@@solomonarhin It's every bit as great as you would expect from Petter. He really brings the sense of confusion and desperation in the cockpit to life.
Is there any way that you @Mentour pilot, could activate the Spanish subtitles? I always want to share your awesome videos with my dad, but he knows very little English. Please! Thanks
This quality of content is something one would usually pay for to watch on Netflix or any platform, but you give it for free. Thanks Petter, what an inspiration 🙏🙌
Aww, thank you! 💕 I can do this because of the ads, my Patreons and my sponsors. I know those ad-breaks are annoying but they all add up to the salaries of me and my team 💕
@@MentourPilot idk why but I'm getting the urge to make 1k Google account to sub on each of the account for real every time I see your vid upon seeing the vid slowly comming to the end i feel like i wanna screem NOOOOOOOOOOO!! Like Darth Vader 😂
Still, hearing the first officer say "Damn, we're going to crash" and "This can't be true" my heart just went out to them. That must have been terrifying. I can't even imagine. May all their souls rest in peace.
It absolutely baffles me how he kept on pitching up the whole time, as if stalling didn't exist. Even when tired, any sane person with decent knowledge and training should figure out that falling with no forward speed requires nose down... Also, their is a big screen with ground and sky and roll of plane (ADI?), maybe use it....
I never thought I would one day find myself screaming " PITCH DOWN!!" at my TV for 10 minute straight but here we are.. A very sad and frustrating story
i was frustrated and i know nothing about flying! the dude was stubborn as hell and if the first pilot didn't go to sleep he wouldn't have made this "rookie" mistake.. probably he was a laid back dude, pretty irresponsible to leave his spot when the weather was so bad
I’m not even a pilot and know that if the initial pitch up isn’t working you should attempt a pitch down to regain airspeed and altitude in order to recover the aircraft.
I think that's the real Airbus design fault. You need to be more sure to take control. Let's say the other pilot has suicidal thoughts or loses conscience while still holding the stick. You can press the priority button, but they could still press it back. Of course, at the same time, why do you do it? It's also true that I don't think connect the two sticks together would be so hard, or maybe add vibration to the stick when double input?
@@BioTheHuman Then have the airplane fly itself at that point. Airbus is not there to correct for every scenario possible, such as suicidal thoughts or loss of consciousness. Those are extreme human factors that have to be solved by human actions in the moment. Communication between typical pilots and the ease of switching control is by far the norm. And even in the scenarios you put, the pilot with suicidal thoughts or loss of consciousness could also be the ones that have main control, and it would then be an extreme struggle for the other pilot to regain control. In both scenarios, with current controls, the proper action would be another person coming in and removing the offending pilot, which would still need to be the case if the controls were harder to switch.
I was flying across the Atlantic ocean on an Air France flight from Dulles and we landed in CDG 5 minutes before AF447 expected landing. When I heard the announcement call on the speaker asking everyone waiting for AF447 to go to the customer service desk, I instantly knew something terrible happened. I will never forget
@@jakezxz1352 Yeah, this only makes sense if his plane landed a long time after this guy’s flight landed. It’s possible he’s misremembering the exact details.
@@jakezxz1352 I guess that flight AF447 was lost hours before landing , and those hours were used to realize that there was a problem. Therefore the announcement.
This air disaster is definitely one of the saddest. The combination of how preventable it was, the fact that one of pilots wives sat in the back, the fact that seconds before impact the captain figured out the problem but it was too late and the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder. It’s all very haunting.
@@anlumo1 It was worse than that. The investigation concluded that by the time the captain reached the cabin the plane was doomed. By then to get out of the deep stall before hitting the water they needed to transition to a steep power dive which would peak at a speed that would tear the wings off. A gentler stall recovery would take more time than they had.
I'm a french engineer and in years 2007 and 2008, i designed new types of flight controls systems for small planes. (They would be your nightmare, but we could discuss this elsewhere, here is not the place for that). I think there is a major understanding problem, between we (engineer that imagine new planes) and you, the pilots (that are using them). All these instruments, all these warnings, all these display: we are calmly designing them in our office. We have no idea what it is to really pilot a plane. We have no idea what it is to be in an emergency situation, with doubt, without knowing what to rely on, and whith our human senses blured by the shaking of the plane. What seems totally obvious to us, in the calm of our office ... seems to actually not be obvious at all in the real situation. We (engineer) think that the most direct and the most explicit way to tell, you (the pilot) that the computer has no idea of what the real values are, is to turn the display off: because we think that display turned off means no value (no valid value). That's so obvious to us. But here, in this accident, the 3 pilot did not understand that, and they though that it was a bug, a system malfunction. (while turning the display off to tell the pilot the mesure value was wrong was actually a "feature") Also, we assume that the pilot will have perfect training to understand the specific plane he is piloting, and will follow the procedures like a robot. But that's not the case. So, we should stop considering that some informations could be "obvious". Here, there should have been a red flashing light, with the writing "pitot data inconsistant" or "speed data wrong". That way, the crew would have understood that it was not a computer bug: they would not have had this doubt. Most engineer that design aircraft systems never pilot anything that flys. I do some paraglider freefly, but i don't use instruments: i only rely on my human senses to fly. I really can't imagine what's it's like to be unable to rely on these. We think the same as driving a car: in a car, you can do without instrument, just with your senses. But a plane seems to be more like a blind submarine, doomed without any instrument. I think that the engineers that designed this airbus have assumed that in case of stall, the pilots would have "sensed" it in their body. In case off wrong pitch, gravity beeing what it is, they would have sense it in their body ... i guess the shaking of the plane, combined with the stress and adrenaline of the emergency prevented that. Also, the lack of verbalisation of the pilots shows that they relied too much on considering their understanding as "obvious". 1 pilot alone could have been wrong. But for these 3 (experimented) pilot to be like that, without any clue all the time, that proves there is a problem with the displays that are unclear.
La compréhension de la manière dont fonctionne un ordinateur en général est déjà difficile. Un ordinateur qui n'a pas les bonnes données, encore plus ! L'interaction ordinateur/homme est un sujet aux développements infinis. Bon courage pour améliorer les relations entre ces deux "intelligences"! Nous ne sommes pas au bout de nos surprises...
Having the hugely important stall warning oscillate on/off as the emergency affects the data unreliable flag is also a major design weakness . Given the importance of this event, it would be prudent to update stall warning logic to not incorrectly tell pilots "stall recovered" when it's actually "stall got worse" . Also, disregarding abnormal but truthful sensor inputs seems to be excessive use of incorrect logic in the adiro units, especially as the adiro gyros would be confirming the abnormal situation .
@@johndododoe1411 here I am reading and trying to make sense of your terminology but nothing made sense to me. Hats off to all of you who made the airline industry what it is today 🫡.
@@michellejones8144 I'm referring mostly to things in this video and other crash videos. I don't build aircraft systems but do have the engineering background, Adiro units (mentioned in the video) are separate computer boxes that have one job, and one job only: Figure out which way the plane is pointing and tell the main computers. Each adiro handles its own set of outside sensors and also contains a gyroscope measuring how the box and plane moves around it. Much of the confusion was caused by how the Adiros got confused and how the other computers displayed and misinterpreted the adiro output, in turn confusing the pilots. Many lessons should be learned from each mistake in the chain of events. For example if an adiro detects a sensor value dangerously out of range, it should specifically report that, and let the main computer report back "all other sensors agree, value is possibly real" . Similarly when an adiro corrects a calculated value (such as the altitude), other systems should not misinterpret that as an actual movement by the distance, such as "dropping 300 feet", nor should "unknown speed" get displayed as an artificially low speed.
As an enthusiast and a Brazilian, I am particularly interested in all material out there about this accident. This is hands down the absolute best content available about it. Your assertiveness, attention to detail, didactic, and insights are priceless. And you are the ONLY content creator that wasn't lazy to just blame it all on the youngest co-pilot. You actually included details and insights to look at different angles to try and understand what could have been going on in the minds of those poor pilots. Petter, you are one exceptional person 👏👏👏👏👏👏
Glad someone pointed this out. I've looked into everything available on this accident in video form and peter's breakdown was different. I came out of it more sympathetic for the pilots instead of blaming them,especially the young F/O.
I think about this flight everyday since the victims association is next door to me. They still fight for some sort of compensation after all these years, some of them could no even get a death certificate for their loved ones. It's all so sad, my heart goes out to the families.
I could listen to his voice for hours. The way he describes the whole panicky scene in such calm detail and so sensitively with no judgement is to be commended. Still, despite his calm delivery I felt like I was watching a thriller, not a documentary! Wow. Rest in Peace, those poor souls, such a heartbreaking loss. Thank god these events serve as lessons for the rest of the aviation industry.
You do? I find the accent too distracting and the constant portrayal face kills it for me, too much pose, as if he needed the attention for his life sake
Very professional, but, even though I know nothing about flying. I would have been very critical of all of the pilot's. They were supposed to be flying the plane, not crashing a perfectly good plane killing everybody on board.
@@dariorodriguezdeamericajesus, why are you even here if you hate his voice? His accent is not that thick, and the OP ks right: he gives every accident respect and dignity. What is so bad about his speaking, you?
His accent, you dum dum. The fact that your lover's voice has such an annoying tone titled with an interesting subject doesn't make it less cringy to withstand, and since is an open video, I had the disgrace to run into it, and you.@@MrGrace
This one was always going to be a difficult watch for me as I knew slightly more than most about the human side of this Tragedy. When I was in college back home in Ireland, a secondary school teacher I knew very well would give me lifts as both my college and her school were in the same town. She knew one of the Irish nurses that was on this flight as she had been a student in her school, and sadly they never found her, she was one the unlucky ones that was never recovered. The school since then have given an award for the student who gets the highest score for the Leaving Cert every year, if I remember correctly, and her parents were at the first ceremony for the award along with all the teachers at the school. As you can imagine it was in her own words "One of the saddest things she ever saw", the poor woman's mother couldn't stop crying throughout the entire evert. Thanks very much for covering this story Petter, it's never easy watching this story when you know someone affected by this, but it helped me to understand what happened that night and how steps have been taken to ensure it doesn't happen again.
Just one slight correction: all the Irish victims were doctors, not nurses. Three friends, all young women in their mid-20s and all recently qualified as medical doctors were returning home on Air France 447 from a vacation.
My expat brother-in-law was also due to be on this flight, but delayed his trip by a day to accompany his mother, who was visiting, home to Scotland. A lucky escape, but several other kids at his daughter’s Rio school lost their fathers in this accident. Very sad.
As a former US Air Force fighter and trainer pilot with about 3300 hours in much older, all manual aircraft with MUCH simpler cockpits, I have trouble understanding many of the actions in this and other scenarios that you go through so skillfully. The very first thing I don't understand is why does it seem that the pilots are not paying attention to what I will call the "attitude indicator," the part of the flight director that is showing the pitch and roll attitude of the aircraft. That was our primary reference flying on instruments for keeping the wings level and the nose somewhere near the horizon (AOA is now part of attitude control but I never had it). In "unusual attitude" training, If the nose was in the "sky" part of the indicator, it was: push the nose down, level the wings, and add power if necessary. If the nose was in the "ground" part, pull the nose up, level the wings and reduce power if necessary. Do the newer large commercial aircraft attitude indicators work differently? You refer to the flight director bars appearing and disappearing, but not to the actual attitude reference behind the bars. On a different subject, something that would make me very uncomfortable flying an Airbus is that the sticks don't follow each other. All the other controls and indicators are pretty logical, but those sticks would blow my mind! You have the best presentations and most outstanding productions of anyone I have seen on UTuub!
I wonder too if the Pilots ever paid attention to the attitude reference bars, eg. to the artificial horizon. Shouldn't it be the rule of thumb to look for a typical 0° - +2,5° nose up indication. The second most heöpful tool I never heard anything about is the GPS referenced speed over ground (GS). When in a normal mode 400+ is a typical ground speed (except for the typical strong headwinds [Jetstream] over the North Atlantic), than weren't there any indications showing the 107kts GS?? If the GPS speed is reliable why not take that as a secondary speed source?!
Hello everybody, i am not a pilot but an aviation enthusiast... i know that sitting on the sofa in your living room is easy to say...they should have done this or that ... but come on ...those guys were not qualified to fly any plane... they did not understand the basics of flight let alone the systems of that playstation type aircraft... and they are not to blame for that ...who put them in that situation from the first flight lesson until their first flight in the Airbus...every instructor or trainer who "vouched" for these guys should be held accountable !
I guess it's not as easy to maintain pitch attitude when you're in a high altitude stall. Also, unreliable airspeed and dozens of master warnings going off make it very hard to know what's going on and how to react, more so if they weren't even aware of the unreliable airspeed situation. Very soon you'll be dropping like a rock at 10k ft per minute with very little room to fix the issue.
@@Jojos25 I’d presume (because I’ve never gotten into a stall anywhere close to this badly) that at a slow enough speed, even your control services are ineffective. They are designed to be used pointy end forward, but being almost literally dropped, your ailerons are mere suggestions at best, roll control being very limited even at the onset of the stall, and I’m sure the elevators (trim system that I’m barely comprehending notwithstanding) would be also rather useless. Figure that airspeed is technically high, though AOA is near 90* your services have the effectiveness of an pointy end forward airspeed well under 100kn.
Same here. I was wondering half of the video, if there isn't any more "analog" instrument, you can rely on. Like the artificial horizon. @Mentour Pilot Perhaps you might to answer this.
@@davidelliott5843 also, the people in Petter's videos are all human. Professional producers always try to make certain people into so important characters that you can almost hear the air whistling around them. Usually the accident investigators at least.
So, between 28:23 and 50:56 Mentour Pilot decribes what lead to the final crash. That's 22 minutes, and it feels like the pilots have been struggling for hours but in reality all of this just lasted 4 little minutes... How heartbreaking it is to think that in just over 4 minutes the life of so many ended in this terrible accident. And also, how sad it is that these pilots who struggled until the end died without having any idea of what was going on and they will never know 😔
@@thelonemaiden Yes, indeed they knew they were about to crash, but they did not know that they were in a fully developed stall, and they had no idea how it started.
Hi Peter, Thanks for your excellent research and video, like all of them. I am an Airbus captain myself and I take a lot of content of your videos into my daily operation, in this way you are contributing to flight safety! I am sure many other pilots are doing the same. The biggest strength is that you never judge but always keep an objective view on the events that happened. Keep on the good work!
i LOVE that you explained everything someone could be curious about - all the systems, all the engineering, the psychology - everything that professional documentaries usually leave out (much to my disappointment)! your videos are superior to anything i have seen! thank you so much for this incredible content, one day i want to be an investigator for stuff like this.
Thanks Petter and your wider team - As someone else highlighted this is the only video that actually gave some understanding of the PF (FO) at that point, as to his complete loss of understanding of his aircraft’s systems, namely Airbus. I’m not sure that some critics blaming the side stick controls being the problem even if it did cause more difficulty in noticing what he was doing with the plane. Even so-called specialists and aircraft journalists just crucified him and portrayed the whole incident as playing out for half an hour or so by the way they described the incident. Petter very early highlights the whole set of circumstances were approximately 4 minutes. To me that is just mind boggling when you actually realise the height they were flying at, whilst at the same time having the time to correct the grim situation. I’m not defending the actions of the pilot who was flying this very capable aircraft but I have an understanding of why he may have done what he did. He certainly didn’t do anything with any malice, and it’s very sad that certain actions and system understanding or lack of, resulted in completely avoidable deaths, and non-human costs. This is why Petter, and I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong, always places emphasis on knowing the aircraft you are type-rated on and all it’s systems and how they work. Thanks Petter, this was a fantastic, if very tragic story. I don’t need to add how professional it is, as always.
You are absolutely correct and, in fact, this was one of my main drivers for creating this video in the first place. Thank you so much for your support!
Of course no one believes there was malice. ...but every pilot knows the basics of flying and stalling an aircraft. ...Pulling nose up was purely an instinctive action, not at all a rational one from a pilot,
Peter your content and production quality is simply superb. As an avid pilot I can’t express the gratitude and awe I have for your efforts to present such objective, complete pictures of how we humans, despite technological marvels, find ourselves unwittingly in such terrible situations in the air. The lessons and the awareness you give the viewer are priceless. Many, many thanks for your dedication and generosity.
I never realised how complicated jet airliners are. These aircraft are amazing in the information they gather, how they gather it, and how it is supplied to the pilots. The pilots are also amazing people. As a passenger you just don't appreciate what is going on behind the scenes, while you are drinking your cocktail/coffee etc. The next time I fly, I will fully appreciate the high level of skill and knowledge required to keep me safe. Regards Rob.
Thank you for posting. It certainly is mind bogling to think that three pilots could not agree that they were basically stalled and descending at some 10000 feet/mn. So many people paid the price for that mistake. What is really disturbing is that there are some misguided airline companies out there pushing for single pilot operations today. Post covid single pilot operations should never even be considered given what we know now. It's pure madness.
As long as humans fly planes, they should never be allowed to fly alone if you care about safety. Humans have a tendency to get sick, distracted, or even die. Also, during emergencies having more crew is helpful for troubleshooting. In an emergency situation having 3-4 experienced crew members with good CRM can be invaluable for solving problems as shown by previous emergencies. At the very least I’d like there to be 2. Hell, recently a pilot in France was partially incapacitated during takeoff due to the startle effect, and the plane would have probably crashed had his copilot not been there to keep things going.
You do an outstanding job sir. I am a retirement age woman who hates flying but I find your channel extremely interesting. I have watched so many of your videos I think I might be able to make an auto-pilot localizer assisted landing of a big jet if I am ever called upon to do so 😂. And if not, well I will die trying.
