Air France flight stalled before plunging into Atlantic - Polidicks

[quote=Yahoo!] Air France pilots lost vital speed data and their Airbus A330 stalled, beginning a fatal three minute plunge into the Atlantic in June 2009 with 228 people aboard, the BEA aviation safety agency said Friday. "We have no valid indications," one of the pilots of flight AF447 from Rio to Paris said, according to information from the flight data recorders released by the French Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis (BEA). The aircraft had entered a zone of turbulence two hours into the flight when the autopilot suddenly disengaged. Shortly thereafter one instrument showed "a sharp fall" in airspeed and a stall warning sounded, indicating the plane was no longer being lifted by the air pushing under the wings. As the two co-pilots struggled to understand what had happened the captain, who had left the cockpit to take a rest, returned but did not retake control of the plane. The agency said the plane's engines were working normally and responded to commands. An interim inquiry, conducted prior to the raising of the data recorders from the ocean floor earlier this month, had pointed to an icing problem with the probes measuring air speed but there was no definitive conclusion as to the cause of the crash. According to several experts, the deactivation of the autopilot could have caused by the icing up of the air speed probes, known as Pitots. Low airspeed data can cause the airplane's computer system to reject as invalid other readings, according to the BEA. Pilot's unions and some of the victims' families have accused the airline of reacting too slowly to safety warnings but both Airbus and Air France insist they reacted properly. Since the accident, Air France has replaced the Pitots on its Airbus fleet with a newer model. Both companies are being probed for alleged manslaughter in connection with the crash. Airbus said the information released Friday was consistent with the BEA's preliminary and interim reports and "constitutes a significant step towards the identification of the complete chain of events" that led to the crash. Air France Friday called for waiting for the BEA's further analysis of the data to determine the precise cause of the crash, although it said it appears "that the initial problem was the failure of the speed probes". It praised the "three skilled pilots" who "demonstrated a totally professional attitude and were committed to carrying out their task to the very end". However a source familiar with the investigation was puzzled by the reaction of the pilots. "Why, when getting the stall signal, did the pilots pull the (aircraft nose) up and not push it down?" A retired pilot, Jack Krine, told AFP that in a stall the normal procedure would be to push the plane's nose down in order to regain speed and lift, adding that they may not have had enough time to analyse the situation properly. According to the chronology provided by the BEA, the responses by the co-pilot flying the aircraft "were mainly nose-up" and the aircraft initially gained altitude. "The trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) passed from 3 to 13 degrees nose-up in about 1 minute and remained in the latter position until the end of the flight," said the BEA report said. The last data on the recorder showed that the plane's nose was up at a sharp angle as it plunged into the sea at 10,912 feet (3,300 metres) per minute. [/quote] Source: [url]http://uk.news.yahoo.com/air-france-pilots-flew-blind-plunging-ocean-131421833.html[/url]

That 3 minute plunge must've been scary as fuck for everyone onboard

[QUOTE=FinalHunter;30093166]Lesson of the story: The pilot was a lazy fuck and got everyone killed.[/QUOTE] I take it you didn't read the article at all

[QUOTE=FinalHunter;30093166]Lesson of the story: The pilot was a lazy fuck and got everyone killed.[/QUOTE]How stupid can you get?

[QUOTE=FinalHunter;30093207]I'm sorry, I might be reading this completely wrong, but I take this as "The pilot was taking a nap, and then when the plane began plummeting out of the sky he came back and did nothing".[/QUOTE] There was two other pilots. I mean how stupid can you be to only think one person flies a passenger airliner?

I read the thing with the narrator voice from "aircraft investigation" on Natural geographic. Faulty equipment seems to be the problem, however it must have been really cloudy if the pilot could not find the horizon by just looking out the windows. Since the engines weren't shut off, it would somehow seem the aircraft wasn't high enough to level out before it crashed into the sea, since he would eventually break free from any clouds there might be.

I have to say that it was a silly thing to do pulling the nose up whilst stalling alarms were sounding but because of all the malfunctions they wouldn't of thought anything else about it.

[QUOTE=Ignhelper;30093136]when the autopilot suddenly disengaged.[/QUOTE] This is why I don't trust fly-by-wire aircraft.

[QUOTE=Glitch360;30093158]That 3 minute plunge must've been scary as fuck for everyone onboard[/QUOTE] I don't think they could see a thing, it must have been pitch black and the pilota where given false reading because of the ice covering the Pitots, Some instruments don't work through the use of Pitots though so they had some saying they was in danger and some saying they're fine.

[QUOTE=Sonicfan574;30095777]This is why I don't trust fly-by-wire aircraft.[/QUOTE] What does that have to do with the Autopilot disengaging?

[QUOTE=Sonicfan574;30095777]This is why I don't trust fly-by-wire aircraft.[/QUOTE] Fly-by-wire doesn't equal Autopilot. FBW takes the pilot inputs and transmits them to the flight controls whilst autopilot automatically pilots the aircraft during the cruise. Autopilot is included in all passenger planes, regardless of whether they are FBW or not. Don't get too caught up on either the instrument failure or the autopilot disconnect. The aircraft entered a stall situation, something pilots are trained to deal with. The standard proceedure is to get the nose down [b]first[/b] then gradually increase thrust. It seems that for whatever reason, these pilots both pitched up straight away, and pushed the throttles to full thrust. The other thing is, if you have unreliable airspeed, you fly your aircraft at a very specific thrust level and pitch which will ensure it remains stable but these pilots didn't do that either.

[QUOTE=Sonicfan574;30095777]This is why I don't trust fly-by-wire aircraft.[/QUOTE] i guess you can't trust the car either. drive by wire. plus this doesn't have much to do with the problem. the ailerons had no problem reproducing the pilots actions.

[QUOTE=DogGunn;30100075]i guess you can't trust the car either. drive by wire.[/QUOTE] I don't trust them, but that's mostly because of bad throttle response on anything with drive-by-wire except expensive sports car. :saddowns: