AF 447 Likely Crashed Because of Pilot Error

The first thing I did Friday morning was to go to BEA's website and read the most recent note about AF 447. For the first time the investigators published excerpts from the voice recorder of the downed A330-200. After reading the note it was pretty clear to me that major errors by the pilots caused this tragic accident in June 2009.

As already known, the pitot probes failed during the Airbus's flight through the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Experts believe that super cold water hit the tubes and froze on contact. The tubes failed and the Airbus suddenly did not have any reliable speed data. Consequently, the auto pilot and auto thrust disengaged. The A330 switched into alternate mode, giving the pilots full control of the plane. According to the transcript, the two first officers in the cockpit tried to call the captain, who was resting at the time, but he did not respond. Even though at least one of the first officers was pretty experienced on the A330, they failed to correctly interpret the computer's error messages. They were too consumed by figuring out what all the error messages meant to just focus on flying the plane.

Finally, the captain was back in the cockpit, but the situation worsened. The first officer pulled the plane up and it climbed from 35,000 feet to 38,000 feet, which was too high for the current situation in the ITCZ. Climbing also slowed down the plane and signals went off indicating that the Airbus was about to stall. At an altitude of 35,000 feet, the speed of a plane has to be within a very narrow limit, otherwise it will stall if the angle of attack is not adjusted. A difference of only 20 knots can cause a plane to stall. However, the first officers did not react correctly. The plane was still too slow and turbulence was rocking the plane to the sides.

With the fly-by-wire's envelope system down the first officers pushed the sidesticks too hard and the plane began to roll. Normally, the A330's fly-by-wire system would prevent that, but since it was down, there was no automatic protection anymore. However, and contrary to earlier reports, the Airbus was completely controllable. No primary flight systems failed. The envelope system was down, but the fly-by-wire system was still intact. The pilots had 100% control over the plane.

The first officers were not able to stop the stall. With very high vertical speed, the A330 shot toward the Atlantic. Ironically, one first officer increased thrust to 100%, increasing the plane's speed even more as it was heading toward the water. Pretty soon, the first officer realized he was not able to regain control of the plane. At 10,000 feet, he handed the controls over to the second first officer in the cockpit, who only had a few months flying experience on the A330. They must have realized they were doomed. Ironically, the pitot tubes worked again after less than one minute. The last words in the cockpit were "go ahead, you have the controls," when the first officer handed the controls over to the second first officer. A few seconds later they hit the water and were dead. And with them all 225 people on board flight AF 447.

So what happened? First, the Airbus's systems did not fail. The only thing that did fail were the pitot tubes. This is not really cause for a crash if pilots are well trained in these situations. Pitot tubes have frozen over before and never did a plane crash because of it. In this case, a chain of unfortunate events caused the accident. The following is a list of all the errors and issues that led to this terrible accident:

1) Instead of focusing on flying the plane, the two first officers were too focused on the computer's error messages. Flying the plane at an angle of 5 degrees with thrust at 85% would have been enough to fly without working pitot probes.
2) The first officers made the plane climb to 38,000 feet instead of descending. This decreased speed and caused the stall.
3) They were not well trained to regain control of the stalling plane. This had not been part of their pilot training.
4) They were not trained to realize that the frozen pitot tubes caused these problems.
5) The most experienced captain was not at the controls when the problems started.
6) At 10,000 feet - the most crucial phase of the accident - the least experienced first officer was in control of the plane.

In my opinion, well-trained pilots should have been able to handle this situation. In a BBC documentary from 2010, pilots encountered the exact situation in a simulator and managed the situation very well. Of course a simulator is not a real plane and the pilots in the simulator knew what was happening, but I strongly believe that all pilots should have the training to handle such a situation and a stall.

I am convinced that the crash of AF 447 will result in lots of troubles for Air France and Thales, the manufacturer of the pitot tubes, as they will be charged with manslaughter. Air France will be blamed for not training its pilots well enough and Thales will be blamed for building faulty pitot probes, even though the company claimed that they are able to handle all real-world challenges.

For Airbus, this is a result they can live with. The A330's fly-by-wire system was working and the plane is not to blame for the crash. But that's the only good news...

First Clues in AF 447 Crash

About a month and a half ago I wrote on this blog that I was hoping the search teams would find the black boxes of downed Air France flight 447. To my own surprise, they recovered both boxes last week. Yesterday, investigators were able to have a first look at the data stored in one of the black boxes, but the voice recorder still needs to be analyzed. The families of the people who died in the crash as well as the public will finally know what happened to the A330-200 on June 1, 2009. French investigators confirmed they will be able to fully understand the causes of the crash.

In my opinion, the most surprising development was a telex Airbus issued to all A330 customers today, which stated that there are no recommendations for Airbus's highly successful widebody aircraft. Many of us asked ourselves today: What does that actually mean? And this is the sensational part of today's news - it means that AF 447 did not crash because of any technical difficulties or errors with the fly-by-wire system. This is shocking news. In a good way though for Airbus and everybody who believes in and trusts Airbus's fly-by-wire technology.

After AF 447 crashed almost two years ago, many people - and even experts - believed the jet crashed because of a "stroke inside the plane's computers," as Germany's Der Spiegel wrote in 2009. They assumed the plane's fly-by-wire system shut down, following the icing of the Airbus's pitot tubes, rendering the pilots unable to fly the plane manually. I never believed in this theory as my earlier blog posts about the topic pointed out. Many aircraft have had issues with iced pitot tubes and none of them crashed. It was just not a good reason for a modern, state-of-the art airliner to crash.

