Air France Black Box

[NismoZ]

The recovered black box from that doomed Air France flight of 2 yrs. ago tells an amazing story. Sounds like it is saying "pilot error" while the pilots union says "not our fault." Great. So, an iced-over speed sensor trips a stall warning, kicks off the auto pilot, and a pilot pulls the nose UP!? :eek: And tries to KEEP it up for 3 of the 4 minutes it took to fall the 38,000 ft. To the Atlantic? I've never even flown a model plane, but with engines at full power (box confirms) wouldn't that time have been better spent trying to dive to regain lift and control? Seems like the risk of ripping the wings off would have been a better choice than doing the WRONG thing!? And THIS...a second pilot left the cockpit and returned to "take control" in the final minute. WTF was THAT!? :confused: Any guesses on WHY he left his seat and WHERE he might have gone? The box paints a VERY tragic and heartbreaking picture.:( I wonder what Sully would have to say?

[nrc]

Baffling. Even with the icing problem and resulting invalid readings, I don't see anything about what they knew of the situation that would logically cause a pilot to keep giving nose up inputs.

Seems like the invalid readings must have caused them to lose faith in all their instruments and with no visual references at night they were confused, but three minutes of pulling the stick back doesn't make sense in any scenario.

The pilot was out on a normal break. Totally routine. But it's also confusing that when he returned he didn't immediately take control of the situation.

The invalid readings created the situation to begin with but it was pilot error that ultimately caused the crash. Are we into a generation of pilots who think airliners work like an arcade game?


Full report for those who like links... ;)

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/point.enquete.af447.27mai2011.en.pdf