Air France Flight 447

**Air France Flight 447** was a scheduled commercial flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France. The aircraft used was an Airbus A330 jet. On June 1, 2009, the A330 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 228 people on board. Air France Flight 447 is currently the deadliest plane crash in Air France's history. It is the deadliest plane crash since the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, which occurred on November 12, 2001.

## Aircraft
F-GZCP was an Airbus A330-203, equipped with General Electric CF6-80E1A3 engines. It was delivered new from Airbus, after having its first flight on 25th February 2005, and at the time of accident, it had flown for 18,870 hours, taking off and landing 2,644 times.

## Occupants
As the flight was more than 11+ hours long, there were 3 members of the Air France flight crew operating the airplane, so that each of them could take their scheduled breaks during the flight. On the plane were 9 cabin crew and 216 passengers.

The captain of the flight, Marc Dubois, 58, was an experienced pilot with about 11,000 flight hours. He started as an Air France flight attendant. He was qualified to fly the A320, A330 and Airbus A340. During his career, he flew different kinds of planes, from the Cessna 172, to the Boeing 737-200, passing through older airplanes such as the Caravelle 12. He had a lot of experience, being able to fly well without electronic instruments.

Relief First Officer David Robert, 37, had about 6500 flight hours under his belt. He too was qualified to fly the A320, A330 and A340, and got all his licenses at Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile, the best flight school in France. He worked for both Air France and Air Calédonie, often flying between Southeast Asia and South America. He flew the TB10 Socata in his free time.

First Officer Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32, had about 2900 flight hours, being the least experienced of the trio. In 2003, he was selected as Air France “cadet” and sent by the company to the Amaury de la Grange Training Centre in Merville, in northern France, where he got his airline transport license before being employed. He was also qualified to fly the A320, A330 and A340.

## Accident Sequence 
Air France Flight 447 took off from Rio de Janeiro International Airport for the flight to Paris' Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport at 7.29 p.m. Brazilian time. In the first leg of the flight, the captain was in the left seat, while first officer Bonin was in the right seat. The third pilot, Robert, was resting in the small cabin behind the cockpit. The plane cruised at FL350 (35,000 feet).

At about 2:11 a.m. and 6 seconds, the plane reached its maximum permissible altitude (for the total weight that the aircraft had at the time) of 37,924 feet. The nose was pitched up to 18 degrees. The plane entered a stall and began to descend. Throughout the whole descent, the flight crew did not mention the word "stall", and multiple changes in control took place during the descent. As the aircraft descended below 8000 feet, Bonin finally admitted to pulling the controls back and raising the nose when his colleague Robert shouted to "climb", with the words, "but I've had the stick all the way back for a while". The angle of attack remained above 35 degrees when valid. In the final seconds of the flight, all three pilots gave up on trying to solve the problem and desperately tried to get the aircraft to climb, and their final words were:

**[02:14:19] Bonin:** "Come on, pull up, pull up, pull up, pull up!"

**[02:14:23] Robert:** "F*ck, we're going to crash! This can't be happening!"

**[02:14:25] Bonin:** "But what's happening?!"

**[02:14:25] Robert:** "We are dead!"

**[02:14:26] Dubois:** "Ten degrees of pitch!"

At 2:14 and 28.4 seconds, Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean with a final nose angle of 16.2 degrees, speed reading of 152 knots, and with a vertical speed of 10,912 feet per minute (which is roughly 102 knots). On impact, the Airbus was completely destroyed, and all 228 occupants were killed instantly by the resulting blunt force trauma.

## Searches
At 2:20 a.m., air traffic control at Dakar, Senegal failed to contact Air France Flight 447, which was supposed to have entered Senegalese airspace. The controller then contacted Air France, who tried to contact Flight 447, but failed. At that time, people had thought that the plane had "disappeared". Ships and planes then searched the area near the last-known position of Flight 447, and by 6th June, the first bodies have been found. The plane was confirmed to have crashed.

As the search for survivors ended, the search for the plane's recorders then began. Underwater vehicles were used to detect the recorders' signals that they gave out for 30 days. However, at the end of the 30 days, there was not a sign of the recorders. Other searches in 2009 and 2010 also found nothing.

Then, in 2011, the search for recorders finally ended when an underwater vehicle found the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder on 26th April and 2nd May respectively. The recorders are sent to BEA Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile, Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety)'s headquarters for analysis and arrived on 12th May.

## Cause of accident
When the pitot tubes were blocked by ice crystals, the automatic controls of the plane, including autopilot and autothrust, switched off by itself. This had surprised the pilots, even though this was a well-known phenomenon. The pilots likely never understood that the only problem they had was that the airspeed was incorrect.

The plane began to climb. During the whole climb to 38,000&nbsp;feet, the crew failed to understand the situation. Even when the plane stalled and the stall warning sounded, the crew likely did not understand the stall situation they were in and so never tried to put the nose down and recover the plane from the stall. The plane remained stalled until impact with water.

## Aftermath
Right after the crash, Air France sped up the replacement of pitot tubes. By June 11, 2009, all the pitot tubes were changed to ones that will not freeze up when ice crystals hit them.

Both Airbus and Air France were later charged with manslaughter. They were both found not guilty on April 17, 2023 by a French court with the verdict pointing toward pilot error. Victims families disagreed with the results of the trial.

The flight number was changed to AF 445 after the crash and is still flown by Airbus A330-200s.

## Documentaries 
There are some documentaries about the crash, including:
* BBC's one hour documentary, produced before the recorders were discovered
* *Mayday* (also known as *Air Crash Investigation*), Season 12, Episode 13
* *Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit*

## References 
## Other websites 
* Final Report of the crash