Air France 447: Final report on what brought airliner down

for more than two years a few pieces of debris floating in the Atlantic Ocean were all that was left of Air France flight 447 and the answer to what happened seemingly lost forever on the ocean floor but in May of 2011 state-of-the-art submarines made a remarkable dive more than two miles below the ocean's surface and collected the crucial black box expert analysis of the reported cockpit transcripts point to a perfect storm of problems including stormy weather aircraft malfunction and pilot error but some say there was another contributing factor the very design of the airbus cockpit what Air France 447 have had the same disaster if this cockpit were a Boeing instead of an Airbus I think it would have been much less likely to happen in a Boeing because the control wheels are large they're obvious I think it could hardly have been missed what's the last time you were in one of these to help us break down and understand what happened on board Air France flight 447 CBS News aviation and safety expert captain Chesley Sully Sullenberger took us into an Airbus simulator this is going from neutral to full nose up command full aft side stick that's it right there that one little movement that small movement on the Airbus flight controls or side stick raises the nose of the plane and instructs it to climb pilots rarely perform the maneuver at high altitudes because it can be very dangerous but that is exactly what one flight 447 pilot did around 2:05 a.m. when the airbus a330 was flying through a storm system all three of its speed indicators stopped working as a result the aircraft's autopilot turned off with a captain on break the two Co pilots were forced to fly the plane manually the least experienced pilot 32 year-old Pierre Bona was in the right seat and said I have the controls copilot david robear was in the left seat and even though considerably more experienced he let buona fly theoretically it was possible to apply the airplane those conditions challenging but manageable yes although they lost the autopilot and speed indicators they were flying normally and safely but then suddenly and without robear knowing bone and does something almost inexplicable he pulls back on his side stick and raises the nose of the plane that causes the aircraft of fall and the stall warning sounds minutes the stall warning will sound 75 times but strangely neither pilot will mention it and unbeknownst to robear Bona will keep the nose of the plane up almost the entire time exactly what he shouldn't do a decision that experts still can't understand it's difficult to explain that I just don't know why he did that and there's nothing to you that makes sense on on any experience or intellectual level about pulling back when you should push forward no nothing at all because of bonus actions the plane is attempting to climb but is actually losing altitude robear appears to have no idea the nose is being lifted when he says what the hell is happening I don't understand what's happening if he had known what Bonin was doing where a bear could have conceivably solved the problem very easily at this point so you're sitting where Bonin was sitting and he starts pulling back and right Sullenberger showed us why he thinks in this situation the design of the airplane helped keep robear in the dark and it's a subtle movement compared to more traditional airplanes and unless I happen to notice you visually doing it I would have no way of telling the writer but it does because your science dick is not linked to mine when I moved this one that one never budgets by traditional airplanes Sullenberger means those built by Boeing there are only two major airliner manufacturers in the world Boeing and Airbus and the two have different cockpit designs and philosophies the main difference Airbus uses sidestick technology boeing uses a yoke and this airplane you have a big control wheel it's right in front of both pilots we sat down in a Boeing 747 simulator to see the difference there mechanically linked they're not independent so if if I move mine yours moves in unison had he been pulling back in a Boeing how would it have looked like this and on my side it's in my life yes robear would clearly have known what was happening if this was happening in a Boeing I think it would be obvious yeah Airbus didn't respond to our request for comment however they have never wavered in their public support of their cockpit design at 2:10 a.m. five minutes after the autopilot disengaged the airbus a330 continues to lose significant altitude as the captain brie enters the cockpit and says what the hell are you doing Bona the least experienced pilot continues to hold back on his side stick but still doesn't seem to understand what's happening we've lost control of the airplane banaz says robear tells the captain we've totally lost control of the plane we don't understand it all almost a minute later as the plane is now just 10,000 feet above the surface of the ocean but net finally reveals the crucial information they've needed he shouts I've had to stick back the whole time robear seems to instantly realize what's going on he jumps in and says give me the controls give me the controls but it's too late about 40 seconds later the two co-pilots say what will be their last words robear damn it we're going to crash this can't be happening banana but what's happening four seconds after that the voice recorder cuts out it's clear that the pilot of Airbus have to work as a team man Roberts ULA's lost his 24 year old daughter Caroline in the crash her husband of just two years was a flight attendant on board I was alone on the earth nothing to speak no a lot of questions with no answer 228 people lost their lives that night after analyzing debris and examining remains experts suspect passengers likely didn't know what was going wrong until they had the oceans surface a tiny bit of Solace in one of modern Aviation's biggest disasters we don't want that the victims dead for nothing Sulis and everyone who lost someone that night want answers but industry experts want more beyond increased pilot training if deemed necessary even changes to the cockpit design so the circumstances that took down flight 447 never happened again if we only blame the pants we will not have changed any of the fundamental underlying conditions we would have done our best to prevent this from happening again

Channel: Captain Chesley Sullenberger

Views: 1,495,806

Rating: 4.6752696 out of 5

Keywords: AIR FRANCE 447, CBS

Id: kERSSRJant0

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 09 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Mike734]

I fault the ab-initio training history that is typical of pilots almost everywhere but the USA. Before I got hired by a major airline I had 9000 hours flying a huge variety of aircraft. My classmates and I had well rounded breadth of experience. It's my opinion that a few hundred hours flying a C-172 and a few more in a Senica before strapping on an A-330 is not adequate. But I'm afraid, as more and more pilots retire, that's exactly what we are going to see, even in the USA.

[u/perAstra]

This video is a year and a half old. Some form of "final report" on this accident is posted here at least once a month, and the comment section is always filled with "this would have never happened if it was a Boeing" claims. Every accident has several causes. Design of control systems may have made it more difficult for the crew to complete a recovery, but to say that a Boeing design would save them for sure is also not appropriate.

[u/mnpilot]

A student pilot knows to push the nose over on a stall. What the fuck was that FO doing ???

[u/thetrueonion]

Compromise: Mechanically link the cockpit joysticks. Yes, I know these are vastly more complicated than your dinky desktop computer joystick, but we are talking about the lives of 228 people lost due to an entirely preventable and incredibly stupid human error.

228 people. All those people dead, friends and families devastated.

Human error will never be designed out of a system. Who cares how old fashioned it is, use common sense precautions in design. Human communication is and forever will be prone to error.

Some will cry "another point of failure!" If the Cessna 152 from 1981 I'm training in has this figured out, I think Airbus can too.