I've done a lot of research into air disasters and this is one of the ones that has shocked me the most. I remember watching it on the news back then when it happened, and looking at it again from time to time. The way these individual, little bad decisions compounded into the final crash, is pure nightmare fuel. You could save it nearly at any point: avoiding the storm in the first place, having the captain on duty while going throught it, letting the more experienced first officer take control of the plane when he left, or just NOT putting the nose up when you have a stall warning over you, just keep it steady and stable... Astonishing.
At one time I questioned that it was a Murder suicide. His mistakes were so juvenile that it couldn't have been on accident. We don't know him. We know nothing about him at all. Someone then replied. "But his wife was on board and they had 2 boys back home in France." Umm......this certainly isn't the first time that murder suicide has involved a spouse. It usually does.
They were overconfident in Airbus capabilities, I mean they even made a comment earlier in the flight stating as such. It's just sad these planes are so automated these days when manual control is needed they are like fish out of water. Was it intentional? You can never say for certain, but the possibility always exists.
1. the captain leaves the cockpit in stormy weather conditions 2. the crew member with least experience is taking over 3. the then flying pilot has no idea/feeling on what to do after the AP turns off 4. strange smell, sound and lightning distracts the crew 5. the captain needs endless 54s to get back into the cockpit when the plane already stalls 6. instruments show incomplete or erratic information 7. pilot flying loses control, gets in "panic", cramps the stick back and even tries to lock in the air brakes 8. when the captain arrives he does not take over the stalling plane but observes the situation 9. the plane has sidesticks which do not coordinate with each other => this accident is a tragic chain of bad circumstances, failures and wrong decisions
Captain left for his scheduled rest time. Doesnt matter if its stormy or not, whats the point of having 3 pilots if you assume 2 of them are incompetent. If thats the case, he cant leave the flight deck at all then. After coming back, being away for sometime he is basically out of the situation, he cant just storm in and get the pilots who were flying, out of their seats. He is no savior or Jesus Christ. He needs sometime to understand whats happening.
@Richard NZ I think you, like many other folks I see analyzing this on the internet, are confusing pitch angle with angle of attack. They had over 40* positive AoA in some cases!! The wings and the tail were BOTH stalled, not just the wings. Nobody I've seen that talks about this accident seem to grasp that concept. I've seen so few people that have ANY training or qualifications to speak on this topic, yet everyone acts like they are experts... Did you also not see the report? The Captain on the ground complained about having only 1 hr of sleep!! How is that for an aggravating factor? There is so much more that was missed it isn't even funny.
Pilotes and investigators must have been in disbelief when they heard this the first time. It is even worse when you realise that it is one man's faulty actions that brought them all down because of no comunication in the cockpit. Horrible!
Steban Noirot Yes it is hard words, to sit safe at home and point the finger. I know about the false readings of their altitude they were given and the loss of speed instruments because of the frozen pitotubes. I know it's easy to say what they should have done afterwards when we know what happend whit the aircraft, but either way, the actions of Bonin is to strange to be explained. If he were told that the plane had lost altitude by a few hundred feet I can understand that he wanted to climb when the autopilot disconnected but why would he climb whit that huge rate, feet/minute? Climbing like a fighterjet the moment he took over, pulling back the stick that much for that long whit the stallwarning going on and still no idea that he was about to stall the aircraft. I just think it's scary that a trained pilots mind can be totally blocked for that long.
Steban Noirot Yes It is kind of strange that captain Dubois sound like he didn't care much at all when he entered the cockpit. It is likely that they all more or less got in some kind of chock and therefore failed to discover the real problem. However I think it might be hard for actors to recreate the sence of fear that really will occur in a cockpit when the pilots face the fact that this is it. It is just too disturbing and hard to imagine how any person would feel in this situation. No matter how wrong their actions might have been, no one on that plane wanted it to end like this that night, and surtenly not their families either.
Sorry for your loss. It's always the hardest when something is this senseless and completely avoidable. He literally caused a perfectly good plane to crash. I feel sad for the friends and family that will have to suffer the pain of the loss and absence of their loved ones for the rest of their lives.
Indeed. As I find it impossible to blame complete ignorance of the drivers in charge, my best guess remains mental panic of the youngest not recognized by the others. Laisser-aller and incompetence are sometimes not fully or swiftly recognized.
Nobody's baffled, it was frozen pitot tubes. This causes the instruments to give inaccurate & contradictory readings. If pilots aren't trained for it, they just follow the instruments straight into the ground.
After learning about so many aircraft disasters, I always come back to this one because it baffles me how this happened with 3 pilots on board and not one of them could take charge and figure out what was going on, it was like they didnt want to believe what was happening and thought if they ignored the problem it would go away, how could you be a professional and then become paralyzed in the first face of a problem, its absurd
You'd think they would've known the systems, especially Bonin the co pilot, that if they lose instruments because of the pitot tubes, you just do nothing and keep the plane flying straight and level. You also don't make excessive movements with the side control stick, because of its sensitivity.