I'm brazilian, and I still remember 12 year old aviation enthusiast me seeing the news of the plane's then disappearance and thinking oh god, not again. It was really shocking down here, especially since we succesfully experienced our worst aviation disasters in 2006, and then in 2007. May those poor souls rest in peace
It's really worth a visit. I flew to Sao Paulo in 1994 for the F1 race. I flew out of Heathrow on BA and the plane stopped in Rio for refueling. After the race I flew to Salvador in the NE of Brazil in a,local carrier to meet up with a pen friend. I then flew to Rio for a few days before heading back to Sao Paulo and then the UK. Rio has a stunning location.
I used to have real problems with flight anxiety. The content of this channel has really helped, by explaining what's going on and how things work on an aircraft
This one hits hard, my father was due to be on this flight but a puncture on the taxi on the way to the airport , he missed his flight home and subsequently he missed his mother's funeral ! And on his rescheduled flight someone tried to open the door of the cabin 4 hours after takeoff...
It was the first officer pulling back on the stick, that's what crashed the airplane!! And i don't think it was his training at low altitude (thrust+nose up) i think it was purely psychological (emotional) - i don't wan't to crash = nose up. And only at the end he gave the vital information "but i had the stick back for quite some time". It's elementary logic that when an aircraft dosen't display the data, what the procedure should be - NOTHING, the plane has been flying OK till now, so why change anything, why give inputs that don't make any sense. I first watched a Docu about the AF 447 10 years ago and every time i hear about this flight i feel deep sadness, it didn't had to be this way.. I hope the families of the passengers found their peace.
I still feel for DuBois. Just imagine walking into a cockpit like that, and the moment you realize the problem, just to realize at same time it’s too late to do anything.
He wouldn’t of been in the position If he didn’t leave the flight deck just as they flew into an extreme weather event and left the most inexperienced pilot in charge, seems to me he was more interested in going to sleep rather than ensuring the safety of his aircraft. Also why did he take so long to come back after being called, he was in charge of the aircraft, wether it was regulation sleep or not he could of ensured the aircraft was out of the weather event before he went for his beauty sleep.
Outstanding job on this video and analysis Petter and team. A tragic event. I do wonder whether the sidestick control in such extreme circumstances, reduces awareness for the crew of each other's actions vs traditional yoke.
@@pusb_87english63 u r being too harsh to captain, the plan of which one going to rest in which phase was already done with consent of all 3 pilots. The moment he left stick, everything is fine and he rightly have no problem believing that his FOs are capable enough to crusie the flight for next 3/4 hrs.
@@chakraborty1989 exactly, and when he came back, he presumed of course that everything was ok, only to hear the other pilot asking him what to do, as they have lost control of the plane. To which the captain replied: I really don't know. Because as you state he understood there was nothing more he could do. One more thing is also tragic, their wifes, Mme Dubois et Mme Robert, were both with them on this flight, as spouses do sometimes when there is a nice destination.
Too much technology. Computers ruling humanity. A trend impossible to stop. Extremely informative and educational video, as always from Petter and crew.
Wow that was truly terrifying, you felt the panic, emotions, tensions & confusions that took place in that cockpit. Your production & delivery was extremely tense & expertly put together, who on earth could have got out of that situation? You have to think & react at a speed under pressure way above the norm. I felt for those pilots, it was all very sad & of course everyone who lost their lives. May they RIP. Thank you for your masterful break down and insight into what happened.
Thank you. That’s what we wanted to do. This could have been solved in the first few seconds, before the confusion got worse. After they lost the correct mental model, it would have been very hard.
@@MentourPilot Your breakdowns on these accidents certainly shows how critical the first few seconds are, in decision making, communication & team work. Not to mention the essential rest & up to date training you pilots need. Once again brilliant work, your videos are fascinating.
@@MentourPilot Thank you very much for pointing that out. You´ve to understand this to understand what happened here and why it happened. And this became very clear here in your Video. It raises the question to me: Who would have been able to solve the situation in this very first moments - given the startle effect. Maybe Pilots with better training for such situations. The video explained it very lucide that the topic "Stupidity"-Narration of this Accident is way to simple to match the Historic Reality.
@@MentourPilot - You're absolutely right about the mental model aspect. As I've said in other posts, I've come to suspect that for whatever reason, concerns about the weather ahead and the inability to avoid it were weighing unusually heavily (more than one would expect of an experienced ATPL) on FO Bonin, given the frequency with which he mentioned it to Capt. DuBois and his apparent hesitancy in responding to FO Robert's asking if he was OK. I have to wonder whether he had developed a mental model in which he expected severe turbulence leading to control issues and in particular a fear of overspeed such that when the problems began, a combination of startle effect and his mental model caused him to react to the scenario he was expecting (and afraid of) rather than the scenario with which he was presented.
This one angers me so much. The FO completely shut down, and as a result, actively sabotaged the aircraft during the entire disaster sequence. He forgot his training, he disregarded the alarms and the crew’s commands, he failed to allow the relief pilot to take controls. All of these reactions doomed the flight in this extremely preventable accident.
I remember flying my glider thru a downburst a few miles east of Hailey, ID. I contacted the tower telling them my position and that I was inbound for landing. Shortly after that, I was sinking down between two tiny peaks at a rate that would not support a glide path to the airport. The tower, then, contacted me about something that my brain simply could not process. I acknowledged their transmission and told them that I was "really busy" and would talk to them later. It was really weird: I could hear the words, but could not put them together into a meaningful sentence. Thanks for (finally) making me understand that hearing is lost in an emergency. BTW, I flew threw that downburst and was able to land uneventfully.
The Point is - hearing is lost in an emergency, that is true and that is also why "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate" get's hammered in to you right from the beginning. Which is what the First Officer simply forgot due to a lack of training and situational awareness - IMHO. Pulling on the stick for SO long and with a working (even if it's only the backup one) altimiter, should have told him, he's actually stalling the plane...but not being trained to actually Aviate in such a high stress situation...well...
Quality wins out. I’ve been watching Mentour for years and it has always been an excellent channel, but lately the quality is just off the charts in terms of its attention to detail and thorough, comprehensive storytelling. Absolutely ace.
It's surprising to me that none of the 3 pilots realized that they needed to increase their speed to get out of their stall. It likely would have been to late when they finally decided to (deliberately) climb, but at that point, they should have increased to full speed.
@@ihatewhatisawThere was a stall warning that sounded continously for 45 seconds. Usually, that means that the airplane is about to stall. Most pilots should know this.
This reminds me of the Aeroperu crash, in that case the statics were left taped up. In both cases PAT (power, attitude, trim) would have given the pilots much needed breathing space.....just set the normal power for that altitude, the normal pitch attitude and then pitch trim.
Time and time again you continue to publish episode length, in depth content that has some of the best explanations of some of these incidents out there. You're able to explain things so clearly and consicely in a way that people who know nothing about aviation can follow, while not dumbing it down so avgeeks and people in the aviation industry can still get something out of these videos. Your content is also never disrespectful or exploitative of the victims unlike similar content in which aviation disasters are discussed. You're by far my favorite aviation channel, the quality of work you and your team put out is nothing short of phenomenal and is completly unparalleled on RUclips.
I find it weirdly cool that an airline captain tells stories about the worst airline accidents. Almost like a warning and yet an informative on how important each aspect of flight is.
Due to the media coverage when the accident report was first released, I've always thought of the first officer as being responsible for this accident due to panic causing him to continue to continuously pull up. I see now that that is probably a harsh conclusion. None of the pilots realized they were in a stall until it was too late. Their training, which was good overall, let them down in these confusing circumstances. There was panic and they all missed things, but the situation got so extreme so quickly, it probably isn't fair to call any of the crew incompetent.
It seems like the pilot flying didn’t really know how to fly. Getting a stall warning but still continuing to increase pitch/AOA. That’s something that could’ve been learned from 172’s or RC gliders. There is some fault with the training though. Teaching to power out of a stall when it’s not something like a fighter aircraft or Extra300.
They weren't all incompetent, the captain seemed to have figured it out pretty quickly but it was maybe poor judgement to let the less inexperienced pilots fly the plane immediately before entering a severe storm.
90% of these types of accidents are due to stalls and they're constantly asking why they're going down. wish I was there to tell them "YOU'RE STALLING, HOW DID YOU PASS YOUR FLIGHT TESTS"
Yes, I've never flown a plane in my life, but I know what to do in case of a stall. Maybe pilots should be assigned to watch air crash videos on youtube. :D
In defence of couch experts across the globe, it's a 100% certainty that couch experts would've at least matched the ultimate outcome of the trained crew here.
You know, they might mean "what is causing us to stall and how the hell do we fix it" but they just say "why are we going down" because, you know, they're terrified, confused, and about to die. Idk how you can sit there and act like such a know it all when you haven't experienced (and hopefully never will) this level of confusion and stress. I think MOST importantly, we all need to remember how quickly things go wrong. With more time, there is less pressure, and people are able to act a little more rationally. But here, there was barely any time at all to comprehend what was happening, especially as they couldn't get any reliable data.
@@olliej.2776 they had some reliable data, such as altitude. They also were warned about ice forming on the pitet tubes. The first officer just over reacted on a situation that was under control when the AP was disengaged. How could’ve he possibly think that his theory of overspeed would be true when he was receiving stall warnings when pushing the nose down (which is impossible since you would be gaining speed rather than losing it) and then the warning disappeared when he put the nose up. He should’ve connected the dots immediately after that, specially since he had been warned AND trained on what to do when they had erroneous airspeed data. He made so many mistakes in such a small time frame that it is bizarre to think that there might be people like him flying around daily, endangering the lives of thousands of passengers every day.
I hope Airbus integrates A VISUAL panel warning as well as a stick shaker somehow to alert pilots more decisively to an impending stall. Thank you for a very complete inderstanding of this accident - even for a NON pilot!
I watched this flight on an aircraft crash investigation years ago, I never understood how this happened but now it’s clear and very understandable thanks !
It’s horrifying just how many of these stories are fundamentally caused by some pilot being startled and losing situational awareness. The scariest thing about it is that no matter how often we hear about it, we’re all still susceptible.
I'm wondering if the FO's wife was on that same flight home which could explain his total panic reaction. It appears that he lost all logic or reasoning and suffered some form of spatial disorientation as well and couldn't let go of the controls so that the relief pilot could handle the situation. Absolute tragedy! I'm hoping that FO's don't get promoted to pilot status without first undergoing numerous different emergency situations in flight simulators to check their reactions & if inadequate they aren't promoted until they can display adequate reasoning, logic & reactions to give the aircraft & passengers the best possible opportunity of avoiding an air crash. This channel is by far the best of all the aviation channels that I've watched - excellent work, Petter, thank you.
In Chinese, there's a nick name for the first officer "sidestick monster" (I tried to translate it as good as i can). Depicting the fact the first officer continued to pull on the side stick over the entire course of this accident.
Totally harrowing to watch and fascinating at the same time. Thank you for your detailed technical explanations while being kind to the pilots’ decisions in the situation they were faced with. Truly awful!
I fly a lot for business travel and have logged quite a few miles. I’ve flown thru some gnarly weather, and experienced wind shear and multiple go around attempts in crosswinds. After years of this not much phases me, but I couldn’t imagine the terror of being in a full out stall in an airliner, in the middle of a storm. The pilots did the best they could given the situation IMO. They kind of lost their minds and full out panicked amongst the chaos, g-forces/shaking, and lack of sleep….. but who wouldn’t honestly? Damn, what a way to go out. RIP to the crew and passengers who had to experience that horrible event
Imagine if planes can release giant parachutes upon emergency landing or crashing to soften the impact for survival rather than smash like a wedding cake.
I cannot find words to express my gratitude for this video, finally, everything seem to be so much clearer while most of the videos picture FO as an incompetent and his actions as incomprehensible. He's at fault, don't get me wrong, but the most important part is why the swiss cheese effect took place, and I think you explained it so well that everyone, regardless of their field of study, have understood you.
I am impressed, how two pilots crashed fully functional aircraft so quickly. As I am not a pilot, still I know there is some settings in aircraft, which will give stable performance for the aircraft. Thrust+alt+angle of attack-> yor aircraft is flying.
Great videos as always ! This accident highlights everything I hate about airbus and it’s over automation. Despite their safety record , as a pilot it’s why I’ll only operate boeing. The side stick is the most ridicules design, how is it possible you can’t feel exactly what the other pilots inputs are from their flight controls is simply insane. As a captain this is a complete nightmare, having a yoke you have a real sense of the first officers inputs, and vice versa. Despite’s Boeings current issues today, I still believe they are the most pilot oriented aircraft, having flow the max since it’s entry into service , doesn’t change my opinion. Even flying the 787 with its over automated tendencies , still has all the feel, which is a massive part of Situational Awareness. A sad set of circumstances.
It was so frustrating that the relief pilot kept trying to do what might have saved the aircraft only to have the confused, potentially panicking FO yank the controls back from him and doom them all. Very sad, very frustrating incident. You've done a tremendous job educating everyone who's watched this video!
What's even more frustrating is knowing that had this happened on a Boeing, this accident most likely wouldn't have happened since both pilots would easily have been able to tell the pressure on the yokes. Terrible design on Airbus's part and another reason why I will still prefer Boeing.
@@dfg-rg3pd Agreed. Terrible design on Airbus' part. I think they were even criticized for having their airplanes designed this way because of the fact that it made it impossible for the pilots to decipher what the control inputs from the other pilots were.
I also think that because the FO brought his wife onto the plane, psychologically he had some sort of inclination to do what he thought was right in an attempt to try and save her. This I believe needs to be looked into.
Training. The FO was doing what he was taught, as frustrating as that was. I have had similar experiences on the sim where the pitot had frozen over and had to ride the plane down until the anti-ice could thaw enough ice off. When I saw that there was little or no airspeed indication I gently beld the stick forward trying to keep losing altitude at a 3000 fpm rate. Had there been another pilot pulling back on the stick and constantly wresting control from me it would have been impossible. The FO was doing what he thought would save them but did the exact opposite which makes this story all the more sad and frustrating. This is a well told story and all good pilots can learn something from it. Well done! 😢😔
Now, as for this being a bad design or not? I think we have to understand that the whole concept of fly-by-wire is completely different from yoke driven planes. Maybe there needs to be a better prioritization algorithm. Should the captains side be able to have the final word? It seems futile having inputs that merely cancel each other out. Maybe we need AI which takes over control until it has left the stall condition although it would not have enough good data to work with. Still, there must be a better way. Any thoughts?
This flight is why in pilot training they teach us the “sit on your hands” idea. This means that if there is an emergency and you think you have to do something RIGHT NOW to avert disaster, stop for a second and think before you do anything. It’s likely that a startle reaction will cause you to do something that only makes the situation worse.
Yes, reminds me of the upset training I got - if you don’t know what to do - let go. Let go of the controls and let the airplane do its thing until you know what inputs to put - also, just use rudder and pitch. But I understand in imc it’s somewhat different and waaay harder. So sad
I think in spaceflight it is the "don't just do something, sit there" as opposed to the "don't just sit there, do something" principle. I don't remember my source exactly, though.
When Petter said "This all happened in 18 seconds" I thought "Oh my god." Imagine: You got zero visibility and fly in perfect control. Out of nowhere, tons of alerts start blaring and appear on your screens and, maybe most importantly, your speed indicator goes blank. From that moment on you have two minutes (last minute of freefall might not be enough altitude) to find out what's really happening and to recover a big plane from a complete stall. I don't blame the pilots.
Pitch up nose 5 degrees, set thrust at 85% and fly the plane. Until you figure out what to do. What's going on. It's not efficient but beats taking a dip in the ocean.
@@Outpost-13-Hockey I think that's true. My guess is that none of the pilots had ever experienced any serious problems in their entire flying careers, and were just totally shocked that something unexpected had happened for the first time ever. That's why they ought to do more flying in real planes where something goes wrong (deliberately caused by an instructor) and they have to try to sort it out. Just doing it in the simulator isn't going to be the same, when you know you're not in real danger.
Edit: Clarified to reflect that I don't wish to excuse pilots for the errors they're highly trained and employed to avoid - just remarking on how fast the excrement hits the air circulator! It's a slap back to reality when Petter says "and so it's been about one minute at this point". That's an incredibly quick transition from fine to disastrous
@@greenwavemonster There's still no excuse for a professional pilot stalling his plane at 37,000 feet to zero in 4 minutes when if he'd done nothing at all the plane would have been fine.
It will definitely attract judgement, because stall recovery is one of the most basic skills even for learner pilots, as well as recognising when you can't handle a situation. This guy is professional, extensively trained, type certified and supposedly much more experienced than the entire crew on this aircraft model. if all that training does not translate into performance, it was a total waste of time. Worse, he seized up in the middle of performing a dangerous manoeuvre, something that is totally unacceptable even for pilots with 3 flight hours of experience.
The first officer disregarded everything he was being told by captain and the relief pilot. He continued stick input even after transferring the controls. He basically went into full panic mode, disregarding chain of command.
@@johnallen7807 The pilot-in-command is the captain (aka the person who is in charge at the end of the day) but either pilot can be pilot flying (as opposed to pilot monitoring), otherwise the f/o would never get any flying experience, after all ;)
I don’t know about you, but every time I think about what happened that night, it angers me. This should not have happened. The panic actions from the pilot flying with input mostly « à cabrer » (climb position input on the command) are so maddening. But, again, it is easy to see this calmly in the comfort of my living room. Who am I to judge? The combined errors made by those guys made them lose their lives along with the passengers behind them. That is very clear. But I maintain that everyone here is at fault: the pilots, Air France, Airbus. Add to that the combination of it all, the famous Swiss cheese comparison, and we can see how the succession of cascading events offers many similarities to what happened to the Titanic.
