Passenger aircraft falls out of sky - What happened to Flight 447? | 60 Minutes Australia

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tonight the story of flight 447 it has been called the Titanic of air disasters a passenger aircraft so advanced that the chance of it falling out of the sky is unthinkable but on a stormy June night in 2009 that's just what happened to an Air France a330 it's terrifying descent into the Atlantic Ocean took just four minutes for three years what happened inside the cockpit remained a mystery but as you'll see now the blackbox tapes have revealed a shocking and scary scenario of how quickly and easily a high-tech passenger plane can crash May 31st 2009 Air France flight 447 is taxiing about to set off from Rio de Janeiro for Paris all is normal on the flight deck it was one of the world's great airplanes latest technology superb engineering and operated by one of the world's great airlines but this plane would simply vanish over the Atlantic Ocean was no call from the airplane it was just lost and it was unthinkable that that could just go missing without a word 228 lives are lost you you feel alone very alone your daughter and her husband are not there anymore now black box recordings have been recovered from the cockpit these incredible tapes reveal the final terrifying minutes on the flight deck solving one of Aviation's greatest mysteries and challenging every notion of modern air safety this is a systemic problem the industry has got and it's not doing anything about it rio de janeiro Gallio International Airport 7:00 p.m. local time Air France flight 447 and Airbus a330 is taking off for the 11 hour journey to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris Air France is a great airline the a330 is the latest generation of airplane the aircraft is so advanced aviation experts say it almost flies itself on long-haul flights pilots get about three minutes of actual flying just from takeoff to wheels up and then wheels down to landing International Air Safety Specialist David Lee amount has studied the Air France catastrophe extensively other than aircraft like that could possibly go missing and he concludes that modern aviation has become more dependent on computers than pilots the airline tells pilots nowadays you cannot possibly fly this airplane as accurately as the automatics can so don't even try hmm now if you've been training your pilot's never take over if they've never been getting any practice if they don't have any faith in their ability to fly before fly anymore what have you got you've got a passenger on board at 228 people from 32 different countries most afresh like Caroline Sulis and her husband Air France flight attendant sebastian vettel Vaati they've just had three days off together in Rio Sebastian : it's like home usual yet because they have met in a plane and they got married two years after just before boarding flight 447 Caroline sends a text message to her mother Corinne the last SMS she sander was saying it's - it's a pity to come back to France it's so sunny here it was a Sunday in the evening so I knew that she was in the plane the take-off is flawless the plane heads north at 1:35 a.m. flight 447 leaves Brazilian airspace and makes final radio contact with Brazilian air-traffic control get my friend the plane now enters a radar dark spot in the middle of the Atlantic until it comes within range of air traffic control in Dakar Senegal flight 447 won't be seen on radar screens but the pilots can still communicate by radio they had any number of means to communicate with the rest of the world what was going on they could talk to other aeroplanes in the vicinity if they wanted messages relayed so they could have given us a message in this world of satellite communications you don't expect what happened Air France 447 to happen 3:45 a.m. two-and-a-half hours after leaving Brazilian airspace there's been no contact from flight 447 by now it should have appeared on the radar screens in Dhaka the fact that we hadn't heard anything from the aircraft that went missing when it had the means of communicating to any number of people was surprising in its own right but it's a significant piece of evidence did you allow yourself to hope for a miracle or as far as you were concerned or was lost like everybody else my reaction was shock but I think everybody knew it must have gone missing families and friends gather to meet the flight of Charles de Gaulle Airport there were many planes landing here in Paris on that very long evening but Air France flight 447 had simply vanished there was no Mayday call no trace on radar and certainly no witnesses eventually Air France had to make that dreadful announcement the flight could no longer be in the air and all 228 passengers on board had been lost this is a catastrophe undoubtedly and we have lost an aircraft with 228 people on board and at the moment I shall because I I was alone at home and I thought that it was the end Caroline's father Robert was working overseas when he got the call I was alone and a fine of mine called me because my wife couldn't couldn't do it I told me call me and tell me do you know there has been a crush on her France plane and we suppose we suppose that there is no survival clues to what happened to flight 447 are frustratingly few aviation authorities and the distressed families of those on board can only assume some outside