All plane crashes (accidents) of Air France aircraft. The crash of the Airbus A330 over the Atlantic was caused by pilot errors and unreliable equipment. Crash of a French plane over the Atlantic.

7.1. RAILWAY ACCIDENT Precautionary measures: - if possible, sit in the central carriages of electric trains (they will suffer the least damage in an accident); - place bulky and heavy things down, as with a strong push they can fall from the upper shelves and

Tuesday. August 2, 2005. At Paris airport, 296 passengers boarded an Air France plane. It was flight 358, bound for Toronto.

Passenger: My daughter and I sat separately. She was sitting in front of us, next to the wing of the plane.

While passengers took their seats, the crew began preparing the Airbus A340 for takeoff. The commander was 57-year-old Alan Rosai. He has worked for Air France for 20 years. His assistant was Frederic Noe. The pilots decided that Captain Rosay would take off in Paris and his assistant No would land in Toronto. Pilots often shared responsibilities among themselves so that the assistants could gain more experience.

The Airbus A340 was one of the safest aircraft in the world. A few minutes before noon, Flight 358 took off into the skies over Paris. The flight from Paris to Toronto took approximately 8 hours. The plane was approaching Canada, and it seemed that nothing unusual could happen.

Passenger: The company's service was excellent, the food was excellent. There were many students from France on board.

The weather was beautiful throughout the flight. The sun was shining brightly and white clouds were floating across the sky. The autopilot did most of the pilots' work. The crew regularly received new weather reports. The new forecast called for the possibility of heavy clouds and thunderstorms in Toronto.

A few hours later, a thunderstorm was raging at Toronto International Airport. The leadership declared combat readiness. The likelihood of a lightning strike was so high that ground staff were prohibited from working on airplanes. As Flight 358 approached its destination, it began circling the airport. The plane was delayed.

Passenger: I was very surprised when I heard the commander’s announcement that the landing was delayed.

The plane's alternate airport was in Ottawa, 300 kilometers away. There was still enough fuel in the tanks to fly there.

Expert: Typically, a pilot must think about the economics of flying to an alternate airport. But still, he is not the one who makes the final decision. The pilot only offers his option. After all, if you change course, how can you then deliver passengers to their original destination?

Flying to Ottawa could be a logistical nightmare. At the same time, the crew could not endlessly circle in the air and wait for the weather to improve. After half an hour, the delay was canceled and the plane began to descend to land. However, the weather did not improve. The merciless summer storm was in full swing. Gusts of wind and lightning thundered over the airport. This created difficulties for arriving aircraft. Including for flight 358. The pilots continued their descent straight into the thundercloud. There were only a few minutes left before landing, and co-pilot Noe tried to keep everything under control. Everything around was getting darker. It seemed to passengers that hundreds of lightning bolts were flashing around them. So they got pretty nervous.

In front of the Air France jet, two other planes had already landed on the same runway that Flight 358 was scheduled to use. The crew was ordered to fly to the left of runway 24. This allowed them to land into the wind. Lane 24 was also the closest to the city's largest thoroughfare, which was already experiencing evening traffic jams. Coping with unpredictable winds around the runway, the crew prepared to land.

Passenger: The last minutes before landing were terrible. The turbulence was very high. You could feel the crew struggling with the plane, trying to keep it parallel to the runway. My children were very scared.

Passenger: I tightened my seat belt even more. Everyone was expecting a very hard landing.

At 16:02, Flight 358 managed to land. But as soon as he leveled off on the runway, all hell broke loose. The plane began to swing violently up and down. A few seconds after landing, at a speed of 146 km/h, the airliner left the runway.

Passenger: Through the porthole I saw the crimson light of a flame. My daughter, who was sitting in front of us, turned to us in horror. At that moment I thought that we would all die. It was obvious that no one could survive this.

Finally, the landing gear broke and the plane stopped. All the passengers were scared to death. However, this was not the end. The smell of aviation fuel began to permeate the cabin. In addition, one engine of the plane was on fire. Panic spread quickly. Everyone wanted to quickly get out of the burning plane. The flight attendants opened the doors and began evacuating people. But the fire was already raging all around. In the cockpit, Captain Rosai was seriously injured. This happened when his chair fell to the floor due to the impact.

Passenger: I pushed my family down the emergency ramp. We ran past the wreckage as fast as possible.

Rescuers were able to reach the burning plane within a minute after the crash. However, due to the threat of an explosion, it was dangerous to get close. The situation was also complicated by heavy rain. It was very difficult to see anything.