What Puzzles Me is How Come Nobody in The Cockpit Even Mentioned Pitot Tubes as Possible Issue...Also How Come This Plane Did Not TELL Them The Pitots Were Clogged?
He wasn't doing it on purpose he was just panicking because he couldn't see the speed instrument and for some reason thought the plane was hurtling forward faster than it was so he pulled the nose up to try and slow it not realising he made it stall and fall from the sky. Because he's an idiot even at the end at 4000 feet he's telling the captain they need to lift up even though the other two are trying to lift down to get the nose down and out of it.
they explicitly acknowledged that both of the varios were frozen, therefore they didnt know what to believe and ultimately got confused preventable for sure, but imagine yourself in that situation - blind and with (possibly) false instruments
S Piderman sorry to say, you didn’t understand the situation ... at high altitudes an aircraft may stall due to high airspeed ... allow me to suggest to google the coffin corner subject. By the way, this only happens in jet airplanes ...
Dan Dddy even if he didn’t believe the instruments at first, if he’s at 35000 feet, the maximum altitude for the aircraft is 38000 feet, and he is pulling up on the stick for several minutes, it follows that the aircraft will stall.
Captain never said that. Copilot did. Captain was totally unable to help, it's like he accepted death right from the start. He was going thru a divorce, banging a colleague, his kids wouldn't talk to him, he was no longer himself. At least copilot tried to find a solution, but in the end he couldn't counterbalance the stupid actions of this Bonin clown (3rd pilot) pulling back on his stick.
No, he should have been given a hard slap by his flight instructors and the injunction to hand over his pilot's license. That guy clearly wasn't cut for the job.
disastrix47: That's a good question, apparently because the Airbus is so 'intelligent' the computers never let any of its aircraft get into a stall, so the pilots, although understand what a stall is, never need to get out of one . At least that was the theory.
Because they trust too much to aircraft systems. First rule is fly the plane no matter what. When the stall warning came up I cant understand why he was pulling stick to make plane climb. First they thought they were going too fast so they tried to climb OK it can happen without speed indicator in the storm at night. BUT whe the stall warning came up I still cant believe they were so stupid they did not realize that they should push the stick down to gain speed and lift to stop the stall. It does not make any sense and it is beyond me. As someone said in the documentary they crashed with aircraft which was completely flawless. It is very sad. They are trained and they did such a horrible mistake which would not have been made by common aviation enthusiasts who flies in flight simulator on PC..
Overlord Internet is full of people with zero knowledge like you guys. Thats fine,the problem comes when those people feel they can call an air france flight crew stupids or incompetents based on what they feel,or at best on their ppl's 40 flight hours hours . The stall was of such an extreme degree that it went even out of the warning envelope,and was not giving any stall warning when the pilot was fully pitching up. The few times that the pilot pitched down,and the situation came back into the warning envelope,the stall warning started to ring,and the pilot not understanding the situation,pitched up again to remove the warning,which was in fact removed because it went outside the warning envelope again. Such a difficult situation to recover,almost impossible considering the enivomental situation (stormy weather outside,no visual references,going down at extreme vertical speed,startle effect ecc) and people still compara this situation to the three times they performed a stall manouver in a cessna with the instructor supervising eveything
there are also various phenomena that pilots can develop during long trips during conditions where visibility is reduced (bad weather or night time)that cause the crew to become disoriented about the direction , speed and attitude of the aircraft. Their mind provides them with a false sense of security when in reality they are in a dangerous situation.
For me, one of the scariest facts is that from this being a normal, uneventful flight without any issues, to crashing into the sea with total loss of life, took only 5 minutes. I will remember that sobering fact every time I board a plane!
Actually, its a chain of events. It all started with airfrance not replacing the Pitot tubes as they were advised, then the copilot was not trained properly and panicked, and combine that with a storm and the Captain handing him command
There were a few simple reasons for this crash: 1) Once the Pilots lost airspeed Bonin enacted the wrong pitch and power procedure. This led to a stall. 2) Not realising he had made a pitch and power error in response to the stall warnings Bonin then again enacts the wrong stall procedure. The two procedures Bonin enacts are for low level flying- usually after take off. Both Pilots have been trained on that but not on unreliablel airspeed at high altitude so Bonin thinks he is doing the right thing because that is how memory works. In the manual there is a section showing a table to follow for correct parameters- they never got that far. Once in the stall it was too late really- task saturation, alarms going off everywhere and a fixation on keeping the wings level meant they were confused and going on instinct. I don't think Bonin realised they were genuinely in a stall, there was so much going on. Robert I think was in agreeement with Bonin especially in relation to the pitch angle initially. He tells Bonin to stabalise at 12° angle before the stall. He also seemed to be using memory of low altitude pitch and power. Forget Dubois, by the time he came back he was way to far behind to catch up in time. One particularly sad thing that strikes me is Dubois says to Bonin before Robert returns from his break, you should try and take 20mins when he(Robert) comes back. Bonin says he isn't tired but thanks. If Bonin had taken that offer those fatal 10 minutes when the Captain left the flight deck would not have happened and most likely those 228 people would be alive today. Very sad. R.I.P
I wish they would release the full 2 hour cockpit voice recording. That would shed a lot of light on the pilot dynamics and psychology that was the single cause of this accident.
