Air France Black Box Reveals Pilot Confusion

Tuesday, 24 May 2011 | by Pat's Picks

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating reconstruction of what happened in the final minutes of the Air France flight that crashed two years ago, en route from Rio to Paris. Apparently, the information pieced together from the recovered black box recorder indicates that the pilots became confused “by alarms they received from various automated flight-control systems” as they flew through routine turbulence. It also appears that the crew flew into some icing, which is “renowned for making airspeed-indicators and other external sensors unreliable.” The Journal’s anonymous source says even though the basic cockpit function continued to work properly, the crew didn’t follow protocol, perhaps because of their confusion. 

Investigators are likely to point the finger at Air France for not training its pilots in to deal with automation problems “in conjunction with a high-altitude aerodynamic stall, an emergency when the wings lose lift and the plane quickly becomes uncontrollable.” Airbus, the maker of the plane that crashed has been a big proponent of such training.

(Photo via Wikipedia)