Rescuer: The rain didn't stop. Large clouds of smoke enveloped the plane. Some parts of the airliner could be seen to have fallen off. Some wheels were lying on the side of the road.

As the passengers were climbing the hillside, away from the plane, an explosion was heard. Soon the entire fuselage was engulfed in flames. Rescue services arrived and began extinguishing the fire. Doctors also began examining passengers.

Lifeguard: The people were wet from the rain and dirty from climbing the hill. Some were crying and overexcited. Others looked around for other passengers.

Footage of the accident immediately began to be shown on local television channels. Thousands of cars were parked on the highway nearby, and drivers watched a terrible picture of a burning plane. Motorists began picking up victims to take them to the airport. As people began to arrive, airport workers struggled to count whether all the passengers had made it out of the burning plane. Finally, several hours later, the passengers were able to see the relatives who met them.

Passenger: We saw our son who was meeting us. These are indescribable feelings. We were so happy! It was a very touching moment, penetrating to the core.

It took time to find and identify all the passengers. However, late in the evening, Air France made an incredible announcement. Surprisingly, all passengers and crew members of Flight 358 managed to escape the burning wreckage.

The next day, the plane was left with a burning smell and charred debris. The Airbus A340 airliner burned down. Transportation Safety Canada immediately began an investigation into the accident. Rain and lightning actually made it very difficult for the plane to land. Was it just bad weather that caused this crash? Air France has banned all crew members on board flight 358 from speaking to the media.

Expert: The weather was very difficult. Countless lightning bolts literally blinded the pilots. In turn, the turbulence was also a distraction. It made it difficult to read instrument readings.

Investigators determined that the crew did everything possible to control the situation in their cockpit. But, on the ground, instruments for determining wind strength on the runway were damaged by lightning. With ground instruments damaged, the pilots could only rely on the instruments in the cockpit.

Expert: On-board instruments provided information only about the actual direction of the wind and the speed of the aircraft. The crew could not predict anything. They didn't know what lay ahead.

But two planes landed on the same runway just minutes before Flight 358. The crews of those planes reported difficult landing conditions to ground crews. They were talking about 20 knot winds. 20 knots is a strong wind, but such conditions were within the technical capabilities for landing the Airbus A340. After studying the airport radar readings, experts reconstructed the picture of what was happening. As Flight 358 landed, a strong rain squall moved along the runway. The wind force reached 33 knots. It turned out that the crew of the crashed plane had to face much worse conditions than they expected.

Expert: 33 knots is defiantly the maximum headwind speed for an airplaneAirbus A340even if the landing strip is dry.

Having studied the surrounding area of ​​the airport in more detail, experts discovered another strange feature. Technical requirements and weather conditions forced flight control to use runway 24 for landing. This was the shortest landing strip at the airport. It is shorter than the others by almost 650 meters. As a result, heavy rain, gusts of wind, lightning, and the fact of landing on a short runway caused problems for the crew of Flight 358.

Investigator: It was clear that the pilots did not fully accept the information received. Not realizing how threatening the situation was, they tried to sit down.

But even in difficult conditions and on a short landing strip, the crew had 3000 meters to land their plane. This should have been enough. To understand why this happened, experts delved into the past. In 1999, to horror. Then, in the fight against unpredictable weather, the American Airlines plane landed after leaving the runway. 11 people died. One of the investigators participated in the investigation of that disaster.

Investigator: The first thing I thought was: “I’ve already seen this.” The first information about the plane crash "Air France"was strongly reminiscent of the disaster with the American airliner in Little Rock.

During an investigation in 1999, investigators determined that the crew had made a fatal mistake. They did not follow all the actions established by the rules. In that case, ground spoilers remained unreleased. This significantly reduced braking efficiency. Spoilers are just one of the tools pilots use to land a plane. Spare thrust motors are also used. They redirect the engine's action as the plane lands, and then the braking system stops it. All aircraft landing systems were carefully studied by experts. They soon learned that the brakes were working properly and the spoilers were fully extended. There was no talk of any technical malfunction.

While the investigation was ongoing, the French press released a sensation. The newspaper Le Figaro published an article about the crash of Flight 358. It said that the spare thrust engines, which help the plane brake, did not turn on while the plane was on the runway for 12 seconds.

Expert: Captain Rosai confirmed what was written in the newspaper. He explained this by the fact that the co-pilot was tense and could hardly control the lateral movement of the aircraft. With this wind and this speed, his hand pressed hard on the control levers. This prevented the captain from reaching them himself. Therefore, the spare thrust engines were not fired.

