Air France Rio crash: Black box recorder data 'intact'

[nopy99]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13412061

Air France Rio crash: Black box recorder data 'intact'
The data on the flight recorders may help piece together what happened aboard the doomed jet Continue reading the main story
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Flight recordings from an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 have been preserved and are readable, French investigators have said.

They said the material from the voice and data recorders, retrieved earlier this month off the Brazilian coast, will now be analysed.

The readings include the last two hours of the cockpit voice recordings.

All 228 people on board were killed in the disaster.

"Following operations to open, extract, clean and dry the memory cards from the flight recorders, BEA safety investigators were able to download the data over the weekend," the BEA air investigation agency said in a statement.

"These downloads gathered all of the data from the flight data recorder, as well as the whole recording of the last two hours of the flight from the cockpit voice recorder."

Summer report

Any information gleaned from the cockpit voice and flight data recorders will take months to process, investigators have said.

Continue reading the main story
The long hunt for answers
The report into the cause of the crash itself will not be ready before early 2012, although an interim report will be published in the summer, the BEA said on Monday.

Flight AF 447 went down on 1 June 2009 after running into an intense high-altitude thunderstorm, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Paris.

Those on board came from more than 30 countries, though most were French, Brazilian or German.

The wreckage of the plane was discovered after a long search of 10,000 sq km (3,860 sq miles) of sea floor

[amiqbal]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... e-hit.html

Pilot of Air France flight that crashed into Atlantic two years ago was NOT in cockpit when disaster hit, recovered black box reveals
By Allan Hall

Last updated at 1:05 PM on 23rd May 2011

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Marc Dubois was not in the cockpit when Air France flight 447 ran into trouble
The pilot of the Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean nearly two years ago was not in the cockpit when the plane ran into trouble.
Leading German news magazine Der Spiegel quoted an expert who said captain Marc Dubois, 58, could be heard on the black box recordings rushing into the cockpit when the plane encountered bad weather.
'He gave both co-pilots instructions on how to save the plane,' the expert, who was not named, told the magazine.
Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic on June 1, 2009, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 passengers and crew died.
The plane wreckage was found in April, about 1,000 kilometres off the north-east coast of Brazil.
Until now it had been thought that the crew of the Airbus A330 flew directly into a bad weather front as other planes flew around it.
But according to Der Spiegel, information from the flight data recorder - which was recently found with the other so-called black box, the cockpit voice recorder - amid the plane wreckage at the bottom of the ocean, proves otherwise.

Disaster: Brazil's Navy sailors recover debris from the missing Air France jet at the Atlantic Ocean in 2009

Preserved: The first sealed 'black box' recovered from 3,900ft under the ocean revealed flight data
Last moments recorded: The second of the two sealed black box voice recorders recovered from wreckage of the plane revealed conversations from within the pilot's cabin

The flight path showed clearly that the crew had tried to chart a smooth course through the storm clouds.
'It looked initially as if they had been successful, because there were no indications that they encountered increased turbulence,' according to the report

What the data did show, however, was that ice crystals caused by the bad weather had clogged up the pitot tube, an instrument used to measure airspeed, the experts told Spiegel.
After the tube malfunctioned the plane lifted steeply, which could have caused the engine to stall and the plane to crash, they added.

The investigation into the crash is being carried out by the French Transport Ministry’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis (BEA).
On Tuesday, French newspaper Le Figaro daily reported that the black box data had put Airbus in the clear by showing the plane had experienced no electronic or mechanical failure.
The BEA has said it will release details of the circumstances of the crash on May 27, but that the cause of the crash will take longer to establish.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1NB37yW00

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1NB30j8kS

[amiqbal]

Bea report on the time line.

http://www.bea.aero/fr/enquetes/vol.af. ... 011.en.pdf

[Mudassir Iqbal]

Thanks for the report link

[FULLTHRUST]

http://news.discovery.com/human/air-fra ... gn=rssnws1

We hear it so often that it’s taken as a truism: Trust your instincts. Obey your intuition. Ignore your book knowledge and go with your gut.

The importance and value of intuition (especially in women) is widely accepted. One author, Gavin De Becker, even wrote a book based on the premise that we must listen to intuition to be safe. In his bestseller The Gift of Fear, De Becker calls intuition “your personal solution to violence (that) connects us to the natural world and to nature. Freed from the bonds of judgment, married only to perception, it carries us to predictions we will later marvel at.”

Yet heeding instinct and intuition apparently contributed to the 2009 disaster in which Air France flight 447 crashed in the North Atlantic with 228 people on board. Now that one black box was recently found, investigators have a better idea of what went wrong. Experts are calling for improved pilot training that will in part teach them to ignore their intuition for their passenger’s safety.

