Air France Flight 447- Transcript and explanation

absolutely horrific. Also unbelievable yet strangely reassuring that no one on board knew what was coming until it was literally a second away.

The pilot Pierre-Cedric Bonin seems to be just about completely at fault though, and did everything exactly wrong. Had he relinquished the controls to seemingly anyone else or spoken up about what he was doing, it probably could have been avoided. But unfortunately everyone first had to figure out what was happening, then what he'd been doing, then solve them both, by which point it was too late.

I remember actually that I flew on the same type of aircraft to Paris about 4 days after this crash. Back when they still hadn't found the plane, and didn't have the slightest clue as to what brought it down. Bit of a nervy affair for a somewhat nervous flier like myself...
 
and I say reassuring that they didn't know, because if anyone's ever read about egyptair flight 990, it sounds like literally the worst experience ever for anyone.
 
there is a documentary on netflix that goes over all of this. Interesting stuff but scary. The pilot didn't handle it very well (obviously) but training for pilots these days really doesn't cover how to handle things like this because planes now a days essentially fly themselves (relative to older models of course there is still a ton to do its not like I could fly one) so when something like this malfunctions they don't know how to recover and in a matter of seconds or minutes you're already going down and cant tell which way is up. flying.. scary stuff.
 
I'm not a pilot and obviously this sounds like a stressful situation so I am low on the list of who can criticize, but after reading that I feel pretty uneasy about the judgement of some pilots.
 
after recently graduating school as an air traffic controller and holding my private pilots license...it makes commercial flights or any flight for that matter 10x scarier. the shit that goes on and the amount of close calls are astounding.
 
Just to point out to those who don't know. This is a new account of the information from the black boxes, retrieved earlier this year. (I didnt just randomly post something up from 2 years ago).

Sparknotes are;

Plane flying normal

Captain goes for rest leaving two co-pilots in charge

They head into a storm

Confusion ensues over airspeed and who's in control

The two co-pilots handle it wrong (one, a whole lot more than the other)

Captain returns as the plane is stalled heading for the ocean.

Very frightening stuff

 
For real, and I am a confident flyer.

How terrible were the last 3 minutes of that flight for passengers? I feel like I have a good bead on how a plane is being controlled and man, I would be uncomfortable with a rapidly descending plane that was all over the place in a heavy storm, with engines roaring at full power.
 
the one pilot who is pulling back the entire time of the descent towards the ocean pisses me off. he plunges for nearly 40,000 feet pulling back to climb the entire time. you would think if it doesn't work for the first 10,000 feet you might want to try something else????? im no pilot but i feel like there was a lot that could have been done to avoid the crash
 
the first thing a pilot is taught about stall recovery is decrease angle of attack, left rudder pressure (to counteract spin tendencies), and increase power to build airspeed.

complete basics. not to say that i have knowledge on how to fly an A330, or any jet for that matter, but the fundamentals still apply and how that guy didn't do that is beyond me...
 
interesting read. i dont fly at all. but that bonin dude totally lost control of his nerves..
 
Thing that shocked me is how they did not hear the stall warning. And why in the world would you pullback on the stick, just because your autopilot turned off? The plane should still have the correct pitch and speed to stay at the altitude. Turn on de-ice, pitot heat, and watch the vertical speed indicator to make sure youre maintaining the same altitude.
 
I think the thing to note here is that no one in-cabin realized the thing was stalling. The co-pilot noticed he lost the auto-pilot and wanted to (I assume) get out of the storm because it was freaking him out he probably didn't feel comfortable flying in it.

Surely as a private pilot you can understand the role distraction must have played here. I'm not licensed or anything but I have a measly 5 hours training in helicopters, one of the biggest things I start to understand is you either fly the instruments too much or you forget about them for too long.This co-pilot's trying to keep himself and a hundred or so others alive, made the mistake of applying low-level techniques to a cruise altitude, and of course the miscommunication played a huge role as well.

Just my take anyway, interesting read.

 
The worst airline accident from a passenger's perspective is, IMO, the one in Florida where the oxygen bottles or something in the cargo hold caught fire and burnt the plane up in mid air.

Just imagine sitting there reading a book or listening to music when you start to smell something funny, see smoke coming through the floor, and then seconds later the floor bursts into flames. The passengers were all burnt alive inside the cabin and the plane crashed somewhere in the Everglades.
 
Oh my god that co pilot was a fucking idiot. Especially because about half way through the thing they had all the power to recorrect everything all their instruments were working again. He was just an idiot about it. Tragic.
 
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