After this, the investigators made their report. In many ways it was similar to the version set out in Le Figaro. Transportation Safety Canada determined that while the thrust motors were in the ready position, they were not fully engaged. In fact, it took 17 seconds for them to work at full capacity.

Expert: Delay was the problem identified in the report. It is very difficult to understand why it happened. All I know is that usually, pilots try to run the engines as quickly as possible to stop the plane.

The examination revealed other confusing facts. When Flight 358 approached the runway, the plane was at twice its normal altitude. When he landed, he was in the middle of the runway. This is one of the reasons why the pilots were unable to stop the plane in time. From the moment the plane touched down, he had only 1,500 meters left.

Investigator: If the spare traction engines had been started in time, this would have speeded up the braking. Another thing is that the plane landed in the middle of the runway, and it was too late to slow down.

Unfortunately, the case of flight 358 is far from isolated. In 2005, there were 37 such incidents worldwide. The most important thing is that the causes of all the accidents were very similar. Each time, weather conditions and the condition of the landing strips played a role.

Expert: You need to take into account everything that happens around you. There are many factors that can reduce the braking performance of an aircraft. In some cases, stopping distances can easily increase by 50%.

Now, to increase security, special devices are installed at many airports. They are built at the end of landing strips and provide a barrier of crushed stone that quickly and safely slows down aircraft.

In conclusion, I would like to note the prompt action of the crew of flight 358. In just 90 seconds, they managed to evacuate all passengers. It was only thanks to this that everyone survived.

Events related to the crash of the Air France Airbus A330 over the Atlantic have been developing rapidly in recent days. Back on June 5, it seemed that the search would have to be carried out from the very beginning, since the previously discovered debris turned out to be not pieces of the airbus’s skin, but ordinary garbage. The only clue was gone. However, the very next day, the bodies of the airbus passengers and the wreckage of the plane began to be recovered from the water.

The painful uncertainty disappeared, and along with it, hope - the airbus fell into the water and everyone on board died. However, the question is: “why did this happen?” - continues to remain a mystery.

The bodies of the first two passengers were discovered on Saturday, June 6. According to Brazilian Air Force spokesman Colonel Jorge Amaral, the bodies were of two men. In addition, various items from the Airbus were recovered from the water, including a briefcase containing a ticket for the Rio de Janeiro - Paris flight. On Sunday, June 7, the bodies of three more victims were found. By June 8, a total of 17 bodies on board had been recovered from the water, and then it became known that 24 dead had been found. Most of the bodies and debris were found in an area located 1,150 kilometers from the coastal Brazilian city of Recife.

On board the frigate Constituisau, the bodies of the victims were sent to Brazil, where authorities in the state of Pernambuco will have to carry out their identification. It is possible that the grim statistics of bodies caught from the water will increase. For those who have lost their loved ones, this may be at least some consolation, if talk about consolation is appropriate here. The search operation involves 14 aircraft, five ships of the Brazilian Navy, as well as the French frigate Vantose. France and Brazil have divided powers: Paris is investigating the disaster, and the Brazilian side is searching in the ocean. The operation, according to representatives of the Brazilian authorities, will continue until all the bodies and as much debris as possible are removed from the water.

However, an equally important object of search are the flight recorders - the “black boxes” of the Airbus A330, without which it is almost impossible to find out what happened on board. It is noted that the “black boxes” can withstand water pressure at a depth of up to six kilometers. For 30 days, their beacons emit signals that can be used to determine their location. However, they are extremely difficult to find. According to the French magazine Le Point, underwater, the beacon signal from flight recorders can be direction-finded at a distance of 1,500 meters. Meanwhile, the airbus fell almost in the middle of the Atlantic, where the depth ranges from 3,000 to 5,000 meters. In addition to depth, it is necessary to take into account the large area of ​​the search area: the discovered wreckage of the A330 is scattered over an area of ​​300 kilometers.

The discovery of the A330 tail fin on June 8 can provide some consolation: this theoretically narrows the search area, since the “black boxes” are located in the tail section. However, all the difficulties associated with searching at great depths remain. To detect the signal from the “black boxes”, it is proposed to submerge a sonar to an “intermediate” depth of 2000-3000 meters, which will pull one of the ships along a long cable. Obviously, in this case, the search will slow down - despite the fact that, in principle, they have already turned into a race against time. On June 5, it became known that France was sending the nuclear torpedo submarine Emeraude to the search area. Defense Minister Hervé Morin said the submarine's direction-finding equipment could help locate the flight recorders.
It is also reported that the United States provided the most modern sonar systems for the search for “black boxes,” but which ones were not specified. According to representatives of the Bureau of Accident Investigation (BEA), the equipment will be placed on two ships that are already in the search area. Finally, the French research vessel Pourquois headed for the Atlantic, on board of which are the deep-sea bathyscaphe Nautile, capable of operating at depths of up to 6 thousand meters, as well as the remote-controlled robot Victor-6000. They have already been used to search for and raise aircraft wreckage from the bottom of the sea. Nautile, designed in 1994, has completed more than 1,500 dives. In short, significant forces are involved.

