Air France Flight 447

Modern jetliners just aren’t supposed to fall out of the sky. It’s simply not acceptable (it’s not acceptable when smaller aircraft do it, either, by the way). Decades of refinement, engineering, development and lessons learned have produced an extremely safe worldwide air transportation system. That’s one reason the disappearance of an Airbus A330 operating as Air France Flight 447 from over the Atlantic Ocean almost three years ago is serving as a wake-up call to operators and pilots alike.

Key Takeaways:

• Air France Flight 447 crashed after pitot tube obstruction caused erroneous airspeed data, leading to autopilot disengagement and a loss of control.
• Despite significant experience, the flight crew failed to manually recover the aircraft, maintaining nose-up inputs that resulted in an unrecoverable stall, complicated by confusing and intermittent instrument readings.
• The incident serves as a critical reminder for pilots to maintain fundamental manual flying skills and continuous engagement, even in highly automated cockpits, to effectively handle unexpected system failures.

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