But this brings us to the next question: Now what caused AF 447 to go down in early June 2009? Well, it is still too early to know that. We now know more about what didn't cause the crash, but we still do not yet know what caused it. The investigators mentioned today it would take until this summer to come to a final conclusion. There is still a list of numerous reasons for the crash, among them pilot error. Indeed, errors by the crew now seem to be the likeliest possibility. Listening to the voice recorder will answer a lot, if not all, of these questions. While today is a good day for Airbus and the A330, there are still no good answers for the families of those who died on June 1, 2009.

Why I Don't Fly Southwest...

Usually, I don't use this blog to post my opinion as bluntly as I am doing now. The thing is - I am not a big fan of Southwest Airlines. Not at all. I have never been on one of their planes and have no intention to do so in the future. Not only does Southwest have the ugliest color scheme of any U.S. airline, I also believe that the company does not do a good job maintaining its aircraft, which is the main reason I am not flying them.

Several times in the past incidents occurred on Southwest flights that caused me to question their thoroughness in checking and maintaining their planes. The fact that a gaping hole appeared in-flight on a Southwest flight a few days ago confirms my suspicions. And Southwest has a long history of poor aircraft maintenance. In 2008, FAA inspectors submitted documents to the U.S. Congress, alleging that Southwest allowed 117 of its aircraft to fly carrying passengers despite the fact that the planes were "not airworthy" according to air safety investigators. This is the worst hit the airline has every experienced to its reputation. In 2009, a Southwest plane was grounded because of a hole in its fuselage. And now there's a similar story. I just don't believe it's a coincidence this happened to Southwest.

My recommendation: Don't fly Southwest until they have their safety issues figured out. I don't want my hair to get ruined by a gaping hole at 900 km/h. Can you imagine that kind of wind?

United A320 Makes Emergency Landing in New Orleans

I am sure it must have been a very unpleasant landing for the passengers (and crew) on board a United A320 that made an emergency landing in New Orleans yesterday.

United flight UA 497 was on the way from New Orleans to San Francisco when it encountered severe technical difficulties. Apparently, there was smoke in the cockpit and the pilots "lost all instruments" according to a Bloomberg article. Other reports mentioned that the Airbus's primary flight computer wasn't functioning.

As U.S. media love to do (see Sullenberger Hudson landing), the pilots were quickly portrayed as heroes. Big U.S. broadcasters described this landing as a "blind landing," which is a very misleading term as non-experts may believe the pilots didn't see anything. This is not true - blind landing means that the pilots do not have any working navigational instruments. They can still see when they look out of the cockpit.

United's A320 was still functional and returned to New Orleans. With help from the folks in the tower, UA 497 performed a visual landing, which pilots do every single day at airports across the world (e.g., at DC's Reagan Airport). The plane's fly-by-wire system worked, the flaps were retracted and the landing gear worked as well. Pilots should be trained to handle situations like these.

The incident was likely caused by a cable that was heating up and starting to burn, causing the instruments to black out. This has nothing to do with Airbus's technology, flight computers or fly-by-wire system and could have happened on any plane.

To read the Bloomberg story, please click here.

AF 447 Found in Atlantic

To be honest, I was not very hopeful that we would ever hear anything again about AF 447. So you can imagine how surprised and excited I was when I read the news two days ago about a submarine finding parts of the downed A330-200.

AF 447 was en route from Rio to Charles de Gaulle when it crashed into the Atlantic after passing a bad weather front in the ITCZ in June 2009. The emphasis here is on AFTER, not during - contrary to many media reports. Almost two years after the accident, even experts are still unsure about what happened to F-GZCP.

A popular theory is that the Airbus's fly-by-wire system, including all flight computers, broke down, rendering the pilots unable to fly the plane. Based on the automated messages AF 447 sent to the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, this is not very likely. Another theory is that the pilots did not know the aircraft's exact speed, because the pitot tubes were jammed with ice (the plane was flying through a very moist bad weather front) and the Airbus did not receive any consistent airspeed data anymore. The automated messages confirm that this happened. However, this alone cannot be the cause of the crash. Yes, the pilots may not have had exact airspeed data, but they still had over-ground speed information based on GPS. This is not exact, but enough to fly the plane safely in a situation like this.

As in most cases, I strongly believe that many causes led to this fatal accident: Pilots who probably were not very familiar with the aircraft's computers and technology; a stressful and highly demanding situation they were not well trained for and never experienced before; multi-system failure; and it was in the middle of the night, so the crew probably couldn't see anything (contrary to earlier reports, the A330 has a manual horizon, so the crew always knew where up, down, right and left were).

Two years later, important questions remain, which make this accident so mysterious: Why didn't the crew radio to other planes traveling the same route that they were experiencing difficulties? They still had electricity and another Air France jet was directly behind them. A Lufthansa plane directly in front of them. Why did the Airbus hit the water belly first if the crew couldn't control it? Why was the captain not in the cockpit if it was a tricky situation?

Hopefully, in a few weeks from now, we will have answers to these questions. Fingers crossed that the search teams will find the black boxes!