Meanwhile, experts managed to decipher the last automatic messages that came from the Airbus before it disappeared from the radar screens. In just four minutes between 23:10 and 23:14 (Brazilian time), 24 malfunction messages came from the plane, 10 of them in 1 minute, from 23:10 to 23:11. All this speaks of a massive failure of all systems and indicates, according to some experts, that the airbus fell to pieces while still in the air. The French Le Monde reprinted a note from the very authoritative Brazilian publication Estado de Sao Paulo, which published an incomplete transcript of the latest messages from the A330, allegedly received from a source close to the investigation of the disaster. From it we can conclude that flight AF447 died in four minutes, and maybe even less: according to some data, the last message could have arrived already at the moment when the wreckage of the A330 sank to the bottom.

What caused the massive failure of all systems is anyone's guess. It is possible that there was an explosion on board. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo published an interview with the crew commander of Air Comet flight 974 Lima - Madrid. His plane was flying close to the A330 route just at the time when the Air France Airbus disappeared from radar screens. The pilot stated that he saw a powerful white flash, which then began to slide along a downward trajectory and disintegrated after six seconds. The flash was also seen by the pilot's assistant and a passenger on the flight. No one is claiming that the outbreak is directly related to the Airbus, but the version of the terrorist attack, previously sharply rejected by the French and Brazilian authorities, has become more clear: now representatives of France and Brazil say that they do not rule it out 100 percent.
However, no less, and perhaps more excitement was caused by the version associated with possible technical problems or crew error. Representatives of Air France said that the plane was flying at an unusually low speed, which could ultimately lead to a stall and crash. Presumably, having found themselves in a zone of high turbulence, the crew slowed down and, as a result, lost control. In this situation, the airline issued a warning to all its pilots not to reduce speed when passing through turbulence. This hasty step caused slight bewilderment among experts and led them to assume that Air France knew much more than it was saying, and that the decrease in speed could be due not so much to the actions of the crew as to technical problems with the aircraft.

According to Le Figaro, transcripts of the latest messages showed that three dynamic pressure meters, so-called pitot tubes, installed on the Airbus were sending different readings to the central computer. Using pitot tube data, experts judge the speed of the airliner, and in this case the spread was up to 50 kilometers per hour. As a result, the computer turned off the autopilot and, probably, at the wrong time: the pilots were unable to take control to straighten the car. The reason why the pitot tubes went crazy could be glaciation. In the intertropical convergence zone - the so-called "black pot", where warm air from the surface of the ocean rises sharply and cools, turning into dense cumulonimbus clouds - the plane can become icy in a few seconds. Of course, the pitot tubes were equipped with a special heating system that protected them from icing. However, as it turned out, despite this, they have already failed in the past.

Bathyscaphe Nautile, sent to search for "black" boxes. Photo by AFP

As Le Figaro reports, since 1995, pitot tubes on Airbuses have frozen more than once, resulting in malfunctions of on-board equipment and violations of the speed limit: either a sharp increase in speed, or, on the contrary, a slowdown leading to stalling. In September 2007, Airbus recommended that all airlines using A320, A330 and A340 aircraft replace their dynamic pressure meters with more modern ones. Air France began converting its planes back in April after noticing pitot tube problems at high altitudes. At the end of 2008, an Air France A340 flying from Tokyo encountered dense cumulonimbus clouds, which led to pitot tubes freezing, the selected speed limit being violated, and the autopilot being disabled. After the A330 crash over the Atlantic, a number of Air France pilots affiliated with the Alter union threatened that they would not fly until at least two of the three pitot tubes were replaced with more modern ones.
Explosion or frozen pipes? Unknown. All these versions can fall away just as easily as the version about a lightning strike, which was put forward in hot pursuit. We can only hope that the “black boxes” will still be found in the Atlantic. And wait.