According to USA Today, French authorities concluded that the pilots made a series of mistakes. The plane encountered rough weather that caused the speed sensors to ice over and malfunction. This by itself was not necessarily a serious problem, but:

Instead of flying level while they diagnosed the problem, one of the pilots climbed steeply, which caused a loss of speed. Then the aggressive nose-up pitch of the plane and the slower speed caused air to stop flowing smoothly over the wings, triggering a loss of lift and a rapid descent. They had entered an aerodynamic stall, meaning the wings could no longer keep the plane aloft. Once a plane is stalled, the correct response is to lower the nose and increase speed. For nearly the entire 3½ minutes before they crashed into the ocean, the pilots did the opposite, holding the Airbus A330’s joystick back to lift the nose.

Why did these trained pilots do the opposite of what they learned in flight school? They trusted their instincts. Human instinct and intuition for pilots in such a situation is to keep themselves (and therefore the rest of the aircraft) facing up toward the safety of the sky, not to intentionally aim directly toward the ground. In their fear and panic they listened to their intuition instead of their knowledge of basic aviation, and it cost hundreds of lives.

This is not the first time that pilot intuition has killed passengers. In February 2009, a commuter flight crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., killing 50 people including one person on the ground. Investigators determined that the accident was caused by a series of errors by the pilot and co-pilot. They had not been paying attention to the plane’s airspeed, and when they realized the plane was about to stall, the pilot pulled the plane’s nose up instead of down, exactly as the Air France pilots did.

It’s certainly true that intuition can be right. But intuition fails people all the time, and we just don’t notice it because we selectively remember the times when our intuitions or fears were confirmed. We’ve all read news stories of serial rapists or serial killers whose friends and neighbors, upon being interviewed after the criminal was caught, say, “He seemed like a normal guy, I never would have expected this.”

For example, suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell seemed like “a civilized person” before he attacked, according to one of his victims who escaped; Ted Bundy was handsome and charming; and no one had suspected a Sunday school teacher and mom of raping and killing eight-year-old Sandra Cantu in 2009.

Intuition and instinct routinely fail to warn innocent people about impending accidents, attacks, abductions and death. If intuition could reliably avert disasters, and even terrorism, the world would be a very different place.

Perhaps the legacy of Air France flight 447 is reminding the world that intuition is fine for deciding who to date or picking a pet, but when you’re in a life-or-death emergency, let your brain overrule your gut.

[TAILWIND]

FT, an elaborative and edicative account. my question though is why did two experienced pilots did what they did?. While every one related to flying knows that you push the nose down to recover from stall, they continued pulling back on the side stick. Offcourse it is not a simple as that, they had lost very vital air speed indication. Yet I think it is more because of over automation in a modern airliner which has somewhat erroded the basic flying skills of pilots.
A few years back a research carried out by a british aeronautical university put two sets of pilots through a research program. One was experienced on classic 737s and other was NG pilots. They were asked to handfly the airplane through a complicated approach procedure. do a missed approach, jopin a hold and then land. Results were revealing. There were 93% more altitude, heading and speed deviations by NG pilots than the old guys.
With no offence to a modern airline pilot, the automation, all these electronic aids improve safety and ease the workload yet leaves the pilot in a lurch once chips are down.
indeed we cannot compare a 172 pilot landing without ASI and an A330 at night through bad weather without speed indications. But still i think all these FBWs, direct laws alternate laws, so many computers have (with due apology) reduced the pilot to a manager instead of a flyer?
What do you think

[FULLTHRUST]

Hi TAILWIND,

The airbus has very sophisticated avionics, more modern than boeing and more elaborate. It is very funny though, if you are caught up in clearing ECAM messages, it takes a while to get back to the original problem. ECAM is electronic centralize aircraft monitoring system, which has 2 crts in the middle of front console. The left crt is meant for ECAM system "Normal" operation messages, and also for aircraft various system degradation messages - on the right crt, the messages on left crt corresponds to system synoptic. It gives a beautiful combination of messages and system diagrams and where the faults are in the system.

If you remember the Qantas A380 engine failure in/over Singapore, the crew had to clear the messages and take control of the aircraft resulted in a contained engine failure for about 2 hours, they were in the air for 2 hours after the engine failure managing different warnings and their respective corrective actions.

To cut the long story short, in modern day airliners, pilots are there to primarily manage the operations and hence the need to fill in the gap of pilot shortage through MPL.

Coming back to AF airbus incident, they did not manage it well. Sweet and short!! The preliminary report is available on the internet and if you read it carefully, it says it all.

[FULLTHRUST]

To your basic question - at the time of erroneous air speed indications, the set of two pilots were - a regular first officer and the other was a "cruise" first officer. The conditions that they got into were never experienced before by the two and they were clueless as what to do in order to get the aircraft back to straight and level flight - knowingly that if you dont clear the ECAM messages and do some corrective actions on it, it simply does not work. You have to "acknowledge" to the ECAM system in order for aircraft to obey!!


ASI - whether analogue or digital, gives you a comfort level, and helps you fly "any plane" irrespective of modern day avionics with 100% glass cockpit or old round gauges. The primary flying skills are necessary to be on the spot.

