The French public prosecutor is appealing against a ruling that acquits aircraft manufacturer Airbus and airline Air France of blame for a plane crash with an Airbus A330-200 off the coast of Brazil. A French court ruled earlier this month in a case involving a flight that crashed in 2009.

That flight was on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris and ran into problems in a storm over the Atlantic Ocean. So-called Pitot speed control tubes froze, preventing the pilots from getting clear speed readings. They lost speed, but did not notice it in time.

Relatives of the 12 crew members and 216 passengers who died had sued Airbus and Air France for involuntary manslaughter. They claim, along with some aviation experts, that the pilots were insufficiently trained to cope with the loss of speed. In addition, the problem of the frozen tubes would have been known before the crash.

The problem of freezing the Pitot tubes on Airbus A330 aircraft had already been reported by other pilots before the crash. In the months following the accident, these tubes were replaced worldwide. The crash also prompted a review of pilot training protocols.

The judge found that both companies had been negligent on some points. But those cases were not serious enough for a conviction. "A probable causal relationship is not enough," the judges said. It is striking that precisely the Public Prosecution Service had argued for acquittal, but is now appealing.

Alain Jakubowicz, lawyer on behalf of a number of relatives, says that there is "enormous relief" about this "very rare decision by the Public Prosecution Service". "The determination of the families will be even greater. This gives us great hope," said Jakubowicz.

--- DB4 - 20230201
* Origin: AVIATION ECHO HQ (2:292/854)

Vince,

My opinion, but only based on the raw info, is that, yes the crew screwed up - bad pitot tubes / non heating etc allowed. Poor training, rating renewals both for a/c type and not.

Flying a light twin, such as a Cessna C340P I have access to such
secondary instrumentation when using even sat navigation, let alone the other tools at my disposal.

A qualified UK, USA and others, license holder.

You remind me of my friend Luc, former Fido-sysop, who had an ULM. Flew some 200 hours on it and on several occasions tried to overrule professional pilots with 10.000+ hours.

When commenting on a case like this, you need to read up on it and familiarise yourself with the details. For starters, the full incident-report by the BEA (the French authority which examines aitcraft accidents) and the cockpit-voice recorder transcript are available online. Simply google for it, you have not done that.

You make it appear that the 3 cockpit crew were novices with hardly experience.

The captain had 10,988 commercial flying hours, of which 6,258 were as captain, including 1,700 hours on the Airbus A330.

The co-pilot had 2,936 commercial flight hours, of which 807 hours were on the Airbus A330.

The relief co-pilot had 6,547 commercial flying hours, of which 4,479 were on the Airbus A330.

In other words, pretty experienced people.

You need to go back to the moment of the incident à 2009 ... 14 years.

Pitot-tube heating was "on". Simple. What was the trouble was ice crystals forming on the pitot-tubes caused by high-altitude freezing rain altering the airflow enough to cause false speed readings and indicating an 'overspeed' condition. To correct that overspeed the nose was lifted a bit, although there was no overspeed. The plane climbed as a result in the beginning but the overspeed stayed, which made the co-pilot, who was in command, lift the nose even higher (the captain at that moment was in the crew rest compartment) and reduce power. As a result the aircraft turned into an aerodynamic stall at high altitude and the stick-shaker started rattling.

Here you have two different instruments giving contrary information: one saying you are going too fast, the other saying you are going too slow and about to lose lift. What do you do? In the middle of the night? No visual reference... The cockpit crew (co-pilot right seat [pilot in command], relief co-pilot left seat [pilot monitoring]) decided to lift the nose even higher to reduce speed. This worsened the stall condition. The nose 16 degrees up while the engines had been reduced to "flight idle". The flight parameters at that point were so bad that the Flight Management System disconnected and the screens went blank. No more readings were processed and the stick-shaker also disconnected. They figured the stall was solved while in fact it went from bad to horrific.

Here you have a wide-bodied airliner in an aerodynamic stall, falling out of the sky, in the pitchdark of the night with no visual reference and not a single instrument indicating anything.

The relief co-pilot called "my plane", confirmed by the co-pilot "your plane"... Pushed the nose down, revved-up the engines and increased the airflow over the wing surfaces. This started to provide correct information again to the flight management system which moved through the zone where the stick-shaker is active, which activated the stick shaker again and suddenly the pitot tubes started providing false information again.

So here you have a situation where by pushing the nose down and increasing speed, you are getting a warning that you are stalling. It didn't make sense, plus they got again an overspeed warning. Important to understand, under those conditions the auto-pilot disconnected and they were flying by hand ... with faulty instrumentation ... and no visual reference.

To overcome the new overspeed condition, the co-pilot again pulled his stick, while the relief co-pilot was pushing his stick not understanding what was happening as he thought he was in control...

They had alerted the captain who exited from the crew rest and saw the instrumentation. He did not demand his left-hand seat but strapped in the 3rd seat. He went through manuals, tried to coach the people in the left hand and right hand seats. He quickly figured out that the co-pilot never released the control stick and actually was flying instead of the relief co-pilot.

They had been stalling now for minutes and losing a lot of altitude. By the time the condition was discovered, they were too low to lower the nose and speed-up the engines to recover from the stall. The co-pilot realised it suddenly and is heard saying on the CVR in French "But, but ... we are going to crash then?" seconds before impact. At no point during the descent had they been aware.

The relief pitot-tubes for this particular aircraft were in Paris and were going to installed after the plane arrived.

Discussion erupted later about could this accident have happened with a Boeing? The answer is a painful "no" because the control columns in Boeing aircraft are interconnected and the relief co-pilot would have noticed immediately the co-pilot was still pulling and intervened. The joysticks of Airbus aircraft operate independently so they can be used differently with the left seat having priority, but when the left seat is not handling the joystick and the right seat is pulling in a cramp ... the nose goes up ... and remember, your artificial horizon is gone because of the lack of instrumentation.

--- DB4 - 20230201
* Origin: AVIATION ECHO HQ (2:292/854)