Chronicle of the disaster

23:10 - A message has been received indicating that the autopilot has been disabled. It is unknown whether the autopilot was disabled by the crew or turned off automatically as a result of the activation of safety systems. Typically, a shutdown occurs when the on-board computers detect serious damage.
23:10 - Immediately after the first, a second message came that the electric drives of the flaps and ailerons had switched to backup power. It is activated automatically when multiple electrical problems are detected on board. Although in this case the aircraft has enough power to continue flying, the systems responsible for stabilization may not work properly.
23:12 - Two messages were received indicating the failure of two important on-board systems: Adiru (Air Data Inertial Reference Unit) and Isis (Integrated Standby Instruments System). These computers provide basic data about altitude, speed and direction of flight.
23:13 - New messages notifying about failures and electrical problems in the main and auxiliary on-board computers (Prim1) and (Sec1).
23:14 - Last message: "cabin - vertical speed." This indicates depressurization, which, as Le Monde notes, was either the cause or consequence of the plane breaking up in mid-air.

Unfortunately, there is no longer any doubt that another major plane crash has occurred, in which more than 200 people died.

The passenger airliner of the French airline Air France, flight AF 447, carrying 216 passengers, took off from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday evening at 19.00 local time (02.00 Moscow time). Eleven hours later it was supposed to land in the French capital, but instead it disappeared from radar screens and disappeared over the expanses of the Atlantic Ocean, writes RIA News.

The Brazilian Air Force immediately began searching for the plane, but so far their efforts have yielded no results. According to experts, search operations can take from several hours to two weeks, and among the preliminary reasons that caused the disappearance of the airliner, they name strong turbulence, which led to malfunctions in the instruments. Meanwhile, the French side does not exclude the worst-case scenario for the development of the situation and the fact that a possible disaster will become the largest in the history of the airline.

The A-330 began operation in 2005 and has flown about 19 thousand hours, with an experienced pilot at the helm, and on board 216 passengers - 126 men, 82 women and eight children, as well as 12 crew members.

Flight AF 447 last made radio contact 565 kilometers off the coast of Brazil, at the entrance to airspace controlled by Senegal. At the time of leaving the coverage area of ​​Brazilian radars on the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, at 22.48 (05.48 Moscow time), the flight parameters corresponded to the norm: the plane was at an altitude of 35 thousand feet (11 kilometers) and moving at a speed of 840 kilometers per hour. After some time, he found himself in a thunderstorm zone with severe turbulence, and then sent an automatic signal about an emergency in the electrical system.

Air France reported that 100 kilometers before entering the Dakar (Senegal) air traffic control zone, flight AF 447 encountered technical problems - "loss of cabin pressure and electrical failure."

In search of the missing Airbus, Brazilian Air Force planes almost immediately took off from the island of Fernando de Noronha, located in the Atlantic 350 kilometers from the northeastern coast of Brazil, and they were joined by a military plane that took off from the French base in Dakar (Senegal).

Due to scattered information about the alleged crash site of the airliner, the search area is very wide: from the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, 270 kilometers northeast of the coast of Brazil, to the islands of Cape Verde, 500 kilometers west of the coast of Senegal.

Meanwhile, relatives of the passengers of the plane that disappeared over the Atlantic are gathering at Tom Jobim International Airports in Rio de Janeiro and the anti-crisis headquarters deployed at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. French President Nicolas Sarkozy not only sent two ministers to the Paris airport, but he himself will personally arrive at his headquarters on Monday.

According to Air France, there were 61 French, 58 Brazilians and 26 Germans on the plane. As noted in the Air France communique, Air France flight AF 447 also flew nine Italians, nine Chinese, six Swiss, five British, five Lebanese, four Hungarians, three each Irish, Norwegian and Slovak, two citizens of the USA, Spain, Morocco and Poland and one citizen each from South Africa, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Gambia, Iceland, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Romania, Sweden and Turkey.

A representative of the Russian embassy in Paris told RIA Novosti that a passenger named Andrei Kiselev, who is most likely a Russian citizen, is on board the missing airliner over the Atlantic.

The governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Cabral, declared three days of mourning in the state.

A French Navy ship did not find the wreckage of an Airbus A330-200 that went missing the day before in the area indicated by the Brazilian pilots, a source in the Brazilian Air Force told reporters on Tuesday.

According to him, the search vessel found no traces of the plane crash in the territorial waters of Senegal, where, according to the pilots of the Brazilian airline TAM flight, shortly after losing contact with flight AF 447, flashes of orange color were noticed on the surface of the ocean.

The search and rescue operation in the Atlantic Ocean involves five aircraft and two helicopters from the Brazilian Air Force. A frigate, a corvette and a patrol ship from the country's navy entered the search area 597 nautical miles (1,100 km) northeast of the coast of Brazil. They are expected to arrive at their target location on Wednesday morning. The governments of France and the United States promised assistance to the Brazilian authorities in conducting the search operation.