Near Catastrophe! The Air France Flight that Almost Crashed into a Mountain

a boeing triple seven is six sacking between thunderstorms over western cameroon it's a short flight so the crew are finding themselves at a cruise altitude which is much lower than they're normally used to they're flying in and out of clouds in the darkness as they make their turn towards the destination airport when suddenly from out of nowhere a terrain warning can be heard as the crew initiates their terrain escape maneuver they can see the dark outlines of trees just in front of the aircraft the pilots now need to ask themselves something that no pilot wants to ask where are they stay tuned on the 1st of may 2015 air france flight 953 is operating from paris charles de gaulle in france down towards malabu in equatorial guinea the aircraft has been flown is a boeing triple seven and it's had a couple of technical issues earlier on during the day which has delayed the original departure time and that has forced their france to augment the flight crew with a third flight crew member in order to be able to extend the duty times of the crew the pilots who are now flying together are quite experienced the captain has over fifteen thousand hours with six thousand hours on type the first officer has just over five thousand hours and the relief pilot that was called out has just about fifteen thousand hours in total this was going to be a quite long day for the crew because after they had operated that first flight from paris down to malabu they were scheduled to do two short hops more from malabu to dualla in cameroon and then back again to malabu and once they came back to malabu they were scheduled for a night stop and then the following day they needed to operate from malabu back to dwala and then from dwala back again to their home base in paris once they started to operate these two short flights they very quickly realized that the most efficient way of doing the cockpit work was to do the departure briefing and the arrival and approach briefing both together while they were still sitting on the ground because once they got airborne those 20 minutes would go very very fast and the area between dualla and malabu was a non-radar environment which meant that everything that they had to do was procedural that meant a lot of concentration on behalf of the pilot flying but also the pilot monitoring who had to do a lot of air traffic control communication and that's how they ended up operating these two flights and the weather on that day was really good so those two last flights went out without any type of problem on the second day the weather situation had changed for the worse now there was a lot of active thunderstorms both over malabu but also over dwala which was the destination airport the pilots tried to get their head around the weather situation but it was really hard for them to get any accurate weather information and the captain spent a lot of time during the pre-flight contacting the headquarters back in paris via satellite phone to try to get them to read out the weather picture this caused a lot of frustration and confusion and the crew when they started their briefing for the day said that the major threats that they were facing was the poor weather situation both at the departure and the destination airport but also on route between them once the flight crew had finally received the weather and finished their briefing they proceeded to brief their 11 cabin crew members about the day's flight and then they walked out to the aircraft and they started boarding their only 23 passengers for the flight over towards dwala they decided that the first officer was going to be flying for this first flight so he started setting up the flight deck for departure and when he was finished with that he started doing the briefing both for the departure from malabu and the arrival into dwala runway 3-0 which was on use at the time he briefed that the major threat for this departure was going to be the weather that was around but he also said that there was quite a lot of terrain down to the south of malabu airport and because of that they would have to make a right-hand turn of the departure instead of the left-hand turn that was indicated on their flight plan he then proceeded to explain that they were going to rejoin the flight plan route and then they would proceed up towards the dme arc for runway 3-0 ademy arc is a type of procedural arrival which is built on the aircraft flying a specific distance away from the airport until it reaches an inbound radial from a vor beacon at which point it will turn in to intercept the ils approach now the first officer used a standard rival ifr root chart in order to do the whole briefing because that particular shot that he was using had both malabu and dwala on the same chart making it much easier to brief but what he didn't brief or what he didn't point out was that malabu was inserted as an insert on that chart that meant that the chart in itself was not to scale it showed the correct bearing from the malabo airport to dwala but it didn't show the correct distance and that's going to become important very soon the first officer did also mention in his brief that there was some higher terrain up towards the north of the chart where an old volcano called mount cameroon was situated the grid mora in that area was 15 300 feet that means that that's the altitude that an aircraft needs to fly in order to have at least 1 000 feet of terrain separation in that particular grid of the chart but he didn't really discuss that as a major threat because the flight plan route was scheduled to go significantly south of mount cameroon the crew continued to discuss the flight and they decided that the first officer was going to have weather radar on his navigation display that way he could monitor where all of the active thunderstorms were and the captain would keep the terrain on his navigational display so that he could see whether or not they were closing in on terrain this way they would optimize the use of their navigational equipment and also make sure that they were aware where all of the different threats were the captain who saw that this was going to be a very busy and quite complicated flight also told the relief pilot was sitting on the jumpsuit to keep his eyes and ears open and make sure to speak up if he saw something that wasn't looking right as i mentioned before there was very few passengers scheduled on this first flight so one of the cabin crew had been allowed to come in and sit on the jumpsuit for this short flight as well now this cabin crew did not get a headset so he couldn't listen into the departure briefing but he was there observing anyway when the scheduled departure time came the captain wasn't fully ready he decided to delay the flight because he still wasn't sure about what the weather situation