I was an A330 pilot and this had a huge psychological effect on me when it happened. Eastbound at night over the Atlantic it was hard not to see how you were in the same situation as these guys were,cruising along safely,yet 5 minutes later they were all dead. Rewatching this was honestly harrowing. Sometimes I'm glad I'm retired and thank God I never so much as scratched the paint on an airplane. Praying for you Petter and all my colleagues out there that you stay safe!
How did this change when they released the CVR findings in 2011? Before that, many assumed that there was some kind of unknown failure lurking in the A330. Did you find it reassuring to know how big of a role the pilots played? Just curious.
The first officer's last words really stuck with me: "This can't be true". I think he said that because the whole scene played out exactly like a bad dream. Maybe it felt like that moment at the end of a nightmare - just before you wake up in a sweat - when you begin to realize what's happening just can't be real. But this time it was...
@@alacarte5073 I'm not sure if OP understood that or not, but IMO "this can't be happening" is just as haunting and understandable, as last words go. Poor fucker...
A little unrelated but I've wondered when he vocalized he had the nose up the whole time if he recognized his mistake or was he flabbergasted it wasn't working. I've been trying to find data on if he pitched the nose down after saying it or did he pull up the entire time. FDR data is trickier to find sometimes.
A teacher of mine was in this flight with his wife and his 3 years old son. Moments like this leaves you astonished how lives can end so abruptly. He was brilliant. The rest of the semester was very sad and weird
My uncle was flying from Rio to Paris on the same day, his flight left 30 min earlier. He said he remembers walking by the gate for this flight with the people waiting to board the aircraft. I find that chilling.
AF447 flew out of Rio every night (or at least the same route, perhaps not the same flight number). I remember seeing a news report from the following day where Monday night's AF447 passengers assembled at the gate and were asked about how they were feeling. There was obviously a lot of nervousness and apprehension. One person spoken to was actually meant to have flown on the doomed Sunday flight, but had pushed his itinerary back by 24 hours without telling anyone. He would obviously have died if he'd stuck to his original plans.
@@halfbakedproductions7887 that's so lucky. The thing tho, statistically what are the odds that the same flight, in the same route would crash again? There's even less reasons to be scared.
I'd say the odds are more or less the same. The alertness of the pilots who heard from the accident could worsen or improve the pilot's performances. But generally if on the next day all the circumstances would be the same, then the possibility would also be the same. It doesn't matter that a plane crashed the day before. That is the same thinking of doubting that after you got a six on a cubic, you wouldnt get a six again because that feels planned. But reality is that it is always the same possibility of one out of six. The possibility of another plane crashing wouldnt be influenced by the accident the day before but by the fact that the day after the weather conditions are changed and the pilots are different people
@@ericmackrodt9441 The odds are the same every time. Statistically, just because a Rio-Paris crashed doesn't trigger some magical immunity that makes it less likely to crash again in comparison with a Stockholm - Berlin.
I can’t imagine what the investigators felt when they found out the pilot flying wasnt giving the controls over, and also kept the plane’s nose up. I also can’t imagine the distress the captain felt when everything clicked in his mind, but was too late to do anything about it…
@@mlai2546 the whole thing from when autopilot disconnected to when the plane crashed took less than 5 min afaik. The captain came back about 3 minutes in, but the time left was too little to understand what was going on and amend the mistake…
There is also a vanity fair article that for me brought clarity and it was actually quite horrifying. Definitely the Swiss cheese of air crashes and it was shocking.
Even when the pilot finally figured out the issue (it was too late) the co-pilot still kept the nose pitched up after getting yelled at to let go. Incredible.
Absolutely heartbreaking. Another crazy part of this story is that of an italian lady who missed this flight just for being late few minutes, took a flight home the following day and died on a car accident on her way home. Something out of a Final Destination movie..
An Italian woman who missed doomed Air France Flight 447 was killed days later in a car accident, it was revealed today. Johanna Ganthaler and her husband Kurt showed up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31 and dodged death aboard the Airbus, which went down over the Atlantic with 228 on board. The retired couple caught a flight out of Rio the next day. But the woman’s luck tragically ran out last week in Kufstein, Austria when the couple’s car swerved across a road and collided with an oncoming truck, according to the Italian wire service ANSA.
I am a Captain with JetBlue Airways and have been flying the Embraer 190 for the past 17 years. I recently completed my transition training to fly the Airbus 320. During training one of my instructors mentioned the book you credited at the end of your video as it was written by his friend, Bill Palmer. That got me interested in this accident which is how I found your video and channel. My newly acquired A320 knowledge allowed me to understand your full breakdown of this accident and was fascinating/horrifying all at once! I’ve since watched several of your videos and I’m truly impressed with how well they are all done. Some of these accidents I’m familiar with, most I’m not. As a professional pilot I want to continuously strive to be better and these videos are great learning tools of things NOT to do! Thanks for your work it’s much appreciated!
@@johnkibbey1875 Confession: I will be honest with you, I do not like to fly, however, I believe that if I have control of the aircraft, I won’t be scared. I feel uncomfortable when another person drives me, however, when I have control of the vehicle I am not uncomfortably or scared. That is my theory. Learning how to fly is a way to overcome my fear.
@@michellejones8144 I feel the same as you do. These videos make me scared to fly as well but we should take these as lessons as what not to do or rather as lessons on how to avoid similar issues in the future.
I'm amazed by how you can explain this complex technical material in such an engaging manner. I have zero aeronautical knowledge but was able to keep up with the key technical details thanks to your presentation skill.
I agree, but I am concerned, because I have to notice, that Mentour is much superior in his skills to normal pilots. And this fact will go on to produce airplane crashs. It is chique to be a pilot, but it is better to become a carpenter, unless you can exclude a certain amount of stress and skill failure.
A spine chilling account of this tragedy. Very professional and Considerately done. I have nearly 15,000 hrs on Airbus from 320,330,340 and your account made me feel like I was there with them but unable to talk. Poor souls, all 228 of them. Rest in peace.
@@Christiaan08 They weren't lazy, I can agree with that, but their "trying", was what provoked the crash. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the aircraft. The pitot tubes froze, the computers got unreliable read outs, switched the flying to the crew and the crew crashed the aircraft. If they just kept flying straight without pitching up, everything would have returned to normal operation. The pitot tubes would have unfroze and the computers would then be available again to resume automated flying.
Dude I kept getting more infuriated every time you mentioned the FO taking controls and pulling up when all he had to do was pull down and his colleagues pulling down but him pulling up. Soooooo MAD!
F/O killed everyone.. what a tragedy.... I feel like the Captain's decision to leave just before entering a storm wasn't the wisest. My heart goes to the families :/
If you pause the vid and read the report starting at 53:23, along with Peter's commentary, you'll get quite a different picture .."caused a severe startle in the *operating crew* "... "the *crew* were expected to deploy the procedure for unreliable air speed but never did" ... Remember, they were ALL pilots and the Pilot Flying was the F/O and so when the Captain took rest as the Pilot Monitoring, the relief pilot took over THAT role. We can make assumptions that maybe the Captain, as the pilot monitoring, may have effected a different outcome, but we'll never know.
There seem to be more than couple videos on this channel that FO pulling hard and/or captain pushing hard on their controls, refusing to ever flying the damn plane LEVEL for a second. I think they could use some simple sim training until it becomes almost kneejerk response to get the pitch to zero in any panic.
storms on this area are very very very common. 4 planes got through that exact storm within minutes on that same night (all took a right turn, the AF447 was the only one who took a left). this exact flight got through this kind of storm hundreds of times, it made them confident enough
@@すどにむdudes, pilots don't learn how to fly planes without the AP, or flying envelope protection off anymore. all the failures still include at least flying rules protections. it's ridiculous
@@bzipoli IMO there should be a huge "OH SHIT!" button that disables all automatics (apart form warnings ofc) so you could fly the plane the same way you'd fly a Cessna without worrying about control laws and other complex systems. Automation is great at preventing situations but when it hits the fan you won't have time to think of how the flight computer was programmed. But I still can't comprehend why would anyone pull up while getting stall warning at FL360. You know there's a ton of altitude, even if it was for nothing, pulling down won't hurt at all.
I did my A340 type rating just over a year ago and obviously this was discussed. But you presented this much better. I’ve learned a lot more from your video. Thank you for that. It will make me a safer pilot.
Congratulations on your A340 type rating why the co pilot did what he did we will never understand , he thought they were overspeeeding When the complete opposite were happening, the stall warning sounded 28 times but still the co pilot pulled back on his sidestick causing the stall , he thought it was a computer error The plane stopped flying started falling when the pitot tubes froze and the auto pilot disconnected, they should have done nothing , just keep the plane level and leave the power where it is because it’s been working quite well for them and just wait for the sensors to come back Instead they panicked And captain Dubois choose to take his rest break during a very bad weather situation. Just an avoidable accident where 228 people,didn’t have to,die
I had a Tom saying are you gonna manage to get your guy who are your day will you put a man or a quite he would go go and look at his wife are you doing with it we were doing between door now we are the volume at 60 problem why are you why have you got a boy or no
@@Paralyzer - In fairness, it's a bit more involved than saying "they panicked"; there's quite a lot of nuance there. I'll probably write a longer post once I've finished the video, but when it comes to understanding F/O Bonin's actions it's important to remember that he was an accomplished glider (sailplane) pilot. As a result his stick-and-rudder skills and understanding of aerodynamics were in all likelihood above average - and this may have had a direct effect on his concerns regarding transiting areas of strong turbulence while carrying excess speed. Reading between the lines on the CVR transcript, before Capt. DuBois goes for his rest break Bonin repeatedly makes reference to the weather ahead and gives a strong impression that he wasn't comfortable with it - properly-applied CRM on the part of DuBois should have picked up on this and he should have designated FO Robert (who correctly diagnosed and tried to apply corrective actions from the beginning until the end) as temporary PIC.
@@Paralyzer I’ve been flying since the early 90’s and I’m definitely an “older generation” in my way of thinking. However, I do go with the times. Just that a few things I still believe was better in the old days. One of those things is the ability of pilots to hand fly their airplane. Now a days it’s: Gear up, Autopilot on. With that in mind, I can’t comprehend why that co pilot did what he did, but I don’t blame him. I blame how he was trained. Gulfstream has developed side sticks that move simultaneously. I hope Airbus adopts something similar. That way the other pilot can “feel” the inputs from the other pilot. In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head in regards to the Captain. I do a lot of long haul flying. I would never take my rest when you are headed into bad weather while in charge of the flight.
@@rtbrtb_dutchy4183 - Without going into it too much, the technical and safety aspects of interconnected vs. non-interconnected primary flight controls would seem to balance one another out when looking at the statistics (as in neither is inherently 'safer' than the other). Something you may find interesting (as the holder of an Airbus FBW type rating) is that I was fortunate enough to be invited to take part in some experiments in an A32x simulator and in a similar scenario, the autotrim does roll forward with sustained nose-down sidestick input alone in Alternate Law, and it was possible to effect a recovery just using forward stick until relatively late in the sequence (I think the lowest we held the stall into was FL150 prior to full forward input).
It's weird, but every time I hear this story, I still think there's a chance they'll save the plane. I keep waiting for "...and then they realized they needed to push the stick forward and continued on their flight."
But as Petter said, the computer couldn’t make sense with the airstream at such a sharp angle so CANCELLED the warning, then when the nose would be pushed down the computer wakes up and announces STALL! I can certainly see now why these pilots were so screwed up as to what was really going on. How Petter has portrayed it, we can only imagine what they went through which is but a drop in the bucket of what those guys must have actually felt😢
I've seen multiple documentaries about this unfortunate Air France 447. This one hands down is the best one! It covers the technical details, but also captures the absolute horror and confusion in the cockpit like no other. I was sitting on the edge of my seat. Great work! it's crazy that Mentour Pilot makes such high quality content available for free
I think pilots should test for stall scenarios every 3 months. If you fail then you pay a $25,000 fine and lose your license for 18 months. Preventing a stall from happening is one of the easiest things to go. Point the fucking nose down. If your response is to pitch up as you are approaching a stall you have NO BUSINESS being a pilot. Point the nose down. How fucking hard is that to do?
@@mortgageapprovals8933 Rather than punish failures, why not just respectfully debrief them and have them try again? There's no need to make the experience toxic, no need to ruin people's livelihoods, and definitely no need to have them tested every three months (the twice-yearly is plenty sufficient)
@@mortgageapprovals8933 if we are going to fine pilots tens of thousands of dollars for failing stall recovery, why not other scenarios? I say if a commercial pilot fails any checkride they should be fined at least $25 K- if not more.
I remember waking up that morning to the horrible news that my 28 year old Swedish colleague was on this plane. It was her very first business travel abroad. Just a few weeks earlier she had been hugging me with tears in her eyes when I was leaving the company due to redundancies. RIP Laura.
It's easy to forget when watching videos like this just how quickly everything we are talking about is happening. The panic and confusion must have been unbearable, and I can't imagine how the captain felt walking back into all this chaos. And of course that isn't even mentioning how the passengers must have felt. Fantastic video as always, and this was perfect timing on the upload as I had just finished catching up on the videos from the last month that I'd missed
Would they have been aware that they were crashing the plane, though (until they saw the ground, considering the first officer didn't notice the altitude until 10,000 feet), considering they couldn't even tell if they were going up or down? It would've been a really stresful possibility...but not certain?
@@starfrost6816 on a United flight from Lisbon to Newark recently, we hit this unexpected air pocket over the Atlantic that violently rattled the plane and caused a fast drop in altitude that freaked everyone out for about 2 seconds. If a plane is falling from the sky at 10k feet per minute, I can’t imagine how terrifying that would feel. I’m sure the pilots knew they were falling fast, which likely contributed to the panic and confusion in the cockpit as they also knew they didn’t have a lot of time to save the plane.
Yeah I was constantly questioning the actions of the pilots at first, but then I thought about it and tried to put myself into such an incredibly confusing and terrifying situation like that coupled with a complete and total loss of situational awareness as well as any visual cues and there's no reasonable way that I can blame them for just reverting to their subconscious training that ultimately doomed them.
3 minutes from "normal" to "dead". i always think i'd be a good pilot, and yet i always think that when faced with something like this, with 60 seconds to figure it out, I probably would fail too.
I realize how panic affects people but still, even knowing the likely outcome i can’t help wanting to yell at the pilot who is panicking to LET GO OF THE STICK! The dual input when one pilot is doing the correct thing and the other is in full panic mode is heartbreaking.
It shows that early 30s is actually a dangerous age. You’re past the obey as trained automatic behaviours of 18-early 20s people (which makes them desirable soldiers) but not have the life experience of 40+ people who have had minor disasters and accidents and fearful situations and survived them and learned to manage fear.
@@M_SC Most of the car accidents I've had in my life were in my 30s and 40s, not when I was a dumb kid. When I was a dumb kid just learning, I was keenly aware of my limitations. But at that point I started to feel like I was an experienced driver--but in part because of my history as a commuter, I really wasn't.
imagine having reduced thrust, knowing that you are very high up in the sky, hearing a stall warning and pitching up significantly. It makes no sense that a commercial pilot is capable of intentionally doing this. It would be like a commercial bus driver pressing the accelerator at a red light instead of the brake. It doesn't make any sense.
This hits close to home. I had lived 2007-2008 in Brazil, so at Christmas 2008, freshly back in Europe, I helped friends schedule their Brazil visit for May 2009. At my advice, they decided to fly back to Bucharest from Rio (and not São Paulo, as they initially planned) via Paris. Back in 2009, there were two daily flights RIO-CDG. There was no rush, no obvious criteria (except perhaps the price) which flight to take. Fotunately, between two glasses of wine and without any serious consideration, they chose the other one, the one that had flown a couple of hours earlier (and, if I'm not much mistaken, was still airborne when tragedy struck). The first Mentour video I will cannot bring myself to watch, at least not for the moment.
For some reason, as a non pilot who knows nothing about flying aircraft, the CVR recording hit me harder on this one than most. Usually it’s pilots struggling to recover a dire situation caused by a mechanical failure or some other catastrophe. Here there’s this surreal moment of realisation of their predicament even thought they can’t see it or even really feel it. It hits you when Robert says “this can’t be real” and Dubois shouts “no, no, no!”. It’s like a nightmare and you’re expecting to wake up at any moment. Sends a shiver down my spine.
The amount of stress and it's reasoning described over this video, then the realization that it was condensed into just a few short minutes is amazing and frightening. When you said "all of this happened in the first 18 seconds," it was a slap of reality. It only got more gut wrenching from there.
@@joebob2311productions captain was probably dog tired and was the only one that could have identified the stall and taken command from the first pilot sans let him let go of the controls so they could just fly the plane and work the problem. This was definitely a problem of too many chiefs in the kitchen. And panic erasing logical thought or clarity. Unfortunately as well not a lot of manual flying done now by the new generation of pilots. They are wrapped in bubble wrap with their automated systems and when they go to alternate law they are released without much warning. The startle and the panic is a real human emotion that is hard to put aside when you are genuinely fighting for your life, this along with bad software that can’t account for the unaccountable doesn’t help.
@@azzajohnson2123 the FO really had fuckall idea what to do when the AP disengaged, and the design of the Airbus didn't exactly help. The RP had no idea the jackass in the right seat had been pitching the the aircraft nose high for two mins straight.
It bears repeating that Mentour Pilot always treats these incidents with the dignity and gravitas they deserve. May this channel flourish and may future generations learn from it.
The most important thing I’ve learned in my entire life is how to remain calm in crisis. SLOW DOWN IN EMERGENCIES. Slow is steady. Steady is smooth. Smooth is fast…. Fast is deadly…. This has helped me in soooo many different situations in my life. I work in healthcare and this motto is often contagious…As this type of calm spreads throughout emergency environments, it can lead to exceptional outcomes.
