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A new book has revealed the chilling last few minutes of confusion between the pilots of Air France 447 before it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, with one of them exclaiming: “Damn it! We’re going to crash. It can’t be true!”
His co-pilot replied: “But what’s happening?” Moments later, the audio ended.
All 228 passengers and crew on board the Airbus A330-200 died in the crash.
The book, Rio-Paris Crash: A Collection of Pilot Errors, written by French aviation author Jean-Pierre Otelli, described a scene in the Airbus cockpit that was dominated by confusion, a lack of co-ordination, and denial among the flight crew as they struggled to deal with a stall.
The full transcript of the discussion between the pilots Marc Dubois, the 58-year-old captain of the plane, who had 11,000 flying hours, David Robert, 37 and Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32, was previously withheld by air accident investigators who said they did not want to upset their families, London’s Daily Telegraph reported.
“So is he coming?” Mr Robert said after Mr Dubois left the cockpit for a break.
“Hey what are you … ” Mr Dubois said when he returned.
Mr Robert: “What’s happening? I don’t know, I don’t know what’s happening.”
Mr Bonin: “I’ve got a problem I don’t have vertical speed. I don’t have any indication.”
Mr Dubois: “I don’t know, but right now we’re descending.”
The plane approached the sea and was rocking from side to side at this time.
Mr Robert: “What do you think? What do you think? What should we do?”
Mr Bonin: “I don’t have control of the plane, I don’t have control of the plane at all.”
In the final exchange, Mr Dubois is heard to say: “Ten degrees pitch.”
Mr Robert: “Go back up! … Go back up! … Go back up! … Go back up!”
Mr Bonin: “But I’ve been going down at maximum level for a while.”
Mr Dubois: “No, No, No! … Don’t go up! … No, No!”
Mr Bonin: “Go down, then!”
Mr Robert: “Damn it! We’re going to crash. It can’t be true!”
Mr Bonin: “But what’s happening?!”
The audio ended.
The reports previously released by France’s Bureau d’Enquetes sur les Accidents (BEA) investigators showed the crew pulled the jet into a steep climb until it slowed to an aerodynamic stall before slumping into the sea.
“This accident, and the mystery surrounding it, elicited huge emotion in France as well as in Brazil,” Otelli wrote in the book.
“Beyond the questions raised about modern air safety and pilot training, the crash of the Rio-Paris flight will remain a case study in the annals of air transport.”
BEA said it strongly condemned the disclosure of the full transcript.
The mention of personal conversations between the crew members “have no bearing on the event, which shows a lack of respect for the memory of the late crew members”, the accident bureau said.
BEA is set to issue a final report on the accident in June next year following meetings of experts that will examine pilot behaviours in stressful situations.
An interim report from a criminal probe this month broadly endorsed the findings by BEA in a report in May, which showed ice-blocked speed sensors shut down the aircraft’s autopilot and the crew reacting incorrectly.
Air France said yesterday the information in the book was “non-verified, and non-verifiable”, saying it brought “no new elements”.
Manslaughter charges have been filed against Air France and Airbus as part of the criminal investigation, which could increase damages payouts if any criminal liability is established.
Bloomberg and Glenda Kwek
A China United Airlines flight from Beijing to Urumqi, northwestern China, was forced to land at another airport Thursday afternoon after a mentally disgruntled woman alleged there were explosives on board.
The KN 2273 flight, with 160 passengers and 10 crew members, landed at the Jiayuguang Airport in Northwest China’s Gansu Province in an emergency, and police came on board to repatriate all passengers, and conducted a thorough screening of all passengers and their luggage.
No explosives were found, and police found the woman, 27 years and surnamed Wang, was telling a lie threatening the flight, probably because she was mentally unstable after a quarrel with her boyfriend.
Wang was detained by police, facing further investigations.
The KN2273 flight took off at 2:55 pm Beijing time from Beijing’s southern Nanyuan Airport, and was scheduled to land at Urumqi, capital of northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region at 6:35 pm.
According to China United Airlines reports, during the journey, Wang handed the crew a written note which claimed there existed explosives on the plane
The crew immediately contacted the nearest airport, Jiayuguan, and landed safely there at 5:40pm.
All the passengers were evacuated while police detained the passenger, a 27-year-old woman surnamed Wang, who is originally from Chongqing City but most recently worked at a bank in Beijing.
She had a problem with her boyfriend and was heading to Xinjiang to talk to him, local police said.
Chang Shouyuan, head of the Public Security Bureau of Jiayuguan City, told Xinhua news agency that the woman passenger had shouted: “I want to perish with many of you. There is TNT on the plane.”
source: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn
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She may always love you, but when it comes to airline safety Whitney Houston prefers to fly sans legally mandated bodyguard.
According to TMZ, Houston was nearly kicked off a Delta flight in Atlanta Wednesday afternoon after she refused repeated requests to buckle her seatbelt.
Multiple sources tell the website the “Exhale (Shoop Shoop)” singer “‘got diva’ on the crew member” and only relented after “another crew member came over and warned Houston that if she didn’t buckle up, she would have to get off the plane.”
The former addict eventually relented and let a crew member buckle her up, allowing the plane to take off.
According to sources close to the singer, “Whitney ‘overreacted a little bit after missing an earlier flight but she’s still 100% sober and was on the way to Detroit for her first day of shooting a new movie.’”
A word of advice to the PA on that shoot: quit.
Another American is giving power to our international reputation for suing every time someone annoys us. So what’s the problem? Continental Airlines did not hook up their direct line to Mother Nature before taking Colleen O’Neal up into the friendly skies back in 2009, and the whole plane shook from the turbulence.
She wants the airline to pay for medical treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) plus mental anguish. Of course she does!
Let me make this clear: I’m not mocking PTSD. It’s a valid medical condition, and it can be a scary one. The Texas woman’s description of the flight — “so severe she felt like the plane lost power and was falling out of the sky” — even sounds scary. Not to mention, turbulence ranks right up there with screaming babies and stinky toilets on the reasons people hate to fly. There are entire websites devoted to calming people down about the turbulence risks (low if you stay IN your seat) so the airline industry can keep going.
But why, oh why, do we have to blame everything on someone else and go rushing into the court system with another frivolous lawsuit? By suing Continental plus Colgan Air and Pennacle Airlines for the flight to Houston from College Station, O’Neal is making it pretty clear she blames them for an act of God.
Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but if airlines could control Mother Nature, we could end all delays. Forever! Heck, I have a good friend who is a pilot, I’d ask him for the secret to ensure sunny skies and 70 degrees right over my house all day, every day.
Statistics show that there is turbulence on just about every flight. Period. Usually it’s not as severe as the description O’Neal has been giving people, but you have to know it’s a risk when you climb aboard. If anyone had control in this situation, it sounds like the person who got on the plane.
source: http://thestir.cafemom.com
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