The third interim report from BEA (including analysis of the cockpit voice
recordings) was published a couple of weeks back, in English here:
http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601e3.en/pdf/f-cp090601e3.en.pdf
David Learmount wrote in Flight:
" French accident investigator BEA has released a transcript of flight deck
conversation between the pilots of Air France flight 447 as they fought to
save the aircraft. The transcript makes it chillingly clear that they did
not believe that the aircraft was stalled, despite stall warnings, so their
attempts at recovering control were doomed to be unsuccessful.
The transcript shows the pilots tried to blast their way out of the low
speed regime by using power alone, without attending to the aircraft's
nose-up attitude, and their verbal exchanges indicate that they did not
understand why their actions were not producing the results they expected to
see.
When the problem first occurred, two copilots were managing the flight,
while the captain rested in the crew rest compartment. But when the captain
returned to the flight deck the aircraft was stalled and in a high rate of
descent, and he was not able to contribute a strategy for recovering the
aircraft before it hit the sea. "
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/08/02/360282/bea-releases-chilling
-transcript-of-af447-crew-fight-to-save.html
It seems to me that we are being invited to put it down to pilot error, but
as I intimated in my earlier post, I don't believe that the human factors
have been properly considered ... yet.
Piers
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Barker [mailto:ftog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 25 August 2011 21:53
To: Olympus Camera Discussion
Subject: Re: [OM] Titanic, was More from the Airport
I'll wait for the final report of the enquiry team, Piers, but it sounds
like a classic case of an inexperienced pilot forgetting his elementary
flying training: signs of the approaching stall. It's more difficult at
night with a fly-by-wire aircraft, but the principles remain important: high
nose, controls less effective, low speed, stall warner etc . . . But I
don't know what cockpit indications they had. Oh, and the weather won't
have helped, of course.
And I think that the captain was away from the flight deck, or am I thinking
of another instance?
Chris
On 25 Aug 2011, at 19:58, Piers Hemy wrote:
> Thanks for the pointer, Chris. I am reminded of the developing
> explanation for the loss of the AF Airbus over the Atlantic last year,
> whereby it appears the flightdeck crew were battling to recover from
> what appeared to be a dive from 39000 feet (huge amount of wind noise,
> but airspeed indicators not working). The aircraft was actually
> stalled, falling flat into the ocean. I can't imagine that it would
> have been easy to convince anyone in those circumstances that the
> right thing to do is the opposite of their instinct.
--
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