The professionalism of most pilots is amazing. Many years ago, for reasons I won't go into, I was required to listen to the cockpit recording of a plane that flew into the side of a mountain. The crew clearly knew what was about to happen, yet they remained calm and professional instead of panicking, whilst they did their best to rescue the plane. The flight engineer was told to call out the height above the ground, which he did in a calm voice, counting down until the end of the recording. He missed the final number: "zero".
This is probably the only video about this accident that doesn't paint the First Officer's decissions as incomprehensible. It becomes clear that this was a matter of not completely understanding the plane's systems and a lack of training in stall situations, the scene must have been terrifying to the pilots. Thank you so much for this video, can't think of many other channels that achieve this level of quality.
Seems like a lot of excuses for 2 guys incompetence that killed hundreds of people - clearly they weren’t good enough to hold the positions they were in!
@@MentourPilot You did explain well Petter. I think the entire crew behaved like they were in a startled sleep deprived mode. The Captain not taking over immediately upon entering the flight deck is perplexing, again like being startled out of a sleep, not reacting properly.
@Joe Bi-den Probably the standard Adobe suite but honestly nothing in this video was so special in terms of VFX that nothing else can do it, so whatever he actually uses, you can still you anything else and make videos just as good as this one. You need years of experience though, there's no fast-track for that.
I’ll be honest: I found myself continually wanting to smack the First Officer. (But of course it’s only through the lens of hindsight and knowing what’s *actually* happening that I feel like that.) Obviously the real problem is a fundamental failure by the pilots to recognize what the situation even was in the first place; and if you’re incapable of realizing what is going on, then obviously you’re not going to respond in anything resembling a sensible manner. Even still… I was like THE STALL WARNING SOUND HAS BEEN CONTINUALLY BLASTING AT YOU NONSTOP FOR SO LONG, HOW DO YOU NOT NOTICE THAT! and JESUS DUDE WHY DO YOU KEEP TAKING THE CONTROLS BACK?! And again, in reality it’s a matter of the tunnel vision effect and brain overload and being startled and just simply failing to identify what was going wrong from the beginning, which would happen to anyone in the same circumstances who’d had the same training, so it’s totally understandable. Nevertheless, it’s really hard to watch people doing “the wrong thing” that you already know will lead to disaster; so on some level I still sorta feel myself wanting to give him a smack. 😂 I guess ultimately the lesson here is that, if anything, I ought be smacking the guy for his lack of training, not the way he responded. Or actually I should realistically be smacking the training people instead and not the FO at all. 😝
This is a great video and incredibly informative as always, also I really like the fact that you say regularly "xx seconds have past since AP disconect" during your explanation of the events, because its really easy to think that they had time to react and think, but that allows us to realise that what you've spent 10 minutes explaining in details and with insight that the pilots didn't have actually happened in mere seconds
That’s so true. I always had the impression that the pilots had plenty of time to try and remedy the situation. It even seemed that the Captain had to be roused from bed the way the story has been told by others. I have much more sympathy for the pilots after watching this. Incredible job putting it together.
This accident certainly broadened my understanding of how planes work as a whole. Including how a stall occurs and how to recover. This accident occurred two days after my 25th birthday was a shock to the entire world. Not a lot is said about how the passengers would’ve experienced the resulting collision with the sea and the physicality thereof.
I know the first officer tried his absolute hardest to fix the situation, but him taking control from the relief pilot who was doing the exact thing that could’ve saved everyone just so he could do the opposite is heartbreaking
that is not how it was, if you read the discussion taking place in the cockpit the last 3 Min. The captain gave the command to the less experienced co-pilot, right seat (905h on an A330) instead of the more experience 2nd co-pilot, left seat (4.650h on A330). The pilot on the left only talked to the pilot on his right what to do, or asking him, what he is doing. One has to read the discussion which took place to understand. When the captain came back, you know he left his seat when the plane was in perfect state, he did not grasp the situation, thinking all was well, when realising the situation he could only ask: what the heck are you doing? Put the nose down. But it was much too late to do anything at that moment.
@@stephenpalmer8072 You should watch the video again, and pay more attention to Petter's excellent explanation of the very unusual situation this flight got into. Maybe then you'll understand better. I am an A330 pilot myself. That's probably why I have an easier time understanding what happened. By the way, Airbus and all airlines operating the A330 have changed system logic since. So, the people who really do understand what happened were not so ready with their judgement.
@@TribusMontibus I am always ready to listen to someone with experience - so isn't it true that this would not have happened if the two pilots had connected yokes like in a Boeing?
Imagine being the Captain woken up suddenly from rest, coming to the cockpit with both other pilots in complete panic with dozens of warning and many of the display indicators missing. In hindsight it is easy to understand what was happening. But I can't blame the captain for the time it took for him to grasp what was happening. Insanely confusing and scary scenario.
I think the same. Am a PC gamer who dabbles into air combat games at times. Knowing how often I was completely confused and overcome by a suddenly completely changed situation and lost control/got shot down... I don't blame those pilots at all.
@@officerahmo It actually would have been better to take the control from the other pilot instead in this scenario since he was the one causing the stall the whole time, I'm also saying this because the relief pilot actually tried to take over the control but the first officer was in such a bad panic state that he didn't let him do it and he likely wouldn't let the captain take over either.
Just want to say this accident saved at least one life. I had an airspeed unreliable incident during takeoff on one of my student solos and immediately diagnosed it in part based on what I knew about AF 447. Caught a bug or something right before rotation.
56 minutes of high quality Mentour content! It is truly amazing how you can drop two of these videos a month, all with animation and perfect explanation. I can only guess how long making such an extended video takes
Poor Dominic has been working almost day and night on this one.. we didn’t think we would be able to pull it off but here it is. I am so looking forward to hear what you guys think, after the video.
@@MentourPilot Well, I now finished it and ... wow. One of the best ones (if not the best one) so far. Wish I could give more than one like. Yet I wonder, wouldn't pitching down with TOGA increase their speed to put them out of the stall? Or were the pitch downs too short to reach enough speed?
This honestly had me on edge in the best way possible. The storytelling of these events were really portrayed well. Definitely better than a Netflix docu-series!!!
This hits close to my heart. I used to fly that very route and that very plane regularly. Whenever I fly over the Intertropical Convergence Zone just north of Brazil and the plane shakes a bit more in the night I can't help but think of AF 447.
What is your opinion on the performance of the first officer and the team? For me with experience in single engine flying it is horrific. can’t you easily fly an airplane of this size with artificial horizon only? It takes a lot of focus if the conditions are very shaky but it’s doable imo
@@Larsonaut I'm not a pilot, but even I know that was handled poorly. One guy crashed that plane as two others watched it happen. A couple hundred others paid the price.
The fact that when they started doing the right thing by pushing the nose down the stall warning sounding is soooo unfortunate, and is just heartbreaking
And yet, by reading some "aviation experts" here, it's all the fault of the FO... He's not blameless, but that aircraft and its warnings were all over the place...
@@MaxCDet I think it's a flaw in the extreme computerization of the Airbus itself. That, and the pitot tube freezing which set in motion this very unhappy series of events. And really, the fact that the left side pilot could NOT see that his FO would not let go of the stick made this terrible outcome inexorable.
I'm French and I've seen many videos about airfrance 447. As here in France it obviously was a very big deal, I already knew most of what happened. But you truly did an amazing job explaining how the different factors combined brought up this tragedy. You sincerely did an impressive job! Also, when you hear the last words of the crew right before impact, it truly is heartbreaking hearing them realizing they're about to "hit".. I rarely write comments, but your video deserves it! Thanks again.
Actually only one factor, poor pilot skills! Until Large jet pilots have, like in the USA, some real stick and rudder flying, systems operators like these chaps will always make mistakes. Poor training, poor skiils and total lack of CRM
Well, I'm only an amateur but I know there is a debate of which is better, more control to the pilot or more control to the plane's system computer. Obviously you're right about the poor pilot training and skills.. In a way it seems unbelievable that such professionals would not recognize a stall.. Proof that full automation isn't the answer alone. They need to find a balance and the computer should be there to assist the pilot, not to all by itself. But also as it is said in this video, the guys were apparently quite tired also, some French reporters even managed to find the bars where they've been while in Brazil, so this is another factor. Also the bad luck of an improbable timing when the captain comes back and the stall alert stops right at that moment.. And I think Peter is right when he said at the beginning to keep in mind that it is very important to understand exactly how the plane's systems work. So yeah, we come back to to your argument which I agree is the main factor.. But i also think it goes alongside fatigue, bad timing, bad luck, bad equipment (pitot tubes).. I also agree that i think it was be best if both commands are directly linked together, and not get a simple error message coz both pilots are doing opposite things.. During a stressful moment, each pilot would have been able to instantly recognize the issue. Apparently this is Airbus policies, unlike Boeing ones.. Hopefully, everyone will still manage to correct what brought this crash in about 4mns total.. Showing how important it is to have the training and skills. And again, it's heartbreaking hearing the pilots realizing they were going to hit the ground. First time I heard the very last words of the pilots conversation, it was a very powerful moment, I felt so bad for them, even if you know they also have their responsibility.. Let's hope it never happens again!
@@nneellssoonn111 When you train for you IR, you are taught, well not the French or JAR syllabus, to fly. So when the you suspect the pitot has iced. You maintain the picture on the panel, power setting and speed until the de-icing hits. I feel nothing for the pilots, they killed an awful lot of people who I do care for. Their act and the BEA cover up is criminal.
@@jimwalsh8520 well, about the BEA there's no argument there, I completely agree with you. And of course the pilots killed a lot of people, but I think you're a bit harsh about them. They didn't want to crash, in their mind they tried everything without realizing the main issue. Indeed they just should have kept flying the plane level until the pitot tubes started functioning correctly again. Then the computer system would have been working back with correct informations. It's true you're right they didn't do their job properly as they were just trained to recognize pitot tubes malfunction and how to react. It is a tragedy that could have been avoided. But to me, although you're right and it's mainly their poor pilot skills that brought up this crash, they just couldn't understand the situation. As it is often said, it's much easier to see and understand the situation when your life is not on the line. They just couldn't believe what was happening.. And to be honest, the 1st officer whom kept pulling the stick, putting the plane to such an angle that stalling was inevitable, those actions didn't give a chance to the other 1st officer to maybe recover the stall. Anyway, maybe it's because I heard their last words that I feel bad for them, I don't know.. But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about that specific issue. 👍🏻But about the BEA, it's just disgusting.. Big money, too close to Airbus, and no wonder it ends up like this unfortunately..
I'm brazilian and i got a flight from Sao Paulo to Paris the other day, pretty much the same route as this one, and i'll tell you, i thought about this flight the whole trip hah... There was a lot of turbulence over the ocean as well. I feel for all those people, including the Pilots, it's a sad mistake to make, but we're all humans and subjected to those possibilites. May they all rest in peace.
I too am an Airline pilot. I’ve been an f/o and Captain on the Airbus. I’m currently a Boeing 787 f/o. We have heard the cockpit voice recordings (recreated in English) during subsequent training. Your video recount of this accident really helped me to connect the subtleties of the human actions in understanding how this crew remained so far away from identifying the problem and initiating the correct solution. Kudos to your research and your ability to dig deep into the factors at play, many of which were extremely unique to the aircraft manufacturer. This accident helped me to identify the one thing that may have prevented this accident from ending in the water. That is if this had happened in a Boeing aircraft, the “yoke” or control column in front of the nonflying pilot would have been seen by that pilot monitoring as being constantly pulled back by the flying pilot in the right seat and also by the captain, once he was on the flight deck. I’ve loved the side stick control in the Airbus but it is out of sight and is not mirrored to the other side stick. Your use of graphics and animations were so extremely well done, they took me (and I’m sure those who are not aviators) on to that flight deck as if we were there. Every time I go to training and train for the unusual attitudes and “upset recoveries” I always replay Air France 447 as I realize that we are now much safer because of that tragedy. I’m moved even more because of your video. Thanks
I never understood why that actually happened. Simply put: In doubt flat out Meaning: If U have no idea whats wrong, continue straight ahead and put throttle to a setting which will guarantee enough thrust to not fall out if the sky - then start troubleshooting. But pulling up all the time, WTF????
@@brainthesizeofplanet Just reading around there it seems the Co-pilot went into go round mode - the landing-abort procedure which involves full thrust and pitching the nose up. It helps I'm sure if you realise he was on 1 hours sleep from partying all night with his gf.
Why do pilots make a decision to fly a plane knowing it hasn't has maintenance? After watching several clips and many of them had a lack of maintenence and I'm thinking why fly a plane when maintenence is needed.
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Finally what I’ve been waiting for. 😊😊. I asked for it twice and now it’s here
@@solomonarhin It's every bit as great as you would expect from Petter. He really brings the sense of confusion and desperation in the cockpit to life.
@@flagmichael nice indeed
Can you please drop the sponsors by now? The patreon is very big by now and the stops for sponsors are really annoying =/
Is there any way that you @Mentour pilot, could activate the Spanish subtitles? I always want to share your awesome videos with my dad, but he knows very little English. Please! Thanks
This quality of content is something one would usually pay for to watch on Netflix or any platform, but you give it for free. Thanks Petter, what an inspiration 🙏🙌
Aww, thank you! 💕
I can do this because of the ads, my Patreons and my sponsors.
I know those ad-breaks are annoying but they all add up to the salaries of me and my team 💕
@@MentourPilot May I wish you continued success and I hope you can afford to give yourselves a raise (you all deserve it)
@Mentour Pilot one of the very best videos I've seen on your channel. Awesome
@@MentourPilot idk why but I'm getting the urge to make 1k Google account to sub on each of the account for real every time I see your vid upon seeing the vid slowly comming to the end i feel like i wanna screem NOOOOOOOOOOO!! Like Darth Vader 😂
@@Commentator541 PBS comes from grants & taxpayer money. Nothin’ is free🙂
Still, hearing the first officer say "Damn, we're going to crash" and "This can't be true" my heart just went out to them. That must have been terrifying. I can't even imagine. May all their souls rest in peace.
First officer should’ve never been a pilot
@@mritter3874 I agree
It absolutely baffles me how he kept on pitching up the whole time, as if stalling didn't exist. Even when tired, any sane person with decent knowledge and training should figure out that falling with no forward speed requires nose down...
Also, their is a big screen with ground and sky and roll of plane (ADI?), maybe use it....
@@Spido68_the_spectatorwell he was sane and had training so it must have been an emotional problem. Panic makes people be dumb.
What about fu** we're dead by second officier david robert 🙁
I never thought I would one day find myself screaming " PITCH DOWN!!" at my TV for 10 minute straight but here we are.. A very sad and frustrating story
i was frustrated and i know nothing about flying! the dude was stubborn as hell and if the first pilot didn't go to sleep he wouldn't have made this "rookie" mistake.. probably he was a laid back dude, pretty irresponsible to leave his spot when the weather was so bad
I’m not even a pilot and know that if the initial pitch up isn’t working you should attempt a pitch down to regain airspeed and altitude in order to recover the aircraft.
You take control!
… 1 seconds later…
“Duel inputs”
Yep, that First Officer killed 228 people
I think that's the real Airbus design fault. You need to be more sure to take control. Let's say the other pilot has suicidal thoughts or loses conscience while still holding the stick. You can press the priority button, but they could still press it back.
Of course, at the same time, why do you do it?
It's also true that I don't think connect the two sticks together would be so hard, or maybe add vibration to the stick when double input?
@@BioTheHuman Then have the airplane fly itself at that point. Airbus is not there to correct for every scenario possible, such as suicidal thoughts or loss of consciousness. Those are extreme human factors that have to be solved by human actions in the moment. Communication between typical pilots and the ease of switching control is by far the norm.
And even in the scenarios you put, the pilot with suicidal thoughts or loss of consciousness could also be the ones that have main control, and it would then be an extreme struggle for the other pilot to regain control. In both scenarios, with current controls, the proper action would be another person coming in and removing the offending pilot, which would still need to be the case if the controls were harder to switch.
How did Air France find such a stupid pilot
I was flying across the Atlantic ocean on an Air France flight from Dulles and we landed in CDG 5 minutes before AF447 expected landing. When I heard the announcement call on the speaker asking everyone waiting for AF447 to go to the customer service desk, I instantly knew something terrible happened. I will never forget
wow, yeah, that's the sort of thing you never want to see happen. :/
That must have been a chilling thing to hear ...
Im not sure I believe you, it was many hours before any emergency had been declared...
@@jakezxz1352 Yeah, this only makes sense if his plane landed a long time after this guy’s flight landed. It’s possible he’s misremembering the exact details.
@@jakezxz1352
I guess that flight AF447 was lost hours before landing , and those hours were used to realize that there was a problem. Therefore the announcement.
This air disaster is definitely one of the saddest. The combination of how preventable it was, the fact that one of pilots wives sat in the back, the fact that seconds before impact the captain figured out the problem but it was too late and the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder. It’s all very haunting.
The Captain reversed in the last seconds and said pull up.
Even if the captain would have known right away, the two pilots in the seats were in full panic mode and wouldn't have listened.
After the AP disconnected, if they'd just flown the aircraft in the same config for 5-10mins they would have been fine too.
The virtual horizon was fine and there was no reason to suspect the trim was wrong.
@@anlumo1 It was worse than that. The investigation concluded that by the time the captain reached the cabin the plane was doomed. By then to get out of the deep stall before hitting the water they needed to transition to a steep power dive which would peak at a speed that would tear the wings off. A gentler stall recovery would take more time than they had.
I'm a french engineer and in years 2007 and 2008, i designed new types of flight controls systems for small planes. (They would be your nightmare, but we could discuss this elsewhere, here is not the place for that).
