder if the Wx Radar being in the wrong mode gave the Captain the wrong impression of the upcoming weather, maybe he wouldn't have elected to rest if he'd have seen how severe the weather ahead was.

Very sad, Air France don't have a particularly good recent safety record and this incident seems have been exacerbated by poor training.

[paddyhasneeds]

Sobering reading.

I still think, based on my expert knowledge built up over years of Aircrash Investigation and Channel 4 specials, that there's a basic issue these days which is that pilots, particularly younger ones, simply don't have the experience flying by stick.

I've never flown a plane but I'm always a little uneasy when I read of accidents such as this. Sure Boeing's crash, but if there's a crash where the aircraft seems to be doing "strange things" it always seems to be an Airbus involved - even if the "strange things" are occurring by design, it seems the design, or the training, or a combination of both, means the flightcrew simply can't grasp what is going on in time.

[sanf]

Wow, what a shame, it's amazing that Bonin only informed them of the stick back situation 40 seconds before impact.

[Mojocvh]

el stovey said:

Mr Pointy said:

el stovey said:

Mr Pointy said:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/print-this/what-re...

Terrifying. A perfectly serviceable aircraft flown into the sea & none of the pilots knew what was going on.

Perfectly serviceable?

Sounds like some serious design faults if a couple of experienced pilots weren't able to easily understand what was going on? Presumably if you design an aircraft and fill it with men women and children, you would want it to be very straight forward to operate, not one where two/three pilots could "fly it into the sea" like that.

Presumably there were some other factors to consider?

Perfectly serviceable as in nothing mechanically or electrically wrong with it. Did you actually bother to read the article before typing?

here we go again A vs B yawnfest.
Wasn't there some icing issues leading to unreliable airspeed indications at night in convective weather? That's not perfectly serviceable is it?

[Mojocvh]

Sorry but "Can you imagine that happening at night time when you are knackered"

In that case why were they "knackered"?

Is it only FBW aircraft that have icing on their pitots?

Is it only FBW [because that's where your coming from really] aircraft that can give confusing instrument displays..

[siko]

A massively confusing situation no doubt and I think some very harsh and unfair opinions on those pilots.

Usually those with the least experience of those situations who are the quickest to judge. I was lucky enough to get a couple of hours on an A320 full motion sim a while ago - the exact quote from my pilot was that it was the easiest plane in the world when it was working, but when things went wrong it was a nightmare....

[PaulG40]

The old 'Swiss cheese' effect! All the holes (events) lined up unfortunately.


Having not read the link yet (not in a 3g zone) was this the incident that coupled with everything, they went through an instant freezing zone that instantly froze the pitots. Assume they have no pitot heaters?

[anonymous-user]

Mojocvh said:

Sorry but "Can you imagine that happening at night time when you are knackered"

In that case why were they "knackered"?

Is it only FBW aircraft that have icing on their pitots?

Is it only FBW [because that's where your coming from really] aircraft that can give confusing instrument displays..

You sound like you might be drunk or just looking for an argument.

They might be knackered because it's night time. Plenty of aircraft can end up with unreliable instruments for a variety of reasons. All I said there was more to this crash than two pilots just crashing a "perfectly serviceable" aircraft as the OP asserted.

Edited by el stovey on Thursday 8th December 19:38

[Mojocvh]

siko said:

A massively confusing situation no doubt and I think some very harsh and unfair opinions on those pilots.

Big AF culture and training issues that's for sure.

[Mojocvh]

Mr Pointy said:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/print-this/what-re...

Terrifying. A perfectly serviceable aircraft flown into the sea & none of the pilots knew what was going on.

"At a critical speed, a wing suddenly becomes much less effective at generating lift,"

and their is the biggest lie of the whole tale, as detailed in from the given link.

[Mojocvh]

el stovey said:

Mojocvh said:

Sorry but "Can you imagine that happening at night time when you are knackered"

In that case why were they "knackered"?

Is it only FBW aircraft that have icing on their pitots?

Is it only FBW [because that's where your coming from really] aircraft that can give confusing instrument displays..

You sound like you might be drunk or just looking for an argument.

They might be knackered because it's night time. Plenty of aircraft can end up with unreliable instruments for a variety of reasons. All I said was there was more to this crash that two pilots crashing a "perfectly serviceable" aircraft as the OP asserted.

And your answer discloses you know nothing about airline ops [in fact less than myself ] CRM etc.

OK Mr STOVEY or do you want to take this offline?.