The research that you are referring to is understandable, the NG pilots were used to fly autopilot from positive climb (gears up) until 400 ft or so radio alt before landing. The aircraft takes you right on runway centre line and glide-slope. When you put them in manual flying conditions without any practice, they would really deviate from the alt. speed and heading. You are right. In modern day aircraft they are managers and less flyers.

If you happen to see the flt ops checklist - the pilots follow that in the first instinct, and then comes their basic flying skills. The problem with airbus is that as I mentioned earlier, there is lot of corrective actions to be done on ECAM before it comes to manual flying. You got to clear all the system statuses and in some cases manage the cockpit before you think of going manual.

If you remember - there was a similar situation on AP-BDZ (an A310 with PIA) and the pilots had a great deal of efforts to control it manually. I think it was a few years ago, happened over Karachi. They escaped that disaster -- very similar - erroneous air speed indications.

[TAILWIND]

Thanks for a very informative analysis FT.
Not getting into a boeing VS Airbus debate which hough is very common in the aviation forums in the US specially, can we say that Airbus is a difficult plane to handle once something goes wrong!

[FULLTHRUST]

Thanks -

For declaring airbus difficult - absolutely not. It is the amount of "automation" that one can afford to instill in his/her mind, along with the basic flying skills. I personally know a pilot who was on 73s and despite the fact that his seniority was to be on either 310 or 300, he opted to remain on 73s. He was too happy to fly 73s. It is all how you perceive automation - basically. If your perception is along the lines of reality then you are ok to fly airbus.

You know there was a huge debate on putting side sticks on 777s, and boeing decided not to do it, and hence have conventional control columns, - but fully fly by wire though.

[FULLTHRUST]

At the impact, the aircraft forward speed was 107 kts, vertical speed was more than 10,000 feet/min and it took 3 odd minutes to hit the ocean.

I was going through an article - http://msquair.wordpress.com/2010/02/07 ... did-maybe/

and found a comment by a retired airline captain -

Quote -

I am a retired airline Captain.
My training and experience is that a succesful thunderstorm penetration requires complete disregard of pitot information. Attitude and power control are the essential elements. No pilot would knowingly penetrate a thunderstorm. In the event a penetration is inevitable, the attitude gyro, along with the establishment of an adequate power setting are primary. Maintaining a wings level, nose level, attitude is critical. After an adequate power setting is established, changes to it, if any, would be minimal. In a thunderstorm, displayed pitot information, ie., airspeed, altitude, changes dramatically. It becomes unreliable.
Maintaining proper attitude is key.

To think of how the crew of 447 must have felt when the loss of aircraft control left them helpless, because of a poor, almost reckless design concept, makes me ill. Not only because of them, and their passengers, but also because it will happen again.
Bob Klenke

- Unquote

[TAILWIND]

FT
The retired pilot's comments are not off the mark.

[amiqbal]

BEA issues the interim report and safety recommendations. Press conference today at 14:30 CET.

http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight. ... af.447.php

[FULLTHRUST]

From the report;

AF447 crew not trained for high-altitude stall: investigators

AF447 investigation has said that the two pilots had not received any high-altitude training for unreliable airspeed procedures and manual aircraft handling. It is formally recommending review of training and check programmes, and crucially the mandatory creation of specific exercises for manual handling, including stall recovery.

[smhusain_1]

It is rather odd for the captain not to have taken the controls once he had returned to the cockpit though the situation had deteriorated by then. Odder still that the junior most pilot on the flight handled the entire emergency save the last few seconds.

You may remember that in the Toronto accident of Air France a few years back involving an Airbus A 340, the copilot who had more experience on the type than the captain continued handling the controls right up to the overrun on the runway. They landed one third down on a wet runway with probably a strong cross wind blowing. There was a thunderstorm hitting the airport at that time and despite holding for half an hour, the attempt at landing ended in disaster. It would have been more prudent to divert but economics of hotel accommodation and catering for passengers at alternate decided the issue here.

In his inexperience the copilot of Air France 447 over controlled the side stick and as one writer here has suggested couldn't understand or didn't perform the functions required to fly manually. But his first input was a pull on the control rather than forward pressure in case of a stall. Here it seems Air France is suing Airbus for the faulty stall warnings generated, probably for or five in the final four minutes. At one point, the copilot flying did push the side stick forward and the aircraft responded correctly with increase in airspeed. It is also suggested that since there is no power lever movement during change in power in this aircraft, it may also have added to the confusion.

But to suggest that the pilots were not trained for this abnormality-meaning a temporary loss of airspeed sensing is ridiculous. In turbulence and during erratic airspeed fluctuation, a pilot flies a big jet by attitude and power setting. Even in olden times like ours we had an exercise of flying after losing the radome.

You may also note the uneasiness in the non-flying copilot who probably made at least three or four calls for the captain to return to the cockpit.

Every accident is a grim reminder of the lapses somewhere in training and it would be pertinent for our pilots to look at this disaster objectively and contemplate how they would handle the situation in similar circumstances. It is obvious that hand flying skills have deteriorated because of so much automation but this should not prevent a prudent pilot of being aware of this handicap and keep the skills intact.