was like he could see that in malawi where they were the weather was starting to clear up the thunderstorms were starting to move away so they could safely depart but he didn't know what the situation was like in their destination dwala so once again he got onto the satellite phone contacted air france headquarters in paris and at time 2045 he received the latest weather report which indicated that the thunderstorms of dwala was starting to move slowly towards the east and that two aircraft had managed to land safely there this was exactly the kind of news that the captain was hoping for so at the time 2053 air france flight 953 started pushing back from the gate and taxiing out for departure at time 21-03 the first officer moved his trust levels forward to set take off trust and the giant boeing triple 7 started rolling down the runway they took off normally and after departure the first officer started turning right onto heading off zero three zero degrees in order to avoid the terrain to the south of the airport almost immediately several large red thunderstorms could be seen on the first officer's navigation display now the captain who had terrain selected on his navigation display now thought that they had left the dangerous terrain behind them and he switched over his navigation display to weather as well in order to be able to better assess the situation the original route that they wanted to get back onto was filled with thunderstorms so they realized that they wouldn't be able to navigate back on that instead they continued flying in heading select and they started choosing a more northerly route as they were doing so they needed to communicate this to the dwala approach controller and as i mentioned before there's no radar available so this discussion between the captain was pilot monitoring and the radar controller took several minutes to do while the captain was informing the controller about what they were doing as the captain was busy with this discussion the first officer was looking at his navigation display trying to assess what it was that he was seeing he could see a large red return in front of him but he could also see a strange oval shaped return to his right which almost looked like it was following the aircraft as they were flying northbound in order to assess what that strange return was he momentarily switched over from weather to terrain and he also increased the scale from 40 nautical miles to 80 nautical miles he waited about six seconds or so on after those six seconds were up he couldn't see anything on his navigation display so he switched back to weather radar again and this assessment had convinced him that what he was seeing was a big red return in the front that was obviously mount cameroon coming up that corresponded to what he had briefed of the chart and he thought that that strange red return he had on his right side possibly was a false return as in not real now it is important to understand that when you switch to a new mode on your navigation display so as you go from weather radar to terrain you need to let the screen update right and the update generally takes about eight seconds to do and this update needs to be done every time that you switch mode but also when you switch the scale in this case the first officer had only switched over for about 6 seconds and during those 6 seconds he'd also changed the scale of the map meaning that it is unlikely that the screen had time to refresh during the time it was on terrain now let's talk a little bit about the terrain display on the boeing triple seven the display gets its information from a global terrain database and once it knows where it is it's going to show that terrain to the pilots on the display within the scale they have selected the way it shows the terrain is by painting little green dots for all terrain that is between 2000 feet to 500 feet below the aircraft's current altitude terrain that is between 500 feet below and 2000 feet above are painted as amber dots and any terrain that is higher than 2000 feet above the aircraft's current altitude is painted as little red dots if a terrain warning would be activated then those dots would turn into solid color so either solid green amber or red and it would also activate terrain on both navigation display no matter what had been previously selected now this is going to become very important very soon but before we go any further into this story i just want to share this short message from my sponsor did you know that some days i actually consumed two to three books on top of being a professional pilot and a youtuber yeah just hear me out okay the reason for this time management miracle is today's sponsor which is blinkist now blinkist is a fantastic app that takes non-fictional books and titles and they distill them down to their absolute essence their core which they call blinks this means that reading through a book or listening to a podcast which they now call shortcast by the way can take you only 15 to 20 minutes to do which is absolutely perfect i tend to use blinkist when i'm out exercising which i love doing in the morning or when i go to the gym or when i'm doing other things you can use the app to filter down to specific categories that you might like and three titles that i recently went through was the flight atomic habits and of the clock i would definitely recommend blinkies to anyone who has a busy schedule but still want to consume a lot of great books and if you click on the link in the video description here below or in the comments section you'll get seven days free trial where you can check it out and on top of that 25 off the regular price so consider supporting me by supporting my sponsor now back to the video about 10 minutes into the flight the captain asks the first officer to initiate a right hand turn to start connecting with the dmi arc for the rival in towards dwala the captain is still talking a lot with atc as this is happening and the first officer is very hesitant to make this right hand turn he can still see that strange red oval return on his navigation display but he also knows that straight ahead there is an even larger red return which he thinks is mount cameroon and he definitely doesn't want to fly into that one the relief pilot also indicates that he's a bit hesitant but the first officer starts his turn slowly to the right and he sets the heading bug to a heading of 120 degrees the aircraft banks about 25 degrees to the right and initiates the turn at time 21 14 and 12 seconds that's about 30 seconds into the turn the first caution terrain gpws warning can be heard in the cockpit the automatic switching to terrain on both navigational displays occurs and the first office responds to this warning by turning the heading block even further to the right onto a heading of 134 degrees at this point the aircraft is at its planned cruising altitude