[eccles]

el stovey said:

They might be knackered because it's night time.

Twice you have mentioned tired or knackered crew just because it's night time. The crew should be properly rested when they start their shift, whether it's day or night.

[siko]

Big article in Flight a few weeks ago about the problem the industry has created (related to the AF447 crash) due to the lack of 'hands-on' flying experience now prevalent in the airline industry (ie not just AF)- do your 200hrs ish CPL A in 'hands-on' aircraft and then jump in the RHS of a computer that can fly the ac better than you ever will. When you chat to the long-haul pilots it always surprises me how few take-offs and landings they do - especially second or first officers.

[anonymous-user]

eccles said:

el stovey said:

They might be knackered because it's night time.

Twice you have mentioned tired or knackered crew just because it's night time. The crew should be properly rested when they start their shift, whether it's day or night.

In an ideal world. They're still human beings though. You fly across the atlantic at night time and you get tired. You can't simply go from being acclimatised to local time in (say) Brazil for a few days and then suddenly sleep for 12 hours and wake up just before an afternoon report and be 100% awake all night.

I'm not saying it's why they crashed but it's all part of what might lead up to the accident, part of the chain of events.

Fatigue is a big issue in accidents. I read today about the % of pilots who had unintentionally fallen asleep during a flight. There was an alarmingly large % of UK pilots that had then woken up to find the other pilot asleep. These aircraft had been flying along with both pilots asleep for some time. As I said they're only human.

Edited by el stovey on Thursday 8th December 19:35

[siko]

eccles said:

Twice you have mentioned tired or knackered crew just because it's night time. The crew should be properly rested when they start their shift, whether it's day or night.

Human beings aren't meant to be awake at night - circadian rhythms and all that! No matter how much rest they probably got, you can't get over the jet lag, timezones, uncomfortable hotel beds etc that an average crew gets. You could probably put perfectly rested and adjusted crews onto every longhaul flight - but they'd only fly once a month and your ticket would cost £2500 instead of £250. Fatigue is a fact of life - no crew would fly if they felt too tired, but night long-haul flights from distant airports are always going to involve a modicum of fatigue, unless you instigate plan b above. Not me, but a couple of friends fly long-haul - a great lifestyle apparently but very tiring.

[Mattt]

I know a long-haul Pilot, he complains of being tired but that is mainly due to the number of hosties he screws than anything job related

[Mojocvh]

siko said:

Human beings aren't meant to be awake at night - circadian rhythms and all that! No matter how much rest they probably got, you can't get over the jet lag, timezones, uncomfortable hotel beds etc that an average crew gets. You could probably put perfectly rested and adjusted crews onto every longhaul flight - but they'd only fly once a month and your ticket would cost £2500 instead of £250. Fatigue is a fact of life - no crew would fly if they felt too tired, but night long-haul flights from distant airports are always going to involve a modicum of fatigue, unless you instigate plan b above. Not me, but a couple of friends fly long-haul - a great lifestyle apparently but very tiring.

How long was the planned flight duration? And how long into that did the accident happen??

[anonymous-user]

siko said:

Human beings aren't meant to be awake at night - circadian rhythms and all that! No matter how much rest they probably got, you can't get over the jet lag, timezones, uncomfortable hotel beds etc that an average crew gets. You could probably put perfectly rested and adjusted crews onto every longhaul flight - but they'd only fly once a month and your ticket would cost £2500 instead of £250. Fatigue is a fact of life - no crew would fly if they felt too tired, but night long-haul flights from distant airports are always going to involve a modicum of fatigue, unless you instigate plan b above. Not me, but a couple of friends fly long-haul - a great lifestyle apparently but very tiring.

That's right. Westbound long haul from Europe are usually Ok as they tend to be day flights. Eastbound are usually night flights.

If you've been in the States or South American for a few days you will probably wake up at 7 or 8 naturally after a normal nights sleep. Then you try to go back to sleep after breakfast but you've only been up for 3 or 4 hours. It's hard to sleep twice like that especially during the day in a Hotel. Some find it easy some take all kinds of sleeping tablets most people find it hard.

I read that boffins at Cranfield likened the reduction in performance when flying an approach after an Atlantic night flight to having had two pints.

Tie that with some nasty weather and then instruments all telling you conflicting information perhaps as mojo suggests your airline has been lacking in some aspects or your recency training, the trusty Captain's somewhere else having a sleep, it could be rather unpleasant up there.