The INSANE story of Air France 11

what could be worse than losing control of a gigantic passenger jet over one of the most densely populated cities on earth this is exactly what happened the pilots of air france fight 11 on the 5th of april this year on final approach to paris's charles de gaulle airport two pilots battled for control for their boeing triple 7 while alarms spared in the cockpit and the plane rocked from side to side how did they get into this situation and more importantly how would they get out of it this is the story of air france flight 11. [Music] if you like these videos then you'll probably like blinkist blinkist is an app on your phone that allows you to understand the key ideas and insights of a load of nonfiction books by giving you short 15 minute summaries of them called blinks so i was just listening to a book called the body a guide to occupants by bill bryson which is about how our bodies work and how much we still don't know about how our bodies work one thing that stuck out to me reading this was how much of us isn't really us at all the number of microbes in our body far outnumbers our own cells apologies if you're listening to this while eating but i also thought it was cool that we have over 900 species of microbe in our nostrils alone there are loads of interesting facts like this in the book so if you're at all interested in the human body or science in general then this is well worth a look blinkist has summaries of over 5000 other non-fiction books i also like reading why we make mistakes by joseph hallonan this looks at the psychological biases that color our decisions on our perception of the world and i've enjoyed reading physics of the future by michio kaku which predicts some future technologies that we might have by the year 2100 i know that many of you are curious about how things work so i really think you'll get a lot of value out of the short 15-minute summaries that blinkist has on their app and just for greendot viewers blinkers are giving away a 7 day free trial and 25 off a premium membership which you can get right now if you sign up using the link below [Music] at nine o'clock in the evening on april 4 2022 air france flight 11 pushed back from the gate at john f kennedy international airport in new york the aircraft a boeing triple 7 300 er was bound for paris a seven hour journey on board were 177 passengers and 15 crew in the cockpit were two pilots nobody on the flight knew it yet but in a few hours the pilots would be battling with their controls in a desperate attempt to save the lives of all 192 people on board at a quarter past nine that night flight 11 took to the skies above new york and made its way east out of the atlantic ocean the triple seven is a modern long-haul passenger aircraft it has an excellent safety record and remains one of the most technologically sophisticated and fuel-efficient aircraft in the skies it is one of only two boeing aircraft with fly-by-wire technology meaning that all pilot inputs on the controls are fed through computers before the flight control surfaces on the wings and tail plane are moved this reduces the chances that pilots will inadvertently put the aircraft in a dangerous position like an aerodynamic stall an overspeed or a bank angle that is too steep the particular aircraft being used for this flight was 17 years old having first entered service in the year 2005. the flight progressed as normal over the atlantic and by half past seven in the morning local time the aircraft had begun its descent into paris the first officer sitting in the right-hand seat would be flying the approach and landing the aircraft at charles de gaulle he would be using runway 26 left which would require him to fly out to the east of the airport and then to turn 180 degrees to line up with the westerly facing runway the skies were cloudy and the pilots would not break out of the bottom of the clouds until they were just 300 feet above the ground everything went to plan during the descent and by quarter to eight that morning the aircraft was lined up with the runway four minutes later air traffic control cleared the flight to land the crew lowered the gear and set the airspeed on the autopilot to their approach speed of 140 knots they then carried out the landing checklist shortly after this while descending through an altitude of about 1500 feet above the ground the first officer disconnected the autopilot and began flying the aircraft manually he left the auto throttle engaged so that the autopilot would be controlling the aircraft speed he made minor adjustments on the controls steering the aircraft slightly left and right as needed then apparently without warning the aircraft started to bank six degrees to the left the first officer expressed his surprise at this and the captain noted that the aircraft was now starting to veer off the approach path seconds later the bank angle had reached 7 degrees which was beyond the normal bank angle at this stage of the approach confused the crew initiated a go around the first officer hit the take off go around buttons on the throttles which pushed them to go around power and he started pulling the nose of the plane up as the plane pitched skywards and the engine spooled up the left bank continued all the way to 15 degrees the aircraft appeared to have a mind of its own now both pilots were fighting with the controls the forces they were experiencing through their control columns were so strong that while grappling with them one pilot accidentally pushed the push-to-talk button transmitting the ordeal to air traffic control [Applause] [Music] troubled by their transmission the controller called the aircraft at that same time another air france flight had just taken off from the runway which was now beneath flight 11. if it kept climbing it could collide with the out of control aircraft above the controller told this aircraft to immediately stop its climb at 1500 feet but the controller didn't know whether the aircraft had even heard him because the pilots of fight 11 continued inadvertently pressing the push-to-talk button as they fought with the controls the crew then hit the take off go around switch on the throttles for a second time this pushed the engines to their maximum power and the aircraft leapt into a steep climb pitching up to 24 degrees above the horizon the first officer made the standard call out of positive climb and then retracted the landing gear however because he didn't raise the flaps the gear configuration warning alarm sounded the plane was warning the pilots that it was close to the ground and set up for landing it didn't understand why they were raising the gear luckily the pilots of the fight which had just taken off had heard the controller's instructions to stop at 1500 feet and once