Faulty data misled pilot in 2009 Air France plane crash: Report

July 6, 2012

Pilot_error

Le Bourget (France), July 6: A combination of faulty sensors and mistakes by inadequately trained pilots caused an Air France jet to plunge into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people aboard in the airline's deadliest ever crash, French investigators said on Thursday.

Investigators are urging better instruction for pilots on flying manually at high altitudes and stricter plane certification rules as a result of a three-year investigation into what happened to Flight 447.

Airbus, manufacturer of the A330 plane, said in a statement that it is working to improve speed sensors known as pitot tubes and making other efforts to avoid future such accidents. Air France stressed the equipment troubles and insisted the pilots "acted in line with the information provided by the cockpit instruments and systems. .... The reading of the various data did not enable them to apply the appropriate action."


But the Bureau for Investigations and Analysis' findings raised broader concerns about training for pilots worldwide flying high-tech planes when confronted with a high-altitude crisis.

The report also could have legal implications: A separate French judicial investigation is still under way, and Air France and Airbus have been handed preliminary manslaughter charges.

The bureau's analysis lists a combination of "human and technical factors" behind the crash. The plane flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris slammed into the sea during a nighttime thunderstorm on June 1, 2009.

Some families of victims felt investigators didn't focus hard enough on the equipment problems, saying the two pilots at the controls were doing what they could while faced with a barrage of inaccurate information.

Ice crystals that blocked the pitot tubes were the "unleashing event" that set off the plane's troubles, chief investigator Alain Bouillard said. The plane's autopilot shut off and the co-pilots had to fly manually, while a succession of alarms were going off. The captain was on a rest break.

In one fatal decision, the report says, one of the co-pilots nosed the Airbus A330 upward during a stall - instead of downward, as he should have - because of false data from sensors about the plane's position. Mr Bouillard said that was an "important element" of the cause of the crash.

He said the two pilots at the controls never understood that the plane was in a stall. He said only a well-experienced crew with a clear understanding of the situation could have stabilized the plane in those conditions.

"In this case, the crew was in a state of near-total loss of control," Mr Bouillard said.

Robert Soulas, who lost his daughter and son-in-law in the crash, says investigators said the flight director system indicated the "erroneous information" that the plane was diving downward, "and therefore to compensate, the pilot had a tendency to pull on the throttle to make it rise up."

However, the plane was in a stall instead. A basic maneuver for stall recovery, which pilots are taught at the outset of their flight training, is to push the yoke forward and apply full throttle to lower the nose of the plane and build up speed. But because the pilot thought the plane was diving, he nosed up.

Some families of people who died in the crash showed sympathy toward the pilots, saying they were dealing with bad equipment in an exceptionally challenging situation.

Mr Soulas noted that manufacturers had known for years about problems with the plane's speed sensors freezing over, but didn't order the faulty models systematically replaced until after the crash.

Pilot Gerard Arnoux said, "A normal pilot on a normal airliner follows" the signals on the flight director system, which tells them to go left, right, up or down.

Central to this accident is the fact that when the automation failed, the pilots were presented with conflicting information which was obviously incorrect, said William Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia. But they were unable to look through this and understand what the aircraft was actually doing.

"Pilots a generation ago would have done that and understand what was going on, but (the AF447 pilots) were so conditioned to rely on the automation that they were unable to do this," he said.

"This is a problem not just limited to Air France or Airbus," Mr Voss said. "It's a problem we're seeing around the world because pilots are being conditioned to treat automated processed data as truth, and not compare it with the raw information that lies underneath."

The final report included a study of the plane's black box flight recorders, uncovered in a costly and extraordinarily complex search in the ocean depths.

Lais Seba, the mother of 31-year-old victim Luciana Clarkson Seba, said "it's going to be forever difficult" for survivors to deal with the loss of their loved-ones.

"We are surviving," she said. "We live one day at a time, with lots of pain, and always missing her."



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News Network
April 16,2020

Brussels/Amsterdam, Apr 16: As the novel coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in the western world since its outbreak in Wuhan last December, researchers believe that the Chinese leadership is trying to absolve President Xi Jinping by using a section of the western media to influence public opinion globally.

"There are clear indications that China is conducting activities in a persistent and systematic manner to influence public opinion-making, academia, think tanks and political decision-making among the member states of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in general and western capital cities in particular," Siegfried O Wolf, Director of Research at Brussels-based think tank South Asia Democratic Front, said.