I think there is a major understanding problem, between we (engineer that imagine new planes) and you, the pilots (that are using them).
All these instruments, all these warnings, all these display: we are calmly designing them in our office. We have no idea what it is to really pilot a plane. We have no idea what it is to be in an emergency situation, with doubt, without knowing what to rely on, and whith our human senses blured by the shaking of the plane.
What seems totally obvious to us, in the calm of our office ... seems to actually not be obvious at all in the real situation.
We (engineer) think that the most direct and the most explicit way to tell, you (the pilot) that the computer has no idea of what the real values are, is to turn the display off: because we think that display turned off means no value (no valid value). That's so obvious to us.
But here, in this accident, the 3 pilot did not understand that, and they though that it was a bug, a system malfunction.
(while turning the display off to tell the pilot the mesure value was wrong was actually a "feature")
Also, we assume that the pilot will have perfect training to understand the specific plane he is piloting, and will follow the procedures like a robot. But that's not the case. So, we should stop considering that some informations could be "obvious".
Here, there should have been a red flashing light, with the writing "pitot data inconsistant" or "speed data wrong". That way, the crew would have understood that it was not a computer bug: they would not have had this doubt.
Most engineer that design aircraft systems never pilot anything that flys. I do some paraglider freefly, but i don't use instruments: i only rely on my human senses to fly. I really can't imagine what's it's like to be unable to rely on these. We think the same as driving a car: in a car, you can do without instrument, just with your senses. But a plane seems to be more like a blind submarine, doomed without any instrument.
I think that the engineers that designed this airbus have assumed that in case of stall, the pilots would have "sensed" it in their body. In case off wrong pitch, gravity beeing what it is, they would have sense it in their body ... i guess the shaking of the plane, combined with the stress and adrenaline of the emergency prevented that.
Also, the lack of verbalisation of the pilots shows that they relied too much on considering their understanding as "obvious".
1 pilot alone could have been wrong. But for these 3 (experimented) pilot to be like that, without any clue all the time, that proves there is a problem with the displays that are unclear.
You guys are the best.
La compréhension de la manière dont fonctionne un ordinateur en général est déjà difficile. Un ordinateur qui n'a pas les bonnes données, encore plus ! L'interaction ordinateur/homme est un sujet aux développements infinis. Bon courage pour améliorer les relations entre ces deux "intelligences"! Nous ne sommes pas au bout de nos surprises...
Having the hugely important stall warning oscillate on/off as the emergency affects the data unreliable flag is also a major design weakness . Given the importance of this event, it would be prudent to update stall warning logic to not incorrectly tell pilots "stall recovered" when it's actually "stall got worse" .
Also, disregarding abnormal but truthful sensor inputs seems to be excessive use of incorrect logic in the adiro units, especially as the adiro gyros would be confirming the abnormal situation .
@@johndododoe1411 here I am reading and trying to make sense of your terminology but nothing made sense to me. Hats off to all of you who made the airline industry what it is today 🫡.
@@michellejones8144 I'm referring mostly to things in this video and other crash videos. I don't build aircraft systems but do have the engineering background, Adiro units (mentioned in the video) are separate computer boxes that have one job, and one job only: Figure out which way the plane is pointing and tell the main computers. Each adiro handles its own set of outside sensors and also contains a gyroscope measuring how the box and plane moves around it. Much of the confusion was caused by how the Adiros got confused and how the other computers displayed and misinterpreted the adiro output, in turn confusing the pilots. Many lessons should be learned from each mistake in the chain of events. For example if an adiro detects a sensor value dangerously out of range, it should specifically report that, and let the main computer report back "all other sensors agree, value is possibly real" . Similarly when an adiro corrects a calculated value (such as the altitude), other systems should not misinterpret that as an actual movement by the distance, such as "dropping 300 feet", nor should "unknown speed" get displayed as an artificially low speed.
As an enthusiast and a Brazilian, I am particularly interested in all material out there about this accident. This is hands down the absolute best content available about it. Your assertiveness, attention to detail, didactic, and insights are priceless. And you are the ONLY content creator that wasn't lazy to just blame it all on the youngest co-pilot. You actually included details and insights to look at different angles to try and understand what could have been going on in the minds of those poor pilots. Petter, you are one exceptional person 👏👏👏👏👏👏
Glad someone pointed this out. I've looked into everything available on this accident in video form and peter's breakdown was different. I came out of it more sympathetic for the pilots instead of blaming them,especially the young F/O.
It does seem the copilot didn’t understand ‘I have control’ command.
@@Blue-hf7xt could it have been vertigo? Or something along those lines?
@@Ims51 could be. Something was a problem. It wasn’t detectable to the relief pilot or the captain… unfortunately
L
I think about this flight everyday since the victims association is next door to me. They still fight for some sort of compensation after all these years, some of them could no even get a death certificate for their loved ones. It's all so sad, my heart goes out to the families.
The first officer killed them.
@@SAPANNowoh shut up
@@SAPANNow i do kind of agree with this to some extent
@@SAPANNow I think the captain should not have left knowing weather was coming soon
@@aliciamarcel3620 FO wanted to die
I could listen to his voice for hours. The way he describes the whole panicky scene in such calm detail and so sensitively with no judgement is to be commended. Still, despite his calm delivery I felt like I was watching a thriller, not a documentary! Wow.
Rest in Peace, those poor souls, such a heartbreaking loss. Thank god these events serve as lessons for the rest of the aviation industry.
You do? I find the accent too distracting and the constant portrayal face kills it for me, too much pose, as if he needed the attention for his life sake
Very professional, but, even though I know nothing about flying. I would have been very critical of all of the pilot's. They were supposed to be flying the plane, not crashing a perfectly good plane killing everybody on board.
that's just not nice, imagine flying and then whaaaaaaaa, splash! nobody agreed to pay for it!@@Johnny53kgb-nsa
@@dariorodriguezdeamericajesus, why are you even here if you hate his voice? His accent is not that thick, and the OP ks right: he gives every accident respect and dignity. What is so bad about his speaking, you?
His accent, you dum dum. The fact that your lover's voice has such an annoying tone titled with an interesting subject doesn't make it less cringy to withstand, and since is an open video, I had the disgrace to run into it, and you.@@MrGrace
This one was always going to be a difficult watch for me as I knew slightly more than most about the human side of this Tragedy. When I was in college back home in Ireland, a secondary school teacher I knew very well would give me lifts as both my college and her school were in the same town. She knew one of the Irish nurses that was on this flight as she had been a student in her school, and sadly they never found her, she was one the unlucky ones that was never recovered. The school since then have given an award for the student who gets the highest score for the Leaving Cert every year, if I remember correctly, and her parents were at the first ceremony for the award along with all the teachers at the school. As you can imagine it was in her own words "One of the saddest things she ever saw", the poor woman's mother couldn't stop crying throughout the entire evert.
Thanks very much for covering this story Petter, it's never easy watching this story when you know someone affected by this, but it helped me to understand what happened that night and how steps have been taken to ensure it doesn't happen again.
God rest her soul and all the people that perished on this flight.
Just one slight correction: all the Irish victims were doctors, not nurses. Three friends, all young women in their mid-20s and all recently qualified as medical doctors were returning home on Air France 447 from a vacation.
Are you thinking of Aislinn Butler, Jane Deasy or EIthne (Walls)? All were new medicine grads. Ar deis Dé go raibh a n-ainmneacha.
My expat brother-in-law was also due to be on this flight, but delayed his trip by a day to accompany his mother, who was visiting, home to Scotland. A lucky escape, but several other kids at his daughter’s Rio school lost their fathers in this accident. Very sad.
@@Robert_N 😪
As a former US Air Force fighter and trainer pilot with about 3300 hours in much older, all manual aircraft with MUCH simpler cockpits, I have trouble understanding many of the actions in this and other scenarios that you go through so skillfully. The very first thing I don't understand is why does it seem that the pilots are not paying attention to what I will call the "attitude indicator," the part of the flight director that is showing the pitch and roll attitude of the aircraft. That was our primary reference flying on instruments for keeping the wings level and the nose somewhere near the horizon (AOA is now part of attitude control but I never had it). In "unusual attitude" training, If the nose was in the "sky" part of the indicator, it was: push the nose down, level the wings, and add power if necessary. If the nose was in the "ground" part, pull the nose up, level the wings and reduce power if necessary. Do the newer large commercial aircraft attitude indicators work differently? You refer to the flight director bars appearing and disappearing, but not to the actual attitude reference behind the bars.
On a different subject, something that would make me very uncomfortable flying an Airbus is that the sticks don't follow each other. All the other controls and indicators are pretty logical, but those sticks would blow my mind!
You have the best presentations and most outstanding productions of anyone I have seen on UTuub!
I wonder too if the Pilots ever paid attention to the attitude reference bars, eg. to the artificial horizon. Shouldn't it be the rule of thumb to look for a typical 0° - +2,5° nose up indication.
The second most heöpful tool I never heard anything about is the GPS referenced speed over ground (GS). When in a normal mode 400+ is a typical ground speed (except for the typical strong headwinds [Jetstream] over the North Atlantic), than weren't there any indications showing the 107kts GS?? If the GPS speed is reliable why not take that as a secondary speed source?!
Hello everybody, i am not a pilot but an aviation enthusiast... i know that sitting on the sofa in your living room is easy to say...they should have done this or that ... but come on ...those guys were not qualified to fly any plane... they did not understand the basics of flight let alone the systems of that playstation type aircraft... and they are not to blame for that ...who put them in that situation from the first flight lesson until their first flight in the Airbus...every instructor or trainer who "vouched" for these guys should be held accountable !
I guess it's not as easy to maintain pitch attitude when you're in a high altitude stall. Also, unreliable airspeed and dozens of master warnings going off make it very hard to know what's going on and how to react, more so if they weren't even aware of the unreliable airspeed situation. Very soon you'll be dropping like a rock at 10k ft per minute with very little room to fix the issue.
@@Jojos25 I’d presume (because I’ve never gotten into a stall anywhere close to this badly) that at a slow enough speed, even your control services are ineffective. They are designed to be used pointy end forward, but being almost literally dropped, your ailerons are mere suggestions at best, roll control being very limited even at the onset of the stall, and I’m sure the elevators (trim system that I’m barely comprehending notwithstanding) would be also rather useless. Figure that airspeed is technically high, though AOA is near 90* your services have the effectiveness of an pointy end forward airspeed well under 100kn.
Same here. I was wondering half of the video, if there isn't any more "analog" instrument, you can rely on. Like the artificial horizon. @Mentour Pilot Perhaps you might to answer this.
A one hour documentary made with professional quality and exceptionally accurate, digestible info? We’ve hit peak RUclips, folks.
I thought the video was 30 min long before seeing your comment, really digestible I would say
New here?
@@dosmastrify No. I’ve been watching him since the beginning. I just wanted to throw Petter some love. :)
Even more important, Petter does not pad-out the story with constant repetition like the professional producers always do.
@@davidelliott5843 also, the people in Petter's videos are all human. Professional producers always try to make certain people into so important characters that you can almost hear the air whistling around them. Usually the accident investigators at least.
So, between 28:23 and 50:56 Mentour Pilot decribes what lead to the final crash. That's 22 minutes, and it feels like the pilots have been struggling for hours but in reality all of this just lasted 4 little minutes... How heartbreaking it is to think that in just over 4 minutes the life of so many ended in this terrible accident. And also, how sad it is that these pilots who struggled until the end died without having any idea of what was going on and they will never know 😔
4 minutes 😭
I am not sure about "they will never know" part, but yea, I get your drift.
someone in the cockpit read it was going to crash.
@@focumQuariumwhat do you mean you're ot sure mate? You actually think there is an afetrlife? 😂
@@thelonemaiden Yes, indeed they knew they were about to crash, but they did not know that they were in a fully developed stall, and they had no idea how it started.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your excellent research and video, like all of them. I am an Airbus captain myself and I take a lot of content of your videos into my daily operation, in this way you are contributing to flight safety! I am sure many other pilots are doing the same. The biggest strength is that you never judge but always keep an objective view on the events that happened. Keep on the good work!
i LOVE that you explained everything someone could be curious about - all the systems, all the engineering, the psychology - everything that professional documentaries usually leave out (much to my disappointment)! your videos are superior to anything i have seen! thank you so much for this incredible content, one day i want to be an investigator for stuff like this.
Thanks Petter and your wider team - As someone else highlighted this is the only video that actually gave some understanding of the PF (FO) at that point, as to his complete loss of understanding of his aircraft’s systems, namely Airbus. I’m not sure that some critics blaming the side stick controls being the problem even if it did cause more difficulty in noticing what he was doing with the plane. Even so-called specialists and aircraft journalists just crucified him and portrayed the whole incident as playing out for half an hour or so by the way they described the incident. Petter very early highlights the whole set of circumstances were approximately 4 minutes. To me that is just mind boggling when you actually realise the height they were flying at, whilst at the same time having the time to correct the grim situation.
I’m not defending the actions of the pilot who was flying this very capable aircraft but I have an understanding of why he may have done what he did. He certainly didn’t do anything with any malice, and it’s very sad that certain actions and system understanding or lack of, resulted in completely avoidable deaths, and non-human costs.
This is why Petter, and I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong, always places emphasis on knowing the aircraft you are type-rated on and all it’s systems and how they work.
Thanks Petter, this was a fantastic, if very tragic story. I don’t need to add how professional it is, as always.
You are absolutely correct and, in fact, this was one of my main drivers for creating this video in the first place. Thank you so much for your support!
Of course no one believes there was malice. ...but every pilot knows the basics of flying and stalling an aircraft. ...Pulling nose up was purely an instinctive action, not at all a rational one from a pilot,
Peter your content and production quality is simply superb. As an avid pilot I can’t express the gratitude and awe I have for your efforts to present such objective, complete pictures of how we humans, despite technological marvels, find ourselves unwittingly in such terrible situations in the air. The lessons and the awareness you give the viewer are priceless. Many, many thanks for your dedication and generosity.
I never realised how complicated jet airliners are. These aircraft are amazing in the information they gather, how they gather it, and how it is supplied to the pilots. The pilots are also amazing people. As a passenger you just don't appreciate what is going on behind the scenes, while you are drinking your cocktail/coffee etc.
The next time I fly, I will fully appreciate the high level of skill and knowledge required to keep me safe.
Regards Rob.
Thank you for posting. It certainly is mind bogling to think that three pilots could not agree that they were basically stalled and descending at some 10000 feet/mn. So many people paid the price for that mistake. What is really disturbing is that there are some misguided airline companies out there pushing for single pilot operations today. Post covid single pilot operations should never even be considered given what we know now. It's pure madness.
As long as humans fly planes, they should never be allowed to fly alone if you care about safety. Humans have a tendency to get sick, distracted, or even die. Also, during emergencies having more crew is helpful for troubleshooting. In an emergency situation having 3-4 experienced crew members with good CRM can be invaluable for solving problems as shown by previous emergencies. At the very least I’d like there to be 2. Hell, recently a pilot in France was partially incapacitated during takeoff due to the startle effect, and the plane would have probably crashed had his copilot not been there to keep things going.
You do an outstanding job sir. I am a retirement age woman who hates flying but I find your channel extremely interesting. I have watched so many of your videos I think I might be able to make an auto-pilot localizer assisted landing of a big jet if I am ever called upon to do so 😂. And if not, well I will die trying.
This is undoubtedly the best ever video made on AF447; really a huge Bravo to Petter and all his team.
I'm brazilian, and I still remember 12 year old aviation enthusiast me seeing the news of the plane's then disappearance and thinking oh god, not again. It was really shocking down here, especially since we succesfully experienced our worst aviation disasters in 2006, and then in 2007. May those poor souls rest in peace
I will not come to Brazil
It's really worth a visit. I flew to Sao Paulo in 1994 for the F1 race. I flew out of Heathrow on BA and the plane stopped in Rio for refueling. After the race I flew to Salvador in the NE of Brazil in a,local carrier to meet up with a pen friend. I then flew to Rio for a few days before heading back to Sao Paulo and then the UK. Rio has a stunning location.
@@rykehuss3435 well damn!
I used to have real problems with flight anxiety. The content of this channel has really helped, by explaining what's going on and how things work on an aircraft
Don't all these stories about crashes make your anxiety worse?
This one hits hard, my father was due to be on this flight but a puncture on the taxi on the way to the airport , he missed his flight home and subsequently he missed his mother's funeral ! And on his rescheduled flight someone tried to open the door of the cabin 4 hours after takeoff...
It was the first officer pulling back on the stick, that's what crashed the airplane!! And i don't think it was his training at low altitude (thrust+nose up) i think it was purely psychological (emotional) - i don't wan't to crash = nose up. And only at the end he gave the vital information "but i had the stick back for quite some time".
It's elementary logic that when an aircraft dosen't display the data, what the procedure should be - NOTHING, the plane has been flying OK till now, so why change anything, why give inputs that don't make any sense.
I first watched a Docu about the AF 447 10 years ago and every time i hear about this flight i feel deep sadness, it didn't had to be this way..
I hope the families of the passengers found their peace.
I still feel for DuBois. Just imagine walking into a cockpit like that, and the moment you realize the problem, just to realize at same time it’s too late to do anything.
He wouldn’t of been in the position If he didn’t leave the flight deck just as they flew into an extreme weather event and left the most inexperienced pilot in charge, seems to me he was more interested in going to sleep rather than ensuring the safety of his aircraft.
Also why did he take so long to come back after being called, he was in charge of the aircraft, wether it was regulation sleep or not he could of ensured the aircraft was out of the weather event before he went for his beauty sleep.
Outstanding job on this video and analysis Petter and team. A tragic event.
