Air France Fires First (formal) Shot in Flight 447 Blame Game

As predicted the French circular firing squad has formed and this is the second member. The pilots' representatives have already walked from the investigation and now we have Air France blaming Airbus. Left to weigh in are the French Government NTSB equivalent (preliminary report only), Airbus itself, the pitot tube manufacturer, the autopilot maker and other subcontractors that were involved in the monitoring and control systems (bet it will turn out to be a German company by the tone of the release).

The initial release of the investigation which blamed the pilots directly and Air France indirectly on inadequate training has evolved into inappropriate pulsating warning system design. I predict the next will be accusations of failure to maintain and replace the pitot tubes next most likely from the pilots' representatives. Airbus will vigorously defend its design and computer control system and will point out Air France's failure to follow maintenance directives and inexperienced pilots. Here are links to the released information (http://www.businessinsider.com/air-france-crash-sounds-like-pilot-error-2011-5)

Since this is probably ending up in a French court, expect the pace of accusations to increase and for them to become "layered". Airbus has a huge stake in this investigation as does the French government.

I agree. In the end, all of the above will come way off the hip with enormous settlements, and the greatest beneficiaries will be the army of lawyers. Unfortunate, but typical, and very predictable. Of course the French will want to press criminal charges against SOMEBODY.

This to me seems like a blame battle here. Put the French court, Air France, and AFR447/A332 in the picture you got a war right there.

After following and commenting on this crash from the beginning the TWO major problems to be addressed are: 1) What did the designers miss that led to 3 experience pilots not knowing they were descending,ie. warning system and 2) why could they not get the nose down once they determined their altitude, ie. throttle up etc. As to 1) It is very obvious that too many different alarms were going off, too much data was coming up on the MFD and the pilots could not distinguish the correct order in which to react to them. and 2) It would seem that the flight computers might not have allowed the throttles to increase airspeed due to the designed in safety software. Just one pilot's perspective!

"This to me seems like a blame battle here" ... hence the title I gave to the post....

"French court, Air France, and AFR447/A332 in the picture you got a war right there"

The word "French" and "war" in the same sentence, now that's some funny stuff!

I am actually surprised they went there. American avoided blaming Airbus for the clear design flaw of the tail section not withstanding rudder forces. If it turns out that the computer fought the pilots with opposite control actions, the entire Airbus fleet will be grounded with huge implications for EADS.

The same French government that is deeply involved in Airbus and Air France is now also conducting the investigation. Unbelievable. After proving how a politically-motivated "investigation" works after the Concorde accident, the French are once again demonstrating to the world how poorly they deal with aviation accidents. A French court, which has full prosecutorial powers and isn't hesitant about using them as shown in March when Airbus was charged with manslaughter, is conducting the investigation. That alone has the effect of walling off the interested parties, who are interested only in protecting themselves. So instead of openness and cooperation, we have the kind of blame-tossing shown by Air France. It amazes me that the French, who love the cite their history of logical and rational thinkers, can't see why their system is so bad.

It's rare that the US government provides any good examples these days, but the NTSB has truly been one of the success stories in aviation. By separating it from the FAA, we have had the most objective investigations possible. Because the NTSB focuses on facts instead of blame and has no judicial power, it gets the most cooperation possible under truly difficult circumstances. Even when a US airline or manufacturer isn't involved, they are very often invited in by foreign governments after an accident. That says a lot in itself.

My prediction is that, despite plenty of blame for the airline and the manufacturer, the pilots will end up shouldering the majority of the blame. Those 3 poor guys, after all, are not a government agency. And they are not here to defend themselves, which is convenient for all the other interested parties. Hopefully their union won't desert them.

@indy2001 - agree 100%. It is far more important to find out what happened and try to keep it from happening again than trying to punish the people responsible, the hugest majority of whom always acted in good faith.

looks like another -- air crisis -- "heads down syndrome" -- it scares me when I see supposedly trained pilots forget to go back to basic instruments and fly the airplane... Sully ignored all the horns and whistles, flew the airplane using basic instruments, and landed in the river... course it was daylight and he had outside visual references - but he didn't succumb to the "head down syndrome"... i.e. head down, pushing buttons, trying to get the black boxes to fly the airplane....give me an old military pilot with "upset" training any time!

It was the Continental mechanic's fault of course!

Like some of the others, and as in earlier comments, they'll hang this on the pilots before it's over cause they are very dead and can't defend themselves. An NTSB type inquiry would be good here rather than the blame game. Last line of the article is interesting, however, as a bunch of senior and retired pilots in the forum have stressed "FLYING THE PLANE".
"BEA has recommended introducing specific manual flying training for such situations." Are they suggesting that the pilots didn't know how to fly or are they saying too many bells/whistles and the computer wouldn't listen.

Well said Indy. To quote some old pirate; "dead men tell no tales". May they rest in peace for goodness sake.

Good discussion guys.

Airbus pilots should be trained to recognize the significance and criticality of flying in alternate law with instrument failures, it's that simple. The blame lies equally with air france, airbus and the pilots.