force has brought down the plane and the fact that there was no distress signal what does that say to you French authorities suspect a terrorist attack search teams are scouring half an ocean because only the wreckage of flight 447 can reveal whether a bomb caused its destruction now we knew that the airplane was not just going to fall apart in the sky aeroplanes just don't do that airplanes are better engineered now than they've ever been in history after five days frantic search fragments of the planes wreckage and 50 bodies are discovered nearly a thousand kilometres off the coast of Brazil the find rules out a bomb because flight 447 was intact when it hit the water but with 600 Airbus a330s in daily service worldwide including 36 now flying in Australia there's a new fear could this ultra-modern airliner have a fatal and unknown flaw it's been described in some circles as the Titanic of the skies in many ways it's not at all like the Titanic the Titanic sank for a very good reason a very a reason you could see and feel it was an iceberg and it hit one this airplane didn't really have any problems and it went missing anyway but the search for answers would come to resemble the search for the Titanic the truth about flight 447 is locked inside its black box cockpit recorders but they are somewhere on the seabed four kilometres down French authorities throw everything into the deep sea hunt from a nuclear submarine to remote mini subs capable of operating at extreme depths it's a search followed by air safety experts around the world like Bill Voss the black boxes were the crucial piece which is of course why incredible amounts of time and treasure were spent but the French government and others many assisted trying to find these things and it was extraordinary search effort week's turned to months then years but just as it seemed the mystery of flight 447 would never be solved the American team that found the Titanic was called in on the 2nd of April 2011 nearly two years after the crash the planes shattered fuselage was finally found four thousand meters beneath the surface with it the all-important black boxes when they did find them it changed everything yeah because now we started really getting a clearer picture there were also 104 bodies many still strapped in their seats but there was no trace of the remaining 74 passengers including Caroline Sulis but not being able to recover her body it was another death in this story karen has disappeared many times each step was another another night spell coming up the black box recordings give up their secrets Air France flight 447 s final four minutes they knew all three pilots knew they were about to die chaos in the cockpit in the early hours of June the 1st 2009 Air France flight 447 slammed into the South Atlantic Ocean it disappeared without warning without any distress call exactly how and why 228 people died had become one of modern Aviation's great mysteries the only hope for an answer finding the flights black boxes four kilometres down on the seabed after two years and an underwater search more expensive than any other in history flight 447 s black boxes had finally been recovered but would they provide the answer to one of modern Aviation's most urgent questions how had one of the world's safest and most advanced passenger jets simply fallen from the sky the audio recordings recovered from flight 447 s black boxes have never been made public but using their actual transcript we've recreated the final terrifying minutes leading up to the crash flight 447 departs Rio de Janeiro and flies north along Brazil's east coast bound for Paris [Music] captain of the Airbus a330 is 58 year-old mark Dubois he has almost 11,000 flying hours to his name and is a veteran of the Rio Paris route the second pilot is David Robert aged 37 he's done more than six and a half thousand hours the third pilot is Pierre Cedric bonny his wife is also on tonight's flight Bonin is 32 and with just under 3,000 flying hours is the least experienced member of the crew Bonilla is in the right-hand seat of the cockpit with captain Dubois on the left David Robert is on his sleep break in the small cabin behind the cockpit they're making radio calls passing position reports to air-traffic control it's all pretty quiet in the middle of the Atlantic in the middle of the night there's not much to do in the passenger cabin dinner has been served and the cabin lights dimmed it is eight hours to Paris and many of those making the flight are settling into sleep there's also a relaxed mood in the cockpit there was a bit of chop you know the airplane was chopping around a little bit it wasn't severe aviation safety specialist David Lee amount has studied the transcripts of flight 447 s cockpit recordings was quite clear that they had a good situational awareness of the fact that they may work Union cumulonimbus clouds which they would have to avoid which is all standard stuff in that part of the world as they fly towards the equator the weather begins to deteriorate this zone is infamous for its severe thunderstorms with massive clouds impossible for commercial planes to fly over sometimes you've really got to think about whe which route you're going to take and which headings you're going to take up to try and avoid them meteorologist Michael de Villiers has analyzed the weather on that night what it shows there is the these areas that were forecast