I do wonder whether the sidestick control in such extreme circumstances, reduces awareness for the crew of each other's actions vs traditional yoke.
@@pusb_87english63 u r being too harsh to captain, the plan of which one going to rest in which phase was already done with consent of all 3 pilots.
The moment he left stick, everything is fine and he rightly have no problem believing that his FOs are capable enough to crusie the flight for next 3/4 hrs.
@@chakraborty1989 exactly, and when he came back, he presumed of course that everything was ok, only to hear the
other pilot asking him what to do, as they have lost control of the plane. To which the captain replied: I really don't know.
Because as you state he understood there was nothing more he could do.
One more thing is also tragic, their wifes, Mme Dubois et Mme Robert, were both with them on this flight, as spouses do sometimes when there is a nice destination.
I would've sworn that planes had gyros to tell them what their angles are. How is such a sharp climb not immediately noticed?!
Too much technology. Computers ruling humanity. A trend impossible to stop. Extremely informative and educational video, as always from Petter and crew.
This has to be one of the scariest crashes you've investigated on your channel. Good work Petter!!
I agree!!! Horrifying!
Dude not letting go of controls is going to get an absolute reeming in the afterlife by those other two pilots lol.
Wow that was truly terrifying, you felt the panic, emotions, tensions & confusions that took place in that cockpit.
Your production & delivery was extremely tense & expertly put together, who on earth could have got out of that situation? You have to think & react at a speed under pressure way above the norm.
I felt for those pilots, it was all very sad & of course everyone who lost their lives. May they RIP.
Thank you for your masterful break down and insight into what happened.
Thank you. That’s what we wanted to do.
This could have been solved in the first few seconds, before the confusion got worse.
After they lost the correct mental model, it would have been very hard.
@@MentourPilot Your breakdowns on these accidents certainly shows how critical the first few seconds are, in decision making, communication & team work. Not to mention the essential rest & up to date training you pilots need.
Once again brilliant work, your videos are fascinating.
@@MentourPilot Thank you very much for pointing that out. You´ve to understand this to understand what happened here and why it happened. And this became very clear here in your Video.
It raises the question to me: Who would have been able to solve the situation in this very first moments - given the startle effect.
Maybe Pilots with better training for such situations.
The video explained it very lucide that the topic "Stupidity"-Narration of this Accident is way to simple to match the Historic Reality.
@@MentourPilot - You're absolutely right about the mental model aspect. As I've said in other posts, I've come to suspect that for whatever reason, concerns about the weather ahead and the inability to avoid it were weighing unusually heavily (more than one would expect of an experienced ATPL) on FO Bonin, given the frequency with which he mentioned it to Capt. DuBois and his apparent hesitancy in responding to FO Robert's asking if he was OK. I have to wonder whether he had developed a mental model in which he expected severe turbulence leading to control issues and in particular a fear of overspeed such that when the problems began, a combination of startle effect and his mental model caused him to react to the scenario he was expecting (and afraid of) rather than the scenario with which he was presented.
This one angers me so much. The FO completely shut down, and as a result, actively sabotaged the aircraft during the entire disaster sequence. He forgot his training, he disregarded the alarms and the crew’s commands, he failed to allow the relief pilot to take controls. All of these reactions doomed the flight in this extremely preventable accident.
I remember flying my glider thru a downburst a few miles east of Hailey, ID. I contacted the tower telling them my position and that I was inbound for landing. Shortly after that, I was sinking down between two tiny peaks at a rate that would not support a glide path to the airport. The tower, then, contacted me about something that my brain simply could not process. I acknowledged their transmission and told them that I was "really busy" and would talk to them later. It was really weird: I could hear the words, but could not put them together into a meaningful sentence. Thanks for (finally) making me understand that hearing is lost in an emergency. BTW, I flew threw that downburst and was able to land uneventfully.
The Point is - hearing is lost in an emergency, that is true and that is also why "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate" get's hammered in to you right from the beginning. Which is what the First Officer simply forgot due to a lack of training and situational awareness - IMHO. Pulling on the stick for SO long and with a working (even if it's only the backup one) altimiter, should have told him, he's actually stalling the plane...but not being trained to actually Aviate in such a high stress situation...well...
Quality wins out. I’ve been watching Mentour for years and it has always been an excellent channel, but lately the quality is just off the charts in terms of its attention to detail and thorough, comprehensive storytelling. Absolutely ace.
First officer: "But I've been full nose up the whole time!"
It's surprising to me that none of the 3 pilots realized that they needed to increase their speed to get out of their stall. It likely would have been to late when they finally decided to (deliberately) climb, but at that point, they should have increased to full speed.
To get out of the stall you first need to know you are in the stall, it’s only obvious to you because you have 2020 hindsight
@@ihatewhatisawThere was a stall warning that sounded continously for 45 seconds. Usually, that means that the airplane is about to stall. Most pilots should know this.
This reminds me of the Aeroperu crash, in that case the statics were left taped up. In both cases PAT (power, attitude, trim) would have given the pilots much needed breathing space.....just set the normal power for that altitude, the normal pitch attitude and then pitch trim.
Time and time again you continue to publish episode length, in depth content that has some of the best explanations of some of these incidents out there. You're able to explain things so clearly and consicely in a way that people who know nothing about aviation can follow, while not dumbing it down so avgeeks and people in the aviation industry can still get something out of these videos. Your content is also never disrespectful or exploitative of the victims unlike similar content in which aviation disasters are discussed. You're by far my favorite aviation channel, the quality of work you and your team put out is nothing short of phenomenal and is completly unparalleled on RUclips.
Oh, that’s SO nice to hear. Some of the best compliments I’ve had. 💕
@@MentourPilot why didnt pilot didnt come when they were using alarm.. wasnt this an serious issue? Love from India
I find it weirdly cool that an airline captain tells stories about the worst airline accidents. Almost like a warning and yet an informative on how important each aspect of flight is.
Due to the media coverage when the accident report was first released, I've always thought of the first officer as being responsible for this accident due to panic causing him to continue to continuously pull up. I see now that that is probably a harsh conclusion. None of the pilots realized they were in a stall until it was too late. Their training, which was good overall, let them down in these confusing circumstances. There was panic and they all missed things, but the situation got so extreme so quickly, it probably isn't fair to call any of the crew incompetent.
It seems like the pilot flying didn’t really know how to fly.
Getting a stall warning but still continuing to increase pitch/AOA. That’s something that could’ve been learned from 172’s or RC gliders.
There is some fault with the training though. Teaching to power out of a stall when it’s not something like a fighter aircraft or Extra300.
They weren't all incompetent, the captain seemed to have figured it out pretty quickly but it was maybe poor judgement to let the less inexperienced pilots fly the plane immediately before entering a severe storm.
@Trevor Smith imagine being him. You're half asleep and wake up in a plane losing altitude fast. It must feel like you're in a nightmare.
90% of these types of accidents are due to stalls and they're constantly asking why they're going down. wish I was there to tell them "YOU'RE STALLING, HOW DID YOU PASS YOUR FLIGHT TESTS"
Yes, I've never flown a plane in my life, but I know what to do in case of a stall. Maybe pilots should be assigned to watch air crash videos on youtube. :D
Oh yes. The keyboard and couch experts will save the day
In defence of couch experts across the globe, it's a 100% certainty that couch experts would've at least matched the ultimate outcome of the trained crew here.
You know, they might mean "what is causing us to stall and how the hell do we fix it" but they just say "why are we going down" because, you know, they're terrified, confused, and about to die. Idk how you can sit there and act like such a know it all when you haven't experienced (and hopefully never will) this level of confusion and stress. I think MOST importantly, we all need to remember how quickly things go wrong. With more time, there is less pressure, and people are able to act a little more rationally. But here, there was barely any time at all to comprehend what was happening, especially as they couldn't get any reliable data.
@@olliej.2776 they had some reliable data, such as altitude. They also were warned about ice forming on the pitet tubes. The first officer just over reacted on a situation that was under control when the AP was disengaged. How could’ve he possibly think that his theory of overspeed would be true when he was receiving stall warnings when pushing the nose down (which is impossible since you would be gaining speed rather than losing it) and then the warning disappeared when he put the nose up. He should’ve connected the dots immediately after that, specially since he had been warned AND trained on what to do when they had erroneous airspeed data.
He made so many mistakes in such a small time frame that it is bizarre to think that there might be people like him flying around daily, endangering the lives of thousands of passengers every day.
I hope Airbus integrates A VISUAL panel warning as well as a stick shaker somehow to alert pilots more decisively to an impending stall. Thank you for a very complete inderstanding of this accident - even for a NON pilot!
The side stick should go down in aviation history as a dangerous dead end experiment.
I watched this flight on an aircraft crash investigation years ago, I never understood how this happened but now it’s clear and very understandable thanks !
It’s horrifying just how many of these stories are fundamentally caused by some pilot being startled and losing situational awareness. The scariest thing about it is that no matter how often we hear about it, we’re all still susceptible.
I'm wondering if the FO's wife was on that same flight home which could explain his total panic reaction. It appears that he lost all logic or reasoning and suffered some form of spatial disorientation as well and couldn't let go of the controls so that the relief pilot could handle the situation. Absolute tragedy! I'm hoping that FO's don't get promoted to pilot status without first undergoing numerous different emergency situations in flight simulators to check their reactions & if inadequate they aren't promoted until they can display adequate reasoning, logic & reactions to give the aircraft & passengers the best possible opportunity of avoiding an air crash. This channel is by far the best of all the aviation channels that I've watched - excellent work, Petter, thank you.
In Chinese, there's a nick name for the first officer "sidestick monster" (I tried to translate it as good as i can). Depicting the fact the first officer continued to pull on the side stick over the entire course of this accident.
Totally harrowing to watch and fascinating at the same time. Thank you for your detailed technical explanations while being kind to the pilots’ decisions in the situation they were faced with. Truly awful!
Indeed it was. Thank you for your kind comments.
Excellent demonstrates & predicted explanation. Very good crystal clear voice and presentation. 👍
I fly a lot for business travel and have logged quite a few miles. I’ve flown thru some gnarly weather, and experienced wind shear and multiple go around attempts in crosswinds. After years of this not much phases me, but I couldn’t imagine the terror of being in a full out stall in an airliner, in the middle of a storm. The pilots did the best they could given the situation IMO. They kind of lost their minds and full out panicked amongst the chaos, g-forces/shaking, and lack of sleep….. but who wouldn’t honestly? Damn, what a way to go out. RIP to the crew and passengers who had to experience that horrible event
Imagine if planes can release giant parachutes upon emergency landing or crashing to soften the impact for survival rather than smash like a wedding cake.
74 gear, keep the blue side up
Mentour pilot's Tshirt: the exact opposite...
I cannot find words to express my gratitude for this video, finally, everything seem to be so much clearer while most of the videos picture FO as an incompetent and his actions as incomprehensible.
He's at fault, don't get me wrong, but the most important part is why the swiss cheese effect took place, and I think you explained it so well that everyone, regardless of their field of study, have understood you.
I am impressed, how two pilots crashed fully functional aircraft so quickly. As I am not a pilot, still I know there is some settings in aircraft, which will give stable performance for the aircraft. Thrust+alt+angle of attack-> yor aircraft is flying.
Great videos as always ! This accident highlights everything I hate about airbus and it’s over automation. Despite their safety record , as a pilot it’s why I’ll only operate boeing. The side stick is the most ridicules design, how is it possible you can’t feel exactly what the other pilots inputs are from their flight controls is simply insane. As a captain this is a complete nightmare, having a yoke you have a real sense of the first officers inputs, and vice versa. Despite’s Boeings current issues today, I still believe they are the most pilot oriented aircraft, having flow the max since it’s entry into service , doesn’t change my opinion. Even flying the 787 with its over automated tendencies , still has all the feel, which is a massive part of Situational Awareness. A sad set of circumstances.
It was so frustrating that the relief pilot kept trying to do what might have saved the aircraft only to have the confused, potentially panicking FO yank the controls back from him and doom them all. Very sad, very frustrating incident. You've done a tremendous job educating everyone who's watched this video!
What's even more frustrating is knowing that had this happened on a Boeing, this accident most likely wouldn't have happened since both pilots would easily have been able to tell the pressure on the yokes. Terrible design on Airbus's part and another reason why I will still prefer Boeing.
@@dfg-rg3pd Agreed. Terrible design on Airbus' part. I think they were even criticized for having their airplanes designed this way because of the fact that it made it impossible for the pilots to decipher what the control inputs from the other pilots were.
I also think that because the FO brought his wife onto the plane, psychologically he had some sort of inclination to do what he thought was right in an attempt to try and save her. This I believe needs to be looked into.
Training. The FO was doing what he was taught, as frustrating as that was. I have had similar experiences on the sim where the pitot had frozen over and had to ride the plane down until the anti-ice could thaw enough ice off. When I saw that there was little or no airspeed indication I gently beld the stick forward trying to keep losing altitude at a 3000 fpm rate. Had there been another pilot pulling back on the stick and constantly wresting control from me it would have been impossible. The FO was doing what he thought would save them but did the exact opposite which makes this story all the more sad and frustrating.
This is a well told story and all good pilots can learn something from it. Well done!
😢😔
Now, as for this being a bad design or not? I think we have to understand that the whole concept of fly-by-wire is completely different from yoke driven planes. Maybe there needs to be a better prioritization algorithm. Should the captains side be able to have the final word? It seems futile having inputs that merely cancel each other out. Maybe we need AI which takes over control until it has left the stall condition although it would not have enough good data to work with. Still, there must be a better way. Any thoughts?
This flight is why in pilot training they teach us the “sit on your hands” idea. This means that if there is an emergency and you think you have to do something RIGHT NOW to avert disaster, stop for a second and think before you do anything. It’s likely that a startle reaction will cause you to do something that only makes the situation worse.
Yes that is called the Astronaut approach! “if you do not know exactly what to do, do nothing at all” Neil Armstrong…………….
"There is no situation so bad, that you cant make it worse."
Yes, reminds me of the upset training I got - if you don’t know what to do - let go. Let go of the controls and let the airplane do its thing until you know what inputs to put - also, just use rudder and pitch. But I understand in imc it’s somewhat different and waaay harder. So sad
This is true not only in aviation! I have many stories of this happening in other fields.
I think in spaceflight it is the "don't just do something, sit there" as opposed to the "don't just sit there, do something" principle. I don't remember my source exactly, though.
He took 5 minutes to describe what happened within 18 seconds. It's unimaginable the overwhelming pressure those pilots must have felt.
When Petter said "This all happened in 18 seconds" I thought "Oh my god."
Imagine: You got zero visibility and fly in perfect control. Out of nowhere, tons of alerts start blaring and appear on your screens and, maybe most importantly, your speed indicator goes blank. From that moment on you have two minutes (last minute of freefall might not be enough altitude) to find out what's really happening and to recover a big plane from a complete stall.
I don't blame the pilots.
Pitch up nose 5 degrees, set thrust at 85% and fly the plane. Until you figure out what to do. What's going on. It's not efficient but beats taking a dip in the ocean.
@@thomaskositzki9424 The irony is that if all of them had done absolutely nothing, the flight would have continued normally after a few seconds.
@@ajs41it's wild because they had so much altitude, but just goes to show the dangers of fatigue and loss of situational awareness.
@@Outpost-13-Hockey I think that's true. My guess is that none of the pilots had ever experienced any serious problems in their entire flying careers, and were just totally shocked that something unexpected had happened for the first time ever. That's why they ought to do more flying in real planes where something goes wrong (deliberately caused by an instructor) and they have to try to sort it out. Just doing it in the simulator isn't going to be the same, when you know you're not in real danger.
Edit: Clarified to reflect that I don't wish to excuse pilots for the errors they're highly trained and employed to avoid - just remarking on how fast the excrement hits the air circulator!
It's a slap back to reality when Petter says "and so it's been about one minute at this point". That's an incredibly quick transition from fine to disastrous
and don't forget, everything happens while its dark + wind noise + ratteling and shaking etc.
just crazy
Adding on the anxiety of not knowing which instruments can be trustee and...
@@greenwavemonster There's still no excuse for a professional pilot stalling his plane at 37,000 feet to zero in 4 minutes when if he'd done nothing at all the plane would have been fine.
Yeah the FO was panicking and the captain just left them (very inexperienced) at the most critical point of the flight.
It will definitely attract judgement, because stall recovery is one of the most basic skills even for learner pilots, as well as recognising when you can't handle a situation. This guy is professional, extensively trained, type certified and supposedly much more experienced than the entire crew on this aircraft model. if all that training does not translate into performance, it was a total waste of time.
Worse, he seized up in the middle of performing a dangerous manoeuvre, something that is totally unacceptable even for pilots with 3 flight hours of experience.
The first officer disregarded everything he was being told by captain and the relief pilot. He continued stick input even after transferring the controls. He basically went into full panic mode, disregarding chain of command.
NO matter the way we looked at it, he panicked... and not understanding what was happening totally could not control mentally and physically.
If he was the pilot flying he was the pilot in command?
@@johnallen7807 The pilot-in-command is the captain (aka the person who is in charge at the end of the day) but either pilot can be pilot flying (as opposed to pilot monitoring), otherwise the f/o would never get any flying experience, after all ;)
He caused it to crash
I don’t know about you, but every time I think about what happened that night, it angers me. This should not have happened. The panic actions from the pilot flying with input mostly « à cabrer » (climb position input on the command) are so maddening. But, again, it is easy to see this calmly in the comfort of my living room. Who am I to judge? The combined errors made by those guys made them lose their lives along with the passengers behind them. That is very clear. But I maintain that everyone here is at fault: the pilots, Air France, Airbus. Add to that the combination of it all, the famous Swiss cheese comparison, and we can see how the succession of cascading events offers many similarities to what happened to the Titanic.
