Posted on 05/22/2026 11:02:44 AM PDT by zipper
"A French court on Wednesday delivered a dramatic verdict against Airbus and Air France over France's worst air disaster, ruling that both companies were guilty of corporate manslaughter in the 2009 Rio-Paris plane crash off Brazil....."
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.com ...
"Much has been made in the aftermath of the relationship between pilots and co-pilots in airlines around the world, with experts from both the official investigation and independent analyses suggesting that co-pilots are often hesitant to contradict their superior officers in emergency situations."
Wasn’t that the flight that had the bad peto/air speed sensors that went down in the Atlantic and they couldn’t find it for a long time?
Not that the pilots shouldn’t have been able to recover, but I thought it was a foregone conclusion that this was a mechanical failure first.
From 2009 to 2026 - 17 years later; that’s not “justice”, whether the verdict is right or wrong.
Air France Flight 447 Rio Paris 2019 (Mayday Air Disasters)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yU30_2zxh0
Yes, it went down in June 2009 and was recovered in April 2011.
They had an airspeed comparator anomoly from icing, and the autopilot disconnected - the computer essentially “gave up” on the right airspeed and handed the plane over to the pilots. The rest was crew error.
Agreed. And confusing. Here’s a 2023 article entitled “Air France and Airbus cleared over fatal 2009 Rio-Paris crash” from the BBC.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65301302
And an FR article about it:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4146181/posts?page=1
That is an excellent video. Mayday Air Disasters is a good series - and factually accurate.
The AF447 crash generated a lot of scrutiny in the airline training/simulator world. Most of the (U.S.) majors dedicated targeted simulator time to high-altitude upset recovery training as a result of this crash.
aviation ping!
Aviation Ping!................
I’d like to hear about the guy who missed the flight because of Rio traffic or whatever. What has he done with his gift of life since?j. Granted the same could be asked of all of us but this guy got a very special gift in missing his flight.
The reason the plane crashed was the pilot and co-pilot were both trying to fly the plane, one was pulling back on the controls and the other was pushing forward and because the joystick controllers were not visible to each other they did not realize it until it was too late. Total pilot error.
I don’t remember that, but here’s a story that says four people missed the flight...
“The 39-year-old Slovenian sailor and father of two was spared because his cab driver was in a hurry to see a soccer match.”
https://www.foxnews.com/story/four-travelers-missed-doomed-air-france-flight-447
Maybe that was it. I seem to recall the taxi aspect. Thanks
I remember this one. The plane was stalled, the warnings were blaring. The main captain went to his birth and was sleeping when the incident began and the active pilots continued to pull up while a perfectly functioning aircraft plummeted.
The captain made it back to the cockpit and soon realized what was happening and ordered them to nose down the plane so it could gain speed and fly again… you can hear him order them to base down the plane but by then it was too late.
A perfectly mechanically operating vehicle was piloted into the ocean killing everyone onboard.
This is an incident I cite, whenever I say when I screw up at work, nobody dies.
Airbus and Air France were responsible for training the pilots... But in the end... It was pilot error caused by actions they took because the pedo-tube was clogged and sending them and the plane incorrect information, so this verdict will likely be overturned.
That being said... The design of these pedo-tubes is obviously faulty. More than a few accidents have been caused by faulty pedo-tubes.
The transcript, scrolled on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJND9CE7Euc&t=198s
A narrated transcript with voiceover summary, 14 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM3CwBYX-ms
The iced-over pitot tubes induced the reactions that caused the undertrained pilot(s) to crash the airplane. The first mis-step was the right seater zooming the airplane right after the autopilot disconnected, setting up the stall. That was a basic airmanship error - a panic response.
Once they descended a couple of thousand feet, the instruments started to recover.
When the computer disconnected the autopilot, giving control to the pilots, the instruments were not working properly but recovered soon afterwards during the descent.
The right-seater, Bronin, kept pulling back on the stick all the way down, confounding any chances of recovery from the stall, even when told to stop pulling back on the stick.
By the time he started cooperating it was too late.
Airbus design and training requires the cockpit crews to be airplane operators, not pilots.
There was also a book written by an A330 captain about the crash:
https://www.understandingaf447.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Some summary quotes:
“The real story is how it came to be that they couldn’t keep the airplane under control for one minute, how the alternate flight control law prevented the airplane’s natural positive stability from pitching the nose down, how one pilot knew the other was screwing up and took no action to stop it....You’ve heard that the crew did not react to the stall warning. But, you’ll see that they reacted exactly how they were taught to - it just didn’t do any good.”
I believe 2 of the 3 pitot /static systems had no pitot heat (designed that way). They flew through an area of severe icing associated with a line of thunderstorms, the pitot system allegedly iced up and confused the fly by wire system and the pilots were unable to hand fly the aircraft for whatever reason. The aircraft stalled and crashed from 36,000 feet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.