on the significant weather chart where there would be thunder activity quite a few around thunderstorms were probably the most dangerous form of whether it's strong updrafts and downdrafts can knock the aircraft around can also cause the structural damage if a thunderstorm is severe enough to get icing you get the hail you get lightning which can also damage an aircraft but captain Dubois doesn't seem that worried and keeps flight 447 on its current heading Avra navigating around a storm clouds is it's it's not demanding you look at them if they're in front of you you turn left or turn right and you fly round them I mean this is not difficult stuff the thunderstorms also generate bright flashes of what's known as san telmo's fire caused by ice palace discharging electricity on the aircraft's windscreen still it's not so serious that captain Dubois won't take a sleep break before he does establishes who will fly the plane in his absence Dubois decides the least experienced pilot Bonilla he's in control of the plane not David Robert who's now back in the cockpit from his sleep break bah boiling to join along in the world the weather gets worse and in the cockpit the most junior pilot is in charge - but see on purpose I washed up then just after 2 a.m. the black boxes record a loud noise in the cockpit experts believe it's caused by ice crystals striking the aircraft an alarm suddenly sounds it warns the crew that the autopilot has shut down with the autopilot off vernier in the right-hand seat is now in manual control of the aircraft robear despite being more experienced is now effectively copilot remember this is 2 o'clock in the morning on a very dark night no moon they can't see a natural horizon in terms of human alertness these guys in the seats were at their period of lowest possible alertness okay and all of a sudden they're working up by this this blaring this hooter sound that the autopilot is disconnected what neither man realizes is that the freezing temperature outside has caused ice to block three critical speed sensors called Pitters the blocked speed sensors cause the autopilot to temporarily shut down but there is no emergency the plane is still in level flight all the burner and the controls has to do is maintain that level flight [Music] for a reason we will never know he pulled back quite dramatically on his side stick there was no reason to do this absolutely none okay it was like he got a shock by pulling back on the control stick Bonilla puts the aircraft into a steep climb if there is a single moment that dooms Air France flight 447 this is it if he'd done nothing the accident would not have happened because in less than a minute the pitot tubes cleared themselves of ice and everything went back to normal all they needed to do was just to keep flying like it was the aircraft is now climbing rapidly and losing speed because he was going uphill into very thin air that the aircraft couldn't be supported by while he was at its wake the aircraft started slowing down I don't think you'll ever understand how baffling this is to aviators like myself to say how could they not have recognized what had happened coming up they start to stall they started to storm the Atlantic Ocean is 40,000 feet below and flight 447 is in freefall Thor the aircraft starts to drop it starts to fall and it stops flying starts falling the final moments over here France for four seven the Airbus a330 with 228 people on board is high above the Atlantic Ocean when it begins to fall out of the sky and hurtles towards the sea at 10,000 feet a minute but there is no distress call and there is nothing mechanically wrong with the aircraft it can still fly but it isn't the black box recordings revealed the frantic scramble by pilots to correct the aircraft these are those final fateful moments of Air France 447 a blocked speed sensor on the exterior of Air France 447 s fuselage has frozen over and shut down the auto part the man now manually flying the Airbus a330 Pierre Cedric Bonilla is the least experienced pilot on the flight deck he's put the aircraft into a steep climb so steep it begins to stall a stall happens when the aircraft is going too slowly for the wings to produce sufficient lift and therefore the aircraft starts to drop it starts to fall and stops flying starts falling Bernie needs to act quickly to stop the plane falling but at that moment one of the blocked speed sensors comes back online the pilots are now getting real instrument readings but they don't believe them it's a recipe for total confusion says flight safety specialists bill Voss now some new sensors come back in with valid information that didn't look valid because everything else was so totally messed up and that's really where things went from a very benign circumstance to a rapidly escalating out of control circumstance a safety specialist David Lee amount has studied these final minutes of flight 447 and the fateful decisions made in the cockpit and then when they looked up and they saw the airplane with a combination of terribly low airspeed and a very high nose attitude they they didn't understand how they got there even though they themselves had put it there they didn't understand how they got there and they never did understand for the rest of that short flights they didn't understand what was going on copilot robear tries to call captain Dubois back from his break and onto the flight deck