flight 11's crew had stopped transmitting they notified him of this the physical force required to counteract the pressure on the controls was in excess of 50 pounds and both pilots were at their physical limits they were over one of the most densely populated metropolises on the planet if they lost control of their aircraft there was no telling what the loss of life on the ground might be eventually as they reached an altitude of 4000 feet the captain took control of the aircraft and managed to stabilize it the flight then contacted air traffic control the crew took stock of their situation and decided that they should make a cautious second approach to charles de gaulle whatever their issue was it seemed to have corrected itself the safest thing to do was to engage the autopilot and head back around for a second approach while closely monitoring the aircraft the first officer took control of the aircraft again and the captain relayed these intentions to air traffic control [Applause] [Music] foreign foreign shortly after the crew were given instructions to line up with runway two seven right a child to go after a few minutes they were back on final approach and as they broke out of the clouds at 300 feet above the ground they were greeted with a welcome sight level ground the flight touched down safely on its second attempt and the crew taxied back to the terminal immediately the question on everyone's mind was what exactly had caused the modern aircraft like the triple 7 to go haywire on final approach was there a flaw in its computerized flight controls was there an issue with the maintenance of the plane should passengers flying on triple sevens be worried the french bureau of investigation and analysis for civil aviation safety or bea immediately began investigating the incident they got hold of the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder and fight data recorder and began analyzing them for clues as to what went wrong pretty quickly they honed in on a possible culprit and it was surprising how simple it turned out to be for some reason during final approach the first officer had started making a series of inputs on the controls which began to tilt the aircraft to the left with the aircraft in the clouds he had to rely solely on his primary flight display to determine the orientation of the aircraft yet for some reason he did not perceive that he was banking the aircraft to the left even as he manipulated the controls in such a way to do exactly that the aircraft was simply following his commands but he appeared unaware of the commands that he was giving when the first officer noted his surprise to the captain that the aircraft was turning left the captain naturally assumed that there was something wrong either with the weather or the aircraft so the crew initiated a go-round but here's where the real breakdown occurred during the go-around the captain started flying the aircraft but never stated that he was taking over control by issuing the standard call out i have control this meant that both pilots were now struggling with the controls at the same time this is a recipe for disaster in the triple seven both control columns are mechanically linked look how they move completely in tandem here if one pilot applies ten pounds of force to push the nose down the other pilot must apply ten pounds of force to counteract this to keep the nose level there should never be two pilots flying the aircraft at the same time in this case the pilots were applying as much as 50 pounds of force on the controls during the go-round the first officer was pulling back with all his might against what in his mind was a deranged aircraft which was hell bent on nose diving into the ground the captain on the other hand was pushing hard in the controls with all his strength trying to get the nose of the aircraft down while it seemed to want to go straight up in the heat of these desperate moments in the cockpit each pilot was so engaged in his attempts to save the aircraft that neither noticed that the other was fighting with the controls as well but in the opposite direction they were engaged not in a fight with their aircraft but entirely in a fight with each other this was an embarrassing not to say almost deadly predicament the initial reports released by the bea show that the forces on the controls were so strong that on two occasions the controls became decoupled this is a safety mechanism built in so that if one control column becomes jammed the other can be wrenched free so that at least one of the controls is free at all times this means that at two points during this flight the pilots were using so much force on the controls that they overcame the in-built safety mechanism which is only there for when a control gets jammed in this case both control columns were in perfect working order it appears that it was the pilots who were not this is an embarrassing incident for air france and it's not the first time that two of its pilots ended up fighting for the controls without realizing that they were actually fighting each other famously in 2009 an air france airbus a330 crashed midway across the atlantic ocean after one pilot held the nose of the aircraft up while the other tried to push it down in that case the outcome was less fortunate with all 228 people on board perishing the outcome of that crash was a renewed focus both in air france and across the industry on a concept known as crew resource management that is basically teamwork and communication in the cockpit but was air france 11 another case of the left seat not knowing what the right seat was doing have the lessons learned from air france 447 been forgotten already perhaps it's too early to say as the investigation is still underway but unless serious measures are taken to address these issues the next aircraft and its passengers may not be so lucky humans make mistakes but the strength of a two-person fight crew is that mistakes can be seen and fixed before they become serious this time it appears that a breakdown of crew resource management almost led to disaster it remains to be seen whether the lessons of this particular incident will be used to prevent future loss of life special thanks to the patreon and youtube members for supporting the channel i'd especially like to thank snowdoggo and joey for their very generous contributions if you'd like to support the channel and see more of these videos then you can sign up on patreon or youtube i've put the links here on screen as always let me know if there are any incidents you'd like me to cover and i'll see you next week for another episode

Channel: Green Dot Aviation

Views: 351,878

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Id: Vzu8jMjzIM8

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 23 2022