of 9000 feet but its height of a terrain is only 5 000 feet and it's now decreasing rapidly only three seconds later the next terrain pull up gpws warning can be heard indicating that the aircraft is now about 30 seconds from a potential collision with terrain whenever any pilot hears that warning they are trained to do one thing and one thing only and that is without question immediately initiate the terrain escape maneuver and this is exactly what the first officer does he increases trust to maximum he pitches up to what he estimates to be about 20 degrees pitched up he verified that the speed break is down and then he continues to fly the aircraft but remember they were in a turn when this warning appeared and they're still in a turn now which the relief pilot calls out to the puddle flying telling him that level the wings off and the first officer does so that will give him a better climb performance and give him a better possibility to avoid the terrain the captain is now calling pull up pull up to the first officer who's executing the terrain escape maneuver and both the first officer and the cabin crew who's sitting on the jump seat could see the outlines of dark trees outside of the windows as they're now climbing as much as they possibly can so what has actually happened here what's going on well remember how the first officer used that standard rival ifr chart to brief the departure and their rival in towards dwala well the problem with that chart was that the departure airport was actually depicted as an inset and when you look at that chart if you don't think about it it actually gives the false impression of mount cameroon being almost exactly north of the departure airport so that meant that the crew as they were now deviating from their pre-flight plan route towards the north east they didn't see mount cameroon as an actual threat they thought that they were going well east on the mountain in reality they were now coming in to the west of the mountain finding themselves with the 13 202 feet high peak between them and the arrival airport as the first officer is now continuing to fly the terrain escape maneuver with the gpws warnings constantly screaming in the cockpit the captain remembers a simulator session that he'd done a few months earlier in that simulated session he had also executed the terrain escape maneuver only to crash into traffic that was flying at a higher level and as is now thinking about that he realizes that he doesn't know if there's any traffic above them when they're now executing the train escape maneuver so when the aircraft classes to about 11 000 feet the captain asked the first officer to start level the aircraft off the first officer initially ignores this and continues to climb to 12 000 feet but the captain keeps insisting that he wants him to level off and at 13 000 feet the first officer follows this command and levels the aircraft off but remember how i told you that the grid mora the safety height in that part of the chart was about fifteen thousand three hundred feet this means that the aircraft has now leveled off more than 2 000 feet below the safety altitude in that sector but luckily it turns out that they passed north northeast of the highest peak of my cameroon meaning that the lowest height over terrain that the aircraft encountered was about two thousand one hundred feet and that occurred as the aircraft passed to eleven thousand five hundred feet climbing once the ordeal was now finally over the first officer re-engaged the autopilot and the outer throttle and the crew started to resume their navigation towards the demo arc arrival for runway 3-0 in dwala the captain asked the first officer in a calm and reassuring voice whether or not he felt okay to continue to fly and this calmed the first officer down a little bit who said that yeah i can i can continue to do the approach the subsequent approach and landing into dwala was uneventful but the first officer stated that once they had taxed in and completed the shutdown checklist he started to shake in his entire body which i for one completely understand the crew now conducted a debriefing amongst themselves and then they contacted their france operation and this is very important this is something that you have to do as a pilot after serious incidents or accidents happen so that they can give you guidance on how to proceed in most cases especially after a close encounter of a terrain like this the crew should pull the cvr circuit breaker to preserve the cockpit voice recorder data to then help the subsequent investigation but interestingly enough on this occasion it seems like air france asked the crew whether or not they were happy to continue to operate the crew surprisingly said that they were and then they continued to operate the last flight of the day back up to charles de gaulle again now in the investigation that followed this very serious incident all of the involved crew members said that the training that they had received in the simulator with regards to terrain escape maneuvers was very effective and it was absolutely crucial that they had done that training fairly recently in order for the outcome of this potentially disastrous event to be as positive as it actually was it was also found during the investigation that air france hadn't done a proper threat assessment of this short route which involved not only the short flight time the lack of radar and the threats that mount cameroon and its high terrain posts the investigation also found that it wasn't prudent by the crew to use an ifr arrival chart at one of their primary navigational aids during this because it obviously led them to lose their situational awareness but they also came with a suggestion to boeing to consider implementing grid morass into the navigation display because that could potentially help the crews to regain situational awareness if they would venture into an area with high terrain without knowing it now if you want to see me executing a terrain escape maneuver well check out the video up here or if you want to continue to binge on accident and incident videos then check out this playlist if you want to support the work that i do here on the channel then consider becoming part of my awesome patreon family or get yourself some merch have an absolutely fantastic day wherever you are and i'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 1,025,106

Keywords: captain, mentour pilot, mentor pilot, crash investigation, full epsiodes, aviation, pilot, crash, air crash investigation, final report, boeing, airbus, piper, cessna, disaster, fatal crash, air incident, air disasters 2022, cameroon, africa, Boeing 777-200, terrain, escape, storm, True crime, True crime storytelling, Seconds from disaster, Terrain escape maneuveR

Id: SqleyIQ0C8Y

Length: 20min 17sec (1217 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 18 2022