I was an A330 pilot and this had a huge psychological effect on me when it happened.
Eastbound at night over the Atlantic it was hard not to see how you were in the same situation as these guys were,cruising along safely,yet 5 minutes later they were all dead.
Rewatching this was honestly harrowing.
Sometimes I'm glad I'm retired and thank God I never so much as scratched the paint on an airplane.
Praying for you Petter and all my colleagues out there that you stay safe!
Thank you Mark 💕
@அம்BUTன்உதவாநிதீ அம்BUTன்கழுவாநிதி Indeed.
You are making shit up
How did this change when they released the CVR findings in 2011? Before that, many assumed that there was some kind of unknown failure lurking in the A330. Did you find it reassuring to know how big of a role the pilots played? Just curious.
@@JG-zs8tr he never was a pilot.
The first officer's last words really stuck with me: "This can't be true". I think he said that because the whole scene played out exactly like a bad dream. Maybe it felt like that moment at the end of a nightmare - just before you wake up in a sweat - when you begin to realize what's happening just can't be real. But this time it was...
Let's hope he woke up in a better place or alternative reality 😢
Sounds like more like the French version of the English exclamation "this *cannot* be happening"
I'm french. He meant this cannot be happening.
@@alacarte5073 I'm not sure if OP understood that or not, but IMO "this can't be happening" is just as haunting and understandable, as last words go. Poor fucker...
A little unrelated but I've wondered when he vocalized he had the nose up the whole time if he recognized his mistake or was he flabbergasted it wasn't working. I've been trying to find data on if he pitched the nose down after saying it or did he pull up the entire time. FDR data is trickier to find sometimes.
A teacher of mine was in this flight with his wife and his 3 years old son. Moments like this leaves you astonished how lives can end so abruptly. He was brilliant. The rest of the semester was very sad and weird
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro?
My condolences…wow a small child experienced this horror makes me even more sad.
😢😢😢Rest in peace… a human life is truly precious
ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL AIRCRAFT LOST ........Corporal Rnzaf
😢 sry
My uncle was flying from Rio to Paris on the same day, his flight left 30 min earlier.
He said he remembers walking by the gate for this flight with the people waiting to board the aircraft.
I find that chilling.
Oh, absolutely..
AF447 flew out of Rio every night (or at least the same route, perhaps not the same flight number). I remember seeing a news report from the following day where Monday night's AF447 passengers assembled at the gate and were asked about how they were feeling. There was obviously a lot of nervousness and apprehension. One person spoken to was actually meant to have flown on the doomed Sunday flight, but had pushed his itinerary back by 24 hours without telling anyone. He would obviously have died if he'd stuck to his original plans.
@@halfbakedproductions7887 that's so lucky. The thing tho, statistically what are the odds that the same flight, in the same route would crash again? There's even less reasons to be scared.
I'd say the odds are more or less the same. The alertness of the pilots who heard from the accident could worsen or improve the pilot's performances. But generally if on the next day all the circumstances would be the same, then the possibility would also be the same. It doesn't matter that a plane crashed the day before. That is the same thinking of doubting that after you got a six on a cubic, you wouldnt get a six again because that feels planned. But reality is that it is always the same possibility of one out of six. The possibility of another plane crashing wouldnt be influenced by the accident the day before but by the fact that the day after the weather conditions are changed and the pilots are different people
@@ericmackrodt9441 The odds are the same every time. Statistically, just because a Rio-Paris crashed doesn't trigger some magical immunity that makes it less likely to crash again in comparison with a Stockholm - Berlin.
I can’t imagine what the investigators felt when they found out the pilot flying wasnt giving the controls over, and also kept the plane’s nose up. I also can’t imagine the distress the captain felt when everything clicked in his mind, but was too late to do anything about it…
Indeed.
Well this sounds like a huge professional error.
What took the captain so long to return to the cockpit?
@@mlai2546 the whole thing from when autopilot disconnected to when the plane crashed took less than 5 min afaik. The captain came back about 3 minutes in, but the time left was too little to understand what was going on and amend the mistake…
@@mlai2546 He didnt sleep before the journey.
A real masterpiece in clarity and professional explanation, in memory of 228 victims.
Thank you Petter.
You got my words, Luigi. Real masterpiece.
There is also a vanity fair article that for me brought clarity and it was actually quite horrifying. Definitely the Swiss cheese of air crashes and it was shocking.
🕯🕯🕯
Wow felt like watching a movie. You are definitely a talented story teller. Thanks to you and your team for this quality content
Yes, indeed. RIP to the victims.
Even when the pilot finally figured out the issue (it was too late) the co-pilot still kept the nose pitched up after getting yelled at to let go. Incredible.
Absolutely heartbreaking. Another crazy part of this story is that of an italian lady who missed this flight just for being late few minutes, took a flight home the following day and died on a car accident on her way home. Something out of a Final Destination movie..
Yea that's the other crazy part of the story. The woman missed the doomed flight, only to die by a car accident the next day. How unfortunate...
That’s very sad and very spooky.
True
An Italian woman who missed doomed Air France Flight 447 was killed days later in a car accident, it was revealed today.
Johanna Ganthaler and her husband Kurt showed up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31 and dodged death aboard the Airbus, which went down over the Atlantic with 228 on board.
The retired couple caught a flight out of Rio the next day. But the woman’s luck tragically ran out last week in Kufstein, Austria when the couple’s car swerved across a road and collided with an oncoming truck, according to the Italian wire service ANSA.
Oh wow 😮
I am a Captain with JetBlue Airways and have been flying the Embraer 190 for the past 17 years. I recently completed my transition training to fly the Airbus 320. During training one of my instructors mentioned the book you credited at the end of your video as it was written by his friend, Bill Palmer. That got me interested in this accident which is how I found your video and channel. My newly acquired A320 knowledge allowed me to understand your full breakdown of this accident and was fascinating/horrifying all at once!
I’ve since watched several of your videos and I’m truly impressed with how well they are all done. Some of these accidents I’m familiar with, most I’m not. As a professional pilot I want to continuously strive to be better and these videos are great learning tools of things NOT to do!
Thanks for your work it’s much appreciated!
That’s lovely to hear from a colleague. Thank you!
Congratulations and salute to you. You guys are real heroes. I have signed up for flight lessons but have changed my mind after watching these videos.
@@michellejones8144 why ?? No one changes their mind about driving lessons just because cars crash 😊
@@johnkibbey1875 Confession: I will be honest with you, I do not like to fly, however, I believe that if I have control of the aircraft, I won’t be scared. I feel uncomfortable when another person drives me, however, when I have control of the vehicle I am not uncomfortably or scared. That is my theory. Learning how to fly is a way to overcome my fear.
@@michellejones8144 I feel the same as you do. These videos make me scared to fly as well but we should take these as lessons as what not to do or rather as lessons on how to avoid similar issues in the future.
I'm amazed by how you can explain this complex technical material in such an engaging manner. I have zero aeronautical knowledge but was able to keep up with the key technical details thanks to your presentation skill.
That’s awesome, that’s what I’m trying to achieve.
same, i have nothing to do with Aircrafts but am sooo hooked to these videos
I agree, but I am concerned, because I have to notice, that Mentour is much superior in his skills to normal pilots. And this fact will go on to produce airplane crashs. It is chique to be a pilot, but it is better to become a carpenter, unless you can exclude a certain amount of stress and skill failure.
Panic is a powerful enemy in a streed situation.
A spine chilling account of this tragedy. Very professional and Considerately done. I have nearly 15,000 hrs on Airbus from 320,330,340 and your account made me feel like I was there with them but unable to talk. Poor souls, all 228 of them. Rest in peace.
i would say all but the 3 idiotic pilots that were too lazy to do their job, even for their own sake, the other people truly a tragedy.
@@dariorodriguezdeamericaIn what way were the pilots lazy? They tried everything in their might to save the aircraft.
@@dariorodriguezdeamericaspeaking of idiots
@@Christiaan08rookie mistake
@@Christiaan08 They weren't lazy, I can agree with that, but their "trying", was what provoked the crash. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the aircraft. The pitot tubes froze, the computers got unreliable read outs, switched the flying to the crew and the crew crashed the aircraft.
If they just kept flying straight without pitching up, everything would have returned to normal operation. The pitot tubes would have unfroze and the computers would then be available again to resume automated flying.
Dude I kept getting more infuriated every time you mentioned the FO taking controls and pulling up when all he had to do was pull down and his colleagues pulling down but him pulling up. Soooooo MAD!
F/O killed everyone.. what a tragedy.... I feel like the Captain's decision to leave just before entering a storm wasn't the wisest. My heart goes to the families :/
If you pause the vid and read the report starting at 53:23, along with Peter's commentary, you'll get quite a different picture .."caused a severe startle in the *operating crew* "... "the *crew* were expected to deploy the procedure for unreliable air speed but never did" ...
Remember, they were ALL pilots and the Pilot Flying was the F/O and so when the Captain took rest as the Pilot Monitoring, the relief pilot took over THAT role. We can make assumptions that maybe the Captain, as the pilot monitoring, may have effected a different outcome, but we'll never know.
There seem to be more than couple videos on this channel that FO pulling hard and/or captain pushing hard on their controls, refusing to ever flying the damn plane LEVEL for a second. I think they could use some simple sim training until it becomes almost kneejerk response to get the pitch to zero in any panic.
storms on this area are very very very common. 4 planes got through that exact storm within minutes on that same night (all took a right turn, the AF447 was the only one who took a left). this exact flight got through this kind of storm hundreds of times, it made them confident enough
@@すどにむdudes, pilots don't learn how to fly planes without the AP, or flying envelope protection off anymore. all the failures still include at least flying rules protections. it's ridiculous
@@bzipoli IMO there should be a huge "OH SHIT!" button that disables all automatics (apart form warnings ofc) so you could fly the plane the same way you'd fly a Cessna without worrying about control laws and other complex systems. Automation is great at preventing situations but when it hits the fan you won't have time to think of how the flight computer was programmed. But I still can't comprehend why would anyone pull up while getting stall warning at FL360. You know there's a ton of altitude, even if it was for nothing, pulling down won't hurt at all.
I did my A340 type rating just over a year ago and obviously this was discussed. But you presented this much better. I’ve learned a lot more from your video. Thank you for that. It will make me a safer pilot.
Congratulations on your A340 type rating
why the co pilot did what he did we will never understand , he thought they were overspeeeding
When the complete opposite were happening, the stall warning sounded 28 times but still the co pilot pulled back on his sidestick causing the stall , he thought it was a computer error
The plane stopped flying started falling
when the pitot tubes froze and the auto pilot disconnected, they should have done nothing , just keep the plane level and leave the power where it is because it’s been working quite well for them and just wait for the sensors to come back
Instead they panicked
And captain Dubois choose to take his rest break during a very bad weather situation.
Just an avoidable accident where 228 people,didn’t have to,die
I had a Tom saying are you gonna manage to get your guy who are your day will you put a man or a quite he would go go and look at his wife are you doing with it we were doing between door now we are the volume at 60 problem why are you why have you got a boy or no
@@Paralyzer - In fairness, it's a bit more involved than saying "they panicked"; there's quite a lot of nuance there.
I'll probably write a longer post once I've finished the video, but when it comes to understanding F/O Bonin's actions it's important to remember that he was an accomplished glider (sailplane) pilot. As a result his stick-and-rudder skills and understanding of aerodynamics were in all likelihood above average - and this may have had a direct effect on his concerns regarding transiting areas of strong turbulence while carrying excess speed. Reading between the lines on the CVR transcript, before Capt. DuBois goes for his rest break Bonin repeatedly makes reference to the weather ahead and gives a strong impression that he wasn't comfortable with it - properly-applied CRM on the part of DuBois should have picked up on this and he should have designated FO Robert (who correctly diagnosed and tried to apply corrective actions from the beginning until the end) as temporary PIC.
@@Paralyzer I’ve been flying since the early 90’s and I’m definitely an “older generation” in my way of thinking. However, I do go with the times. Just that a few things I still believe was better in the old days. One of those things is the ability of pilots to hand fly their airplane. Now a days it’s: Gear up, Autopilot on.
With that in mind, I can’t comprehend why that co pilot did what he did, but I don’t blame him. I blame how he was trained.
Gulfstream has developed side sticks that move simultaneously. I hope Airbus adopts something similar. That way the other pilot can “feel” the inputs from the other pilot.
In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head in regards to the Captain. I do a lot of long haul flying. I would never take my rest when you are headed into bad weather while in charge of the flight.
@@rtbrtb_dutchy4183 - Without going into it too much, the technical and safety aspects of interconnected vs. non-interconnected primary flight controls would seem to balance one another out when looking at the statistics (as in neither is inherently 'safer' than the other).
Something you may find interesting (as the holder of an Airbus FBW type rating) is that I was fortunate enough to be invited to take part in some experiments in an A32x simulator and in a similar scenario, the autotrim does roll forward with sustained nose-down sidestick input alone in Alternate Law, and it was possible to effect a recovery just using forward stick until relatively late in the sequence (I think the lowest we held the stall into was FL150 prior to full forward input).
It's weird, but every time I hear this story, I still think there's a chance they'll save the plane. I keep waiting for "...and then they realized they needed to push the stick forward and continued on their flight."
Me too, I keep yelling at the screen "just push the stick forward! Just push the stick forward!!!"
nothing you can do with a moron like bonin in the cockpit.
But as Petter said, the computer couldn’t make sense with the airstream at such a sharp angle so CANCELLED the warning, then when the nose would be pushed down the computer wakes up and announces STALL! I can certainly see now why these pilots were so screwed up as to what was really going on.
How Petter has portrayed it, we can only imagine what they went through which is but a drop in the bucket of what those guys must have actually felt😢
@@57Jimmy knowing you might have done something that killed hundreds of people including yourself has got to be a mercifully short horror. 😢
Could this flight have been saved if it was day time and the horizon was visible?
I've seen multiple documentaries about this unfortunate Air France 447. This one hands down is the best one! It covers the technical details, but also captures the absolute horror and confusion in the cockpit like no other. I was sitting on the edge of my seat.
Great work! it's crazy that Mentour Pilot makes such high quality content available for free
Totally agree.
I think pilots should test for stall scenarios every 3 months. If you fail then you pay a $25,000 fine and lose your license for 18 months. Preventing a stall from happening is one of the easiest things to go. Point the fucking nose down. If your response is to pitch up as you are approaching a stall you have NO BUSINESS being a pilot.
Point the nose down. How fucking hard is that to do?
@@mortgageapprovals8933 Rather than punish failures, why not just respectfully debrief them and have them try again?
There's no need to make the experience toxic, no need to ruin people's livelihoods, and definitely no need to have them tested every three months (the twice-yearly is plenty sufficient)
@@mortgageapprovals8933 if we are going to fine pilots tens of thousands of dollars for failing stall recovery, why not other scenarios?
I say if a commercial pilot fails any checkride they should be fined at least $25 K- if not more.
it's horrible !
I remember waking up that morning to the horrible news that my 28 year old Swedish colleague was on this plane. It was her very first business travel abroad. Just a few weeks earlier she had been hugging me with tears in her eyes when I was leaving the company due to redundancies. RIP Laura.
oh, RIP😢
That is terrible. Feels surreal and incredibly sad even though I am so distant. Some things should simply not exist.
RIP Laura Rahal, she was only 28 when she died…
Rest in peace Laura☹️☹️
😢😢😢
It's easy to forget when watching videos like this just how quickly everything we are talking about is happening. The panic and confusion must have been unbearable, and I can't imagine how the captain felt walking back into all this chaos. And of course that isn't even mentioning how the passengers must have felt. Fantastic video as always, and this was perfect timing on the upload as I had just finished catching up on the videos from the last month that I'd missed
Would they have been aware that they were crashing the plane, though (until they saw the ground, considering the first officer didn't notice the altitude until 10,000 feet), considering they couldn't even tell if they were going up or down?
It would've been a really stresful possibility...but not certain?
according to the report, the passengers were unaware.
@@starfrost6816 on a United flight from Lisbon to Newark recently, we hit this unexpected air pocket over the Atlantic that violently rattled the plane and caused a fast drop in altitude that freaked everyone out for about 2 seconds. If a plane is falling from the sky at 10k feet per minute, I can’t imagine how terrifying that would feel. I’m sure the pilots knew they were falling fast, which likely contributed to the panic and confusion in the cockpit as they also knew they didn’t have a lot of time to save the plane.
Yeah I was constantly questioning the actions of the pilots at first, but then I thought about it and tried to put myself into such an incredibly confusing and terrifying situation like that coupled with a complete and total loss of situational awareness as well as any visual cues and there's no reasonable way that I can blame them for just reverting to their subconscious training that ultimately doomed them.
3 minutes from "normal" to "dead". i always think i'd be a good pilot, and yet i always think that when faced with something like this, with 60 seconds to figure it out, I probably would fail too.
I realize how panic affects people but still, even knowing the likely outcome i can’t help wanting to yell at the pilot who is panicking to LET GO OF THE STICK! The dual input when one pilot is doing the correct thing and the other is in full panic mode is heartbreaking.
In my country there is a saying: The baby with 3 midwives never gets borned!
It shows that early 30s is actually a dangerous age. You’re past the obey as trained automatic behaviours of 18-early 20s people (which makes them desirable soldiers) but not have the life experience of 40+ people who have had minor disasters and accidents and fearful situations and survived them and learned to manage fear.
@@M_SC Most of the car accidents I've had in my life were in my 30s and 40s, not when I was a dumb kid. When I was a dumb kid just learning, I was keenly aware of my limitations. But at that point I started to feel like I was an experienced driver--but in part because of my history as a commuter, I really wasn't.
