The Final Chapter

As expected, France’s counterpart to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile (BEA), on July 5 released its long-awaited final report into the loss of Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330 that disappeared over the equitorial Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009. Also as expected, the BEA found a complicated series of events led to the crash, almost all of them associated with crew training and expectations.

Key Takeaways:

• The final report on Air France Flight 447's loss concluded that the crash stemmed from a complex series of events primarily related to crew training and expectations.
• The crew failed to recognize a pitot system failure (likely due to ice), made inappropriate control inputs that stalled the aircraft at high altitude, and subsequently failed to identify, diagnose, or recover from the stall.
• Key recommendations include enhancing initial and recurrent airline crew training, improving information discernible from flight instruments, and reviewing the functionality of stall warning systems at very low airspeeds.

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