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Air France jet 'seconds from disaster' after autopilot fails in drama with chilling echoes of Brazil crash
An Air France jet was just seconds from nose-diving to disaster after the autopilot failed during 'extreme turbulence' over the South Atlantic Ocean. The high-altitude alert in July chillingly echoed the cockpit chaos that preceded the fatal crash of an Air France Rio-Paris flight two years earlier, in which all 228 passengers died. In the latest drama, the autopilot shut down as the plane hit a storm at 35,000 feet while flying from Venezuelan capital Caracas to Paris. Read more:… (www.dailymail.co.uk) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
@Vancouverjake, You forgot a biggie ... AF lost a Concorde, still no blame put on AF, (despite their 'comprehensive' enquiry), yet they didn't install the protective shields adjacent to the tyres, had a wheel with a shim missing, (poor maintenance), causing the plane to steer offline, and the flight engineer shut down an engine without orders from the Captain. Still happy with AF flight crew professional standards? I'm not!!
I ain't a wantin' to start anything here, but didn't 447 take a climb into that stall as the automated systems started going beserk? If that be the case, there is a gremelin there that somebody needs to find and fast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
please make sure you or your family does not get into A330 especially if it is AIR FRANCE!
@isma Mal: Go into "Popular Squawks(last week)" and read the 2 articles about automation fear and 50 crashes. Basic skill is becoming a thing of the past, and Airbus is worst in my opinion because it's system will lock a pilot out of certain functions that may be just what is needed. None of the rest have got there yet but it is worrisome that the push now is for pilots to monitor systems and push buttons rather than manually fly the plane. Once your older generation of pilots has retired, you won't have the Sully's and those like him up front anymore. If you are a PAX, you just better pray nothing breaks.
It's an Airbus, right. Too early to conclude at this time, plus it's a different type of aircraft, A340. Also, automated disasters can happen to Boeings too, recall the B738 in Amsterdam? Faulty altimeters fed into the autopilot the order to reverse thrust, in middair. We rely too much on technology.
Did you notice the article says this was an A340? Although the picture is of an A330.
@David Truchot: 330 or 340, basic system is the same. I made a comment about Boeing in an earlier comment on another post. Auto thrust and auto pilot relying on data from different altimeters when one went crappy and the results blew everybody's mind. If a pilot is going to rely on the systems to bring you in rather than hand fly it in, they had better damn well pay attention to what it is doing and know how to get out of it if something goes screwey. You are correct in that we are relying too much on automation nowadays. I believe that altimeter thing with Boeing has been taken care of, but that is just another example of somebody not really understanding a system AND not understanding Murphy's law. It seems like any airborne emergency is 3 times as bad as one in a SIM, probably from the time standpoint more than anything. In a SIM, you can let go of everything, crash and walk out the door. In the air, there are those things called altitude, airspeed and the ground. That last one will get'cha if you don't know what you are doing.