Actually dual input means the data in the aircraft is not working
imagine having reduced thrust, knowing that you are very high up in the sky, hearing a stall warning and pitching up significantly. It makes no sense that a commercial pilot is capable of intentionally doing this. It would be like a commercial bus driver pressing the accelerator at a red light instead of the brake. It doesn't make any sense.
This hits close to home. I had lived 2007-2008 in Brazil, so at Christmas 2008, freshly back in Europe, I helped friends schedule their Brazil visit for May 2009. At my advice, they decided to fly back to Bucharest from Rio (and not São Paulo, as they initially planned) via Paris. Back in 2009, there were two daily flights RIO-CDG. There was no rush, no obvious criteria (except perhaps the price) which flight to take. Fotunately, between two glasses of wine and without any serious consideration, they chose the other one, the one that had flown a couple of hours earlier (and, if I'm not much mistaken, was still airborne when tragedy struck).
The first Mentour video I will cannot bring myself to watch, at least not for the moment.
I understand
Probably your friends had some Angels to protect them at that day.
@@NicolaW72 And the people on AF447? The angels didn't think they were worth sparing?
@@sfdntk Exactly. People need to be careful about "angels watching" for this very reason.
@@sfdntk Even angels fall asleep sometimes... ;o)
For some reason, as a non pilot who knows nothing about flying aircraft, the CVR recording hit me harder on this one than most. Usually it’s pilots struggling to recover a dire situation caused by a mechanical failure or some other catastrophe. Here there’s this surreal moment of realisation of their predicament even thought they can’t see it or even really feel it. It hits you when Robert says “this can’t be real” and Dubois shouts “no, no, no!”. It’s like a nightmare and you’re expecting to wake up at any moment. Sends a shiver down my spine.
This is nothing short of a masterpiece. You have outdone yourself, Mentour team. Absolutely electrifying.
Thank you so much. ❤️
Glad you found it interesting.
Agreed, watching this channel is like watching a documentary on a major network.
I agree 💯
Absolutely agree!
@Joe Bi-den fl studio.
The amount of stress and it's reasoning described over this video, then the realization that it was condensed into just a few short minutes is amazing and frightening. When you said "all of this happened in the first 18 seconds," it was a slap of reality. It only got more gut wrenching from there.
I was sat there thinking the rest room must be hella resistant for the captain to be sleeping so long
@@joebob2311productions captain was probably dog tired and was the only one that could have identified the stall and taken command from the first pilot sans let him let go of the controls so they could just fly the plane and work the problem. This was definitely a problem of too many chiefs in the kitchen. And panic erasing logical thought or clarity. Unfortunately as well not a lot of manual flying done now by the new generation of pilots. They are wrapped in bubble wrap with their automated systems and when they go to alternate law they are released without much warning. The startle and the panic is a real human emotion that is hard to put aside when you are genuinely fighting for your life, this along with bad software that can’t account for the unaccountable doesn’t help.
@@azzajohnson2123 the FO really had fuckall idea what to do when the AP disengaged, and the design of the Airbus didn't exactly help. The RP had no idea the jackass in the right seat had been pitching the the aircraft nose high for two mins straight.
I was literally getting stressed out just hearing him describe the events
I know. I’m thinking where that lazy ass captain is and he says it was one minute.
It bears repeating that Mentour Pilot always treats these incidents with the dignity and gravitas they deserve. May this channel flourish and may future generations learn from it.
That would be cool
wipe my bum
that's true, he didn't criticize too much and stuck to the facts while painting a beautiful picture of what happened and how it happened.
You would need to relax
Most highly technical episode ive watched yet.
The most important thing I’ve learned in my entire life is how to remain calm in crisis. SLOW DOWN IN EMERGENCIES. Slow is steady. Steady is smooth. Smooth is fast….
Fast is deadly….
This has helped me in soooo many different situations in my life. I work in healthcare and this motto is often contagious…As this type of calm spreads throughout emergency environments, it can lead to exceptional outcomes.
The professionalism of most pilots is amazing. Many years ago, for reasons I won't go into, I was required to listen to the cockpit recording of a plane that flew into the side of a mountain. The crew clearly knew what was about to happen, yet they remained calm and professional instead of panicking, whilst they did their best to rescue the plane. The flight engineer was told to call out the height above the ground, which he did in a calm voice, counting down until the end of the recording. He missed the final number: "zero".
This is probably the only video about this accident that doesn't paint the First Officer's decissions as incomprehensible. It becomes clear that this was a matter of not completely understanding the plane's systems and a lack of training in stall situations, the scene must have been terrifying to the pilots. Thank you so much for this video, can't think of many other channels that achieve this level of quality.
That’s exactly what I wanted to try and explain. Thank you for your kind words! 💕
Seems like a lot of excuses for 2 guys incompetence that killed hundreds of people - clearly they weren’t good enough to hold the positions they were in!
@@MentourPilot You did explain well Petter. I think the entire crew behaved like they were in a startled sleep deprived mode. The Captain not taking over immediately upon entering the flight deck is perplexing, again like being startled out of a sleep, not reacting properly.
@Joe Bi-den Probably the standard Adobe suite but honestly nothing in this video was so special in terms of VFX that nothing else can do it, so whatever he actually uses, you can still you anything else and make videos just as good as this one. You need years of experience though, there's no fast-track for that.
I’ll be honest: I found myself continually wanting to smack the First Officer. (But of course it’s only through the lens of hindsight and knowing what’s *actually* happening that I feel like that.)
Obviously the real problem is a fundamental failure by the pilots to recognize what the situation even was in the first place; and if you’re incapable of realizing what is going on, then obviously you’re not going to respond in anything resembling a sensible manner.
Even still… I was like THE STALL WARNING SOUND HAS BEEN CONTINUALLY BLASTING AT YOU NONSTOP FOR SO LONG, HOW DO YOU NOT NOTICE THAT! and JESUS DUDE WHY DO YOU KEEP TAKING THE CONTROLS BACK?!
And again, in reality it’s a matter of the tunnel vision effect and brain overload and being startled and just simply failing to identify what was going wrong from the beginning, which would happen to anyone in the same circumstances who’d had the same training, so it’s totally understandable. Nevertheless, it’s really hard to watch people doing “the wrong thing” that you already know will lead to disaster; so on some level I still sorta feel myself wanting to give him a smack. 😂
I guess ultimately the lesson here is that, if anything, I ought be smacking the guy for his lack of training, not the way he responded. Or actually I should realistically be smacking the training people instead and not the FO at all. 😝
This is a great video and incredibly informative as always, also I really like the fact that you say regularly "xx seconds have past since AP disconect" during your explanation of the events, because its really easy to think that they had time to react and think, but that allows us to realise that what you've spent 10 minutes explaining in details and with insight that the pilots didn't have actually happened in mere seconds
Yes! That’s exactly what I wanted to get across. 💕
That’s so true. I always had the impression that the pilots had plenty of time to try and remedy the situation. It even seemed that the Captain had to be roused from bed the way the story has been told by others. I have much more sympathy for the pilots after watching this. Incredible job putting it together.
about 400seconds.
every second is important when you haven't yet realized a zombie is at the helm until its too late.
This accident certainly broadened my understanding of how planes work as a whole. Including how a stall occurs and how to recover. This accident occurred two days after my 25th birthday was a shock to the entire world. Not a lot is said about how the passengers would’ve experienced the resulting collision with the sea and the physicality thereof.
I know the first officer tried his absolute hardest to fix the situation, but him taking control from the relief pilot who was doing the exact thing that could’ve saved everyone just so he could do the opposite is heartbreaking
that is not how it was, if you read the discussion taking place in the cockpit the last 3 Min. The captain gave the command to the
less experienced co-pilot, right seat (905h on an A330) instead of the more experience 2nd co-pilot, left seat (4.650h on A330). The
pilot on the left only talked to the pilot on his right what to do, or asking him, what he is doing. One has to read the discussion which
took place to understand. When the captain came back, you know he left his seat when the plane was in perfect state, he did not grasp the situation, thinking all was well, when realising the situation he could only ask: what the heck are you doing? Put the nose down. But it was much too late to do anything at that moment.
The first officer, Bonin, was the cause of the crash.
bonin the culprit
@@stephenpalmer8072 You should watch the video again, and pay more attention to Petter's excellent explanation of the very unusual situation this flight got into. Maybe then you'll understand better.
I am an A330 pilot myself. That's probably why I have an easier time understanding what happened. By the way, Airbus and all airlines operating the A330 have changed system logic since. So, the people who really do understand what happened were not so ready with their judgement.
@@TribusMontibus I am always ready to listen to someone with experience - so isn't it true that this would not have happened if the two pilots had connected yokes like in a Boeing?
Imagine being the Captain woken up suddenly from rest, coming to the cockpit with both other pilots in complete panic with dozens of warning and many of the display indicators missing.
In hindsight it is easy to understand what was happening. But I can't blame the captain for the time it took for him to grasp what was happening. Insanely confusing and scary scenario.
I feel like had he taken the controls from the relief pilot, he would have understood what was going on.
@@officerahmoHow would he have known they climbed up that high and was falling?
I think the same.
Am a PC gamer who dabbles into air combat games at times. Knowing how often I was completely confused and overcome by a suddenly completely changed situation and lost control/got shot down...
I don't blame those pilots at all.
@@officerahmo It actually would have been better to take the control from the other pilot instead in this scenario since he was the one causing the stall the whole time, I'm also saying this because the relief pilot actually tried to take over the control but the first officer was in such a bad panic state that he didn't let him do it and he likely wouldn't let the captain take over either.
I think that he should not have left for his rest period when so much was happening
Just want to say this accident saved at least one life. I had an airspeed unreliable incident during takeoff on one of my student solos and immediately diagnosed it in part based on what I knew about AF 447. Caught a bug or something right before rotation.
Well, i doubt you would just pull the stick all the way back in desperation untill you crash
@@StoneCoolds you're very right about that. Day VFR helped, too. Diagnosing the issue was what this accident helped with :)
@@madrockxvx dis accident happened due to improper speed and altitude details right sir?
@@akshayveralkar4611 due to the crew’s improper reaction to invalid airspeed data, yes
@@madrockxvx wat should have the pilots done like continuously try to keep stable the plane by manual input?
56 minutes of high quality Mentour content! It is truly amazing how you can drop two of these videos a month, all with animation and perfect explanation. I can only guess how long making such an extended video takes
Poor Dominic has been working almost day and night on this one.. we didn’t think we would be able to pull it off but here it is.
I am so looking forward to hear what you guys think, after the video.
@@MentourPilot I already posted a thumbs up comment, before watching ;)
@@rtqii I always give his videos a like the second I click on them.
@@MentourPilot Well, I now finished it and ... wow. One of the best ones (if not the best one) so far. Wish I could give more than one like.
Yet I wonder, wouldn't pitching down with TOGA increase their speed to put them out of the stall? Or were the pitch downs too short to reach enough speed?
@@MentourPilot what do you guys use for your graphics? MSFS2020?
This honestly had me on edge in the best way possible. The storytelling of these events were really portrayed well. Definitely better than a Netflix docu-series!!!
Glad you found it interesting!
This hits close to my heart. I used to fly that very route and that very plane regularly. Whenever I fly over the Intertropical Convergence Zone just north of Brazil and the plane shakes a bit more in the night I can't help but think of AF 447.
What is your opinion on the performance of the first officer and the team? For me with experience in single engine flying it is horrific. can’t you easily fly an airplane of this size with artificial horizon only? It takes a lot of focus if the conditions are very shaky but it’s doable imo
@@Larsonaut I'm not a pilot, but even I know that was handled poorly. One guy crashed that plane as two others watched it happen. A couple hundred others paid the price.
The fact that when they started doing the right thing by pushing the nose down the stall warning sounding is soooo unfortunate, and is just heartbreaking
And yet, by reading some "aviation experts" here, it's all the fault of the FO... He's not blameless, but that aircraft and its warnings were all over the place...
@@MaxCDet I think it's a flaw in the extreme computerization of the Airbus itself. That, and the pitot tube freezing which set in motion this very unhappy series of events. And really, the fact that the left side pilot could NOT see that his FO would not let go of the stick made this terrible outcome inexorable.
I'm French and I've seen many videos about airfrance 447. As here in France it obviously was a very big deal, I already knew most of what happened. But you truly did an amazing job explaining how the different factors combined brought up this tragedy. You sincerely did an impressive job! Also, when you hear the last words of the crew right before impact, it truly is heartbreaking hearing them realizing they're about to "hit".. I rarely write comments, but your video deserves it! Thanks again.
Actually only one factor, poor pilot skills! Until Large jet pilots have, like in the USA, some real stick and rudder flying, systems operators like these chaps will always make mistakes. Poor training, poor skiils and total lack of CRM
Well, I'm only an amateur but I know there is a debate of which is better, more control to the pilot or more control to the plane's system computer. Obviously you're right about the poor pilot training and skills.. In a way it seems unbelievable that such professionals would not recognize a stall.. Proof that full automation isn't the answer alone. They need to find a balance and the computer should be there to assist the pilot, not to all by itself. But also as it is said in this video, the guys were apparently quite tired also, some French reporters even managed to find the bars where they've been while in Brazil, so this is another factor. Also the bad luck of an improbable timing when the captain comes back and the stall alert stops right at that moment.. And I think Peter is right when he said at the beginning to keep in mind that it is very important to understand exactly how the plane's systems work. So yeah, we come back to to your argument which I agree is the main factor.. But i also think it goes alongside fatigue, bad timing, bad luck, bad equipment (pitot tubes).. I also agree that i think it was be best if both commands are directly linked together, and not get a simple error message coz both pilots are doing opposite things.. During a stressful moment, each pilot would have been able to instantly recognize the issue. Apparently this is Airbus policies, unlike Boeing ones.. Hopefully, everyone will still manage to correct what brought this crash in about 4mns total.. Showing how important it is to have the training and skills. And again, it's heartbreaking hearing the pilots realizing they were going to hit the ground. First time I heard the very last words of the pilots conversation, it was a very powerful moment, I felt so bad for them, even if you know they also have their responsibility.. Let's hope it never happens again!
@@nneellssoonn111 When you train for you IR, you are taught, well not the French or JAR syllabus, to fly. So when the you suspect the pitot has iced. You maintain the picture on the panel, power setting and speed until the de-icing hits. I feel nothing for the pilots, they killed an awful lot of people who I do care for. Their act and the BEA cover up is criminal.
@@jimwalsh8520 well, about the BEA there's no argument there, I completely agree with you. And of course the pilots killed a lot of people, but I think you're a bit harsh about them. They didn't want to crash, in their mind they tried everything without realizing the main issue. Indeed they just should have kept flying the plane level until the pitot tubes started functioning correctly again. Then the computer system would have been working back with correct informations. It's true you're right they didn't do their job properly as they were just trained to recognize pitot tubes malfunction and how to react. It is a tragedy that could have been avoided. But to me, although you're right and it's mainly their poor pilot skills that brought up this crash, they just couldn't understand the situation. As it is often said, it's much easier to see and understand the situation when your life is not on the line. They just couldn't believe what was happening.. And to be honest, the 1st officer whom kept pulling the stick, putting the plane to such an angle that stalling was inevitable, those actions didn't give a chance to the other 1st officer to maybe recover the stall. Anyway, maybe it's because I heard their last words that I feel bad for them, I don't know.. But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about that specific issue. 👍🏻But about the BEA, it's just disgusting.. Big money, too close to Airbus, and no wonder it ends up like this unfortunately..
@@jimwalsh8520 you can never train for all the possible situations.
You’re so disrespectful to these people.
I'm brazilian and i got a flight from Sao Paulo to Paris the other day, pretty much the same route as this one, and i'll tell you, i thought about this flight the whole trip hah... There was a lot of turbulence over the ocean as well. I feel for all those people, including the Pilots, it's a sad mistake to make, but we're all humans and subjected to those possibilites. May they all rest in peace.
I too am an Airline pilot. I’ve been an f/o and Captain on the Airbus. I’m currently a Boeing 787 f/o. We have heard the cockpit voice recordings (recreated in English) during subsequent training. Your video recount of this accident really helped me to connect the subtleties of the human actions in understanding how this crew remained so far away from identifying the problem and initiating the correct solution. Kudos to your research and your ability to dig deep into the factors at play, many of which were extremely unique to the aircraft manufacturer. This accident helped me to identify the one thing that may have prevented this accident from ending in the water. That is if this had happened in a Boeing aircraft, the “yoke” or control column in front of the nonflying pilot would have been seen by that pilot monitoring as being constantly pulled back by the flying pilot in the right seat and also by the captain, once he was on the flight deck. I’ve loved the side stick control in the Airbus but it is out of sight and is not mirrored to the other side stick.
Your use of graphics and animations were so extremely well done, they took me (and I’m sure those who are not aviators) on to that flight deck as if we were there. Every time I go to training and train for the unusual attitudes and “upset recoveries” I always replay Air France 447 as I realize that we are now much safer because of that tragedy. I’m moved even more because of your video. Thanks
why are the controls not mirrored. This seems problematic, not only In light of this incident
I never understood why that actually happened.
Simply put:
In doubt flat out
Meaning:
If U have no idea whats wrong, continue straight ahead and put throttle to a setting which will guarantee enough thrust to not fall out if the sky - then start troubleshooting. But pulling up all the time, WTF????
@@brainthesizeofplanet Just reading around there it seems the Co-pilot went into go round mode - the landing-abort procedure which involves full thrust and pitching the nose up. It helps I'm sure if you realise he was on 1 hours sleep from partying all night with his gf.
You can always let the yoke go to neutral
Why do pilots make a decision to fly a plane knowing it hasn't has maintenance? After watching several clips and many of them had a lack of maintenence and I'm thinking why fly a plane when maintenence is needed.