Some western media say some Chinese officials were secretly aware that they were facing a pandemic from the new coronavirus but allowed Wuhan to host a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people and millions began their annual trip home for the Lunar New Year celebrations.

The pandemic has since then affected 210 countries and territories around the world. Over 2 million people have been declared positive in which over 134,000 lost their lives.

"The frequency and extra-ordinary large scale of Chinese sponsored events in European political hubs, like in Brussels, and the subsequent media coverage can be seen as evidence for Beijing's public diplomacy efforts. However, the rising skepticism within the EU regarding Xi Jinping's development projects and the emerging questioning of Chinese sources funding Free Universities, like the one in Berlin, shows that this strategy produced mixed results so far," Wolf said.

He added, "However, one must also state that these efforts helped China to gain certain leverage among many non-Chinese media, western as well as non-western ones. Today, we can observe that China's political leadership tries to instrumentalise this influence for a major image campaign to distract from the fact that it carries the initial responsibility for the dramatic spread of COVID-19 by holding back key information."

Wolf also said that the current internal dynamics in China, like the shirking of responsibilities by the local authorities, are most-likely part of a twofold strategy. Firstly, there is the strategic component - namely, to reaffirm to the general public that the Communist Party of China is still in full control of the situation. The second strategic pillar is one of 'whitewashing'.

"Concretely, Beijing's obvious aim is to distract the domestic and international attention from the real, but hidden causes of the Coronavirus outbreak and its potential reputational and political consequences for Xi Jinping and his BRI," he stated.

Yoana Barakova, a Research Analyst at European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS), an Amsterdam-based think-tank, said, "The death of Dr. Li Wenliang, one of the very few medical professionals who tried to warn the world in December 2019 about the looming threat, sparked widespread condemnation around the international community in early February. Yet, little did he know that his legacy would continue much later after his demise, with the emboldened Chinese government trying to cover up its missteps through hardcore censorship after being exposed for undermining and underestimating the initial danger."

The researchers believe that the deterioration in press freedom under Jinping's regime has become more evident in recent days, with local authorities trying to control the state narrative by cosmetically placing media's focus on government's superficial attempts to tackle the crisis.

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News Network
May 9,2020

Islamabad, May 9: A female doctor posted at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) Mother and Child Hospital (MCH), who was tested Covid-19 positive, has exposed Pakistan's mismanagement in handling the patients affected with the deadly virus.

Identified herself as Dr. Sharbat, she made a video of herself locked in an isolated room when the authorities failed to provide any medical assistance to her.

According to Pakistani media, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) Mother and Child Hospital (MCH) and the operating theatre in the Children's Hospital were sealed on Tuesday after 15 people from both facilities were diagnosed with Covid-19.

Dr. Sharbat said that despite having Covid-19 symptoms after her colleague doctor was tested positive, she was forced to perform duty by the hospital authorities.

After she tested positive, Dr. Sharbat has isolated herself in a room and has requested the hospital authorities to provide her a bed in the hospital.

She said, "I am isolated in a small room. There is no toilet and other facilities at this place. I have requested the authorities several times to provide me proper bed because I cannot go home as my son and father is there. I have no other place to go. Its been several hours now and the administration is busy doing meetings. They have no idea about my location. I have called the concerned officials several times and requested for a room in the hospital, but they said that they are looking for it. This is the kind of arrangements we have that a doctor, who was serving the patients, is not able to get proper care".

Dr Sharbat said that she is feeling depressed after seeing the response of authorities tackling with Covid-19 crisis in the country.

She added, "It is unfortunate that the government salutes [health professionals] but is not willing to provide isolation rooms."

Pakistan's position in the global ranking in respect of Covid-19 dropped from 24th to 22nd after the number of positive cases increased to 26,806 (till May 08) with the addition of 1,791 new cases.

However, the National Coordination Committee (NCC), chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, had decided to substantially ease the lockdown from Saturday after detailed deliberations and consultations with the provinces.

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Agencies
March 25,2020

Moscow, Mar 25: An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale struck off Russia's Kuril Islands on Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The magnitude of the quake, which occurred at 2:49 am (UTC), was registered at a depth of 56.7 kilometres, about 219 kilometres southeast of the Russian town of Severo-Kuril'sk, the USGS said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage to the property as a result of the quake.
Further details are awaited.

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