Dubois does not respond Air France 447 reaches nearly 40,000 feet above the sea before it starts to drop a minute after robear's call captain Dubois returns to the coppers when the captain comes back into the cockpit the aircraft is is beyond it's it's topped out it's stalled and it's now descending with its nose very high very little forward speed but it's it's got a race of just a huge rate of descent the Airbus a330 is now plunging towards the ocean at ten thousand feet a minute on this moonless night the pilots have no idea they're just three minutes from crashing into the sea and of course they wouldn't have been able to see the surface of the sea or the surface of the earth at all because it was too dark there's still time to pull out of the stall but the pilots mistakenly believe the plane is traveling too fast the noise the aerodynamic noise you know when you're an airplane you can hear the air rushing past the fuselage but this was a completely different noise much louder than that then the noise is you normally hear and they thought they misinterpreted this as the aircraft over-speeding when exactly the opposite was true it's just total pilot misinterpretation it was pilot panic really the crew has now just seconds to push the aircraft's nose down and try to recover from the stall but Bonilla is still pulling back on the stick which neither of the other pilots can see from where they're sitting what they needed to do because the airplane was so deeply stalled was to dramatically push the stick forward because there was nothing wrong with the airplane at all not a soul not a dickiebird wrong with the airplane Oh the stall warning alarm has rung 58 times now it cuts out and the computer this stop telling the pilots that the aircraft was stalled because because they've gone into realms that the computer just didn't recognize the crew and passengers of Air France 447 now have less than a minute to live the plane reaches the point of no return 10,000 feet above the sea they're flying through that they sell flight level one zero zero which is ten thousand feet I think that was a point where we went from we have some time to figure this thing out to like we might not be able to save us of ourselves how would it have been for the passengers do you think well I hope is that most of them were asleep it was two o'clock in the morning but I think an awful lot of them wouldn't of being and some of them who were would have been woken up and when they were woken up they would have heard this very unfamiliar noise this the airplane would have been juddering and buffeting and they would have known something was very very wrong the passengers I'm not sure what they would have made of it doesn't bear thinking about I have wondered but I don't think you can even guess captain Dubois suddenly realizes what Bernier has been doing all along pulling back on the stick pushing the aircraft's nose up and stalling it I don't doesn't wanna come on I'm worried come on the aircraft passes through two thousand feet its ground proximity warning system detects the ocean below and its alarm rings out Lu [Music] they knew all three pilots knew they were about to die because they could see that they'd completely run out of height and the last couple of seconds they'd just given up the recording ends at 14 minutes and 28 seconds past 2:00 a.m. Sebastien Villa Vaati in Caroline Sulis met on an Air France flight to San Francisco in 2003 just six years later they were killed aboard Air France 447 Sebastian's body was recovered caroline's was never found they were a couple sebastian bodies has been retrieved and Carolyn knew so it's been that they are separated no forever I hope she didn't feel anything before the impact be before Vikash I hope I'm not sure Elvis it's afterwards you you feel alone very alone and you you you don't realize that your daughter and your her husband are not there anymore if ever an air disaster was caused by a pilot error it would seem to be this one but many experts blame the aviation industry itself for insisting it's pilots rely almost entirely on their aircrafts automatic systems effectively training them not to fly if these pilots were not prepared for a situation like this it's much more than pilot error its system error blame these individuals if you like but if you want to do that you will be missing the entire point this is a systemic problem the industry has got and it's not doing anything about it so it could happen again it could happen again hello I'm Sara Arbor thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes Australia make sure you subscribe to our Channel you can also download the 9 now app for full episodes and 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Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 292,438

Rating: 4.774663 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Tom Steinfort, Ellen Fanning, Peter Overton, Karl Stefanovic, Ray Martin, Peter Stefanovic, Jana Wendt, Jeff McMullen, Jennifer Byrne, Mike Munro, Richard Carleton, Tracey Curro, Paul Barry, Peter Harvey, George Negus, Ian Leslie, Gerald Stone, Sarah Abo, Flight 447, Titanic, Air disaster, A330, Air France, 2009, aircrash, cockpit mystery, black box, plane crash

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Length: 33min 51sec (2031 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2019

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