@Wingscrubber - Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda. I actually agree with what you say in that it appears that all training and such has been pointed toward the fact of how easy it it is, the plane will fly itself, and just push a button. Such as what probably happened ain't supposed to happen. Training may be more centered toward that rather than flying the plane but it kinda sounds like here that the electronics went bananas here too and that pilot input either wasn't being accepted correctly or else it was and input was correct according to signals they were getting, which were false. Either way, they crashed. We weren't in the cockpit and reacting to that. Has anybody brought all this together yet and ran it into a SIM? It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

no no no - I'm talking about basic instruments - turn and bank, artificial horizon, etc that give the pilots a sense of what the plane is actually doing - yes, airspeed was iced out, but some of the old basic stuff should have been working and an old military pilot with flight upset training may have
tried to fly the airplane rather than try to reset the auto-pilot, computers, etc

@ Tom - I agree. However, did they have access to "old basic stuff" in the electronic environment of that aircraft? I don't know - just asking? Could an A330 guy enlighten us as to what exactly might have been available to the pilots of 447 as far as "old basic" instrumentation like we all learned to fly with is concerned?

All instrumentation is connected to the flight director system which will become the focus point as to the ability of the pilots ability to override it. in the last 2000' they were pushing down on the control and the nose of the aircraft never reacted to the input as determined from the voice recorder and the flight data recorder. At least that has been determined so as I said above the software program will become the real target of this investigation as will be demanded by the pilots union atty. That being said if they had steam gauges in the cockpit it will be as Tom is saying.

Leave it to the French to through the blame to someone else. There pilots made an error, Except it. Being in the maintenance part of airline industry for over 27 years now, everyone I know as well as myself knew it was pilot error, and not pitot static. I have been working pitot specialty for over 25 years!

I am surprised they did not say it was "Bush's Fault"

Some questions..... Can anyone explain why the crew did not at any time put the nose down into a flying attitude to break the stall when the alarm sounded in the first place. I do not think there is any record of them putting the aircraft attitude into a nose down attitude during the first warnings of the stall?

They must have had a least three attitude indicators in the cockpit with which they could have referred to and would not be affect by icing? Would there have not been at least one standby emergency attitude indicator in addition to their own individual glass cockpit versions in front of them?

If the blackbox as indicated in reports, recorded rate of descent and altitudes then can we assume the crew saw the same indications on their instruments right?

Correct me if I am wrong, but could not a basic IFR scan technique have shown the aircraft was going down at a high rate of descent?

If we assume the pressure altimeter was working correctly and unwinding in addition to the VSI being pegged, then why did they not place the aircraft nose in a recovery attitude with full power and then after in a level flight attitude with cruise power using the artificial horizons?

As indicated by allench1 the crew was pushing the nose down in the last 2000 feet does this mean they may have had no accurate altimeter readings and that they only finally noticed the situation of high rate of descent when the radar altimeter would have possibly set off an alarm?

I assume the radar altimeter works only at low altitudes and only accurately in zero bank attitudes?

10'000 feet a minute rate of descent...how did they miss that?

The Copilot who was just woke up from a sleep by the Captain to relieve him, could he have been a little groggy after only a few minutes on the flight deck.

Surprisingly we do not hear what was being said in the cockpit between the crew members. Did Captain scream for them to lower the nose below the horizon and to apply full power after he enters the flight deck?

Has there been a cockpit voice recording released yet?

It is even more surprising that there has surfaced by an instructor of the aircraft that there is a procedure for this and that they didn't call for the unreliable airspeed checklist.

In any event doesn't every pre solo pilot know what to do in a stall situation under VFR.

In IFR isn't an artificial horizon used as a substitute for recovery?

Even if the static ports were iced and giving erroneous info you could understand the confusion I guess initially but three and a half to four minutes later?

Power and attitude equals performance!!!!!

Lowering the nose below the horizon to an optimum attitude with max power would have broken the stall and putting the aircraft in an inappropriate level pitch attitude with cruise power should have allowed them to continue until they sorted out the A/S issues ..... Right?

I heard of a program now to train low time pilots for the en-route portion of flight (no takeoff landings) to watch the instruments and to alarm the captain if there are any problems en-route while he rests to do the landing at the other end.

I think I will stop flying commercial!!!

Al... That is where the Pilot Error was at. They apparrantly felt that there was no way the plane could be stalling there for they were thing the stall warning had failed and not the pitot static.

The French were very instrumental in setting up a program to 'Black List' airlines, and airlines from countries that fail to meet certain safety and maintenance standards. Airlines from all over Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and more were banned from flying into France until they met certain standards.

Yet look at accident records for the last 25 years.... look at hull losses in major accidents... which airline, and the subsidiary airlines it controls, has the WORST RECORD IN THE WORLD ????

And again, as they did with Concorde, where the airplane as over max gross take off weight, out of CG balance, taking off with a tail wind, with a wheel incorrectly installed and pulling the airplane off the left side of the runway.... find someone else to blame. Air France has been lucky with some of the accidents - the 4 day old A.320, the A.340 in Toronto, the Air France Regional Fokker 100 at Pau in 2006, the Air France (Brit Air) CRJ100 at Brest in 2003 with a combined loss of life of 4 and hundreds of shaken survivors. Not so lucky with Concorde and the A.330 over the Atlantic.

As you read the accident reports, the story comes down again and again to the same root causes: Lack of communication between the flight crew members, lack of flying skills, and plain, simple arrogance.

I will NEVER fly in an airliner operated by or for Air France, and I will urge family members to do the same. Until this endemic and systemic situation gets fixed, and fixed properly!