What caused the crash of Air France Flight 447? “If the captain had stayed in position . . . it would have delayed his sleep by no more than 15 minutes, and because of his experience, maybe the story would have ended differently,” chief French investigator Alain Bouillard
Moreover, what is truly amazing is that the captain chose to take a nap right before they entered an ice storm.
Furthermore, this is just another case of pilot error before the main pilot error.
In addition, the transcript of the last 3.5 minutes of this flight is very depressing.
It is the total opposite of Sully Sullenberger when you consider both confidence, competence and control of the airplane.
In the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the South Atlantic Ocean in June 2009, about 435 nautical miles north-northeast of Fernando de Noronha island. A Brazilian island that was discovered on August 10, 1503, by a Portuguese expedition.
A popular book on the crash’s author wonders how it can be possible:
That for an entire three minutes and forty seconds the three pilots completely lost the ability to understand what the Airbus’s computers were telling them.
Moreover, the simple direction of the plane, up vs down, was lost on the pilots.
French investigators would eventually come to the conclusion that the crash was due to a combination of factors.
As a result of both technical failures that involved the Airbus’ Pitot sensors during the storm. In addition to the Air France pilots’ inability to react to the plane stalling.
Which led to the plane plunging into the sea at a frightening speed of 11,000ft (3,352m) per minute
Investigators would locate the wreck and bring much of the plane back to the surface.
In conclusion, recently, a Parisian high court ruled that both Airbus and Air France will have to go to court for apparent design errors on the Airbus 330-200. In addition, to the insufficient pilot training, leading to the Rio-Paris crash on June 1st 2009.
Both companies have announced they will appeal this decision with the supreme court.