Yeah, but at least we can gather a lot of information from these few minutes. It’s obvious that they had poor communication. And Bonin seemed spooked by the sights, smells, and turbulence caused by that storm.
This is very unsettling. The pilots didn't know how to handle the misreading which there is a standard protocol and then not being able to get out of a simple stall? That's crazy it's not like the plane was rolling off a wing. The guy that was pulling the stick back basically killed everyone on the plane. Sad. Rip.
What nobody talks about is really that the pilots could have done nothing and still everyone would hVe been ok. Why not maintain same speed same altitude as before if u dont have a good reading. The incompetence here is beyond shocking. First they decided to go thru bad weather knowingly and the captain decided to have a rest during the period he is needed the most
@Joe Ropaio the weather played a huge factor in the accident. I have yet to hear or read one person state that turbulence was what brought the plane down. It wasn't. The pilots were obviously to blame, but the weather is notoriously dangerous around that part of the world. Combine that with poor pilot training, you get results like AF447
Clearly Bonin was having a panic attack... he sure knew how to recover from a stall but he wasn’t in the mental condition to understand and solve the problem.... I will never understand why Robert didn’t take the control sooner... so sad hearing their voices knowing they are all dead, what a tragedy! 😔
Chiara Soldati yes very sad and I believe you are right about the panic attack, cause it is really like the basic of basics to nose down when stalling. One thing though, the conversations in the video are not the real recordings
The only way to avoid this entirely was to either not take off or do what the other aircraft that evening decided to do: divert *around* those thunderstorms and do NOT penetrate them! Once it was decided to penetrate that massive, angry system of well developed storms, their fate was all but sealed. The icing contributed, but what killed those people was the aerodynamic factors that led up to that jet entering a "deep stall" which rendered control inputs from the tail ineffective (pitch and yaw from those surfaces were blanked out due to the deep stall....) Regulators glossed over this. They didn't want to, I am sure, call out Airbus as having a jet that couldn't fly in bad weather, and it is FAR easier to blame dead pilots who can't argue back.
Ervira Rosiana it wasnt the captains fault, the pitot tubes froze up so they didnt have a fix on their altitude and angle, for all they knew they were still straight on course until they felt the plane doing things it shouldnt not all the blame rest on the pilots.
@@Bingus2255 - What happened to the plane itself was only 30-40% of the problem. Under a more experienced pilot's hands it was 100% manageable. I hate to speak ill of the dead but inexperienced pilot error is what ultimately crashed this plane, nothing else.
@Cindy Tartt Yes Cindy you are only going on the information you are allowed from the documentary little snipets of the pilots conversations. I find it hard to understand that pilot Robert never once checked Bonin on bringing the nose down when they could see they were dropping altitude rapidly and nothing was solving the situation.
Also just for shits he should have pushed forward on the stick to see what that would do... You can't pull back forever and never try something else...
Don't mean to single you out, but Bonin did push the stick forward again after their initial climb up to 39000 ft after pulling on the side stick. He managed to get the plane under control for a moment, then pulled back on the stick again until the plane went into a stall. The entire situation here caused by these pilots was unbelievable.
He DID try it. Multiple times. The problem, however, is that the stall warning would sound off every time the nose went down, and then go away when the nose went up. I’m shocked that they didn’t mention this in the video.
Kory remember also that all three pilots may have all raised their hands once they saw their final destination rising up to meet them since as American comedian Jay Leno once so eloquently stated: *raise one hand if you like the French then raise both hands if you ARE French*
This is way better than the 6+ minute version of this cockpit voice recording that's also on RUclips. This has far more audio and fills in some blanks I had not heard before. Nice work. Bonin is definitely to blame.
The FIRST thing you learn in training is "LOWER THE NOSE" and "FORGET THE INSTRUMENTS...JUST FLY the PLANE.” These are the dumbest pilots ever. Seriously, wtf? Engineers and pilots need to get together more, but I have noticed this is not common practice a lot of the times.
They are all so used to fly technically advanced planes with all those automatisms that they have forgotten the basics. Theere was a push for AF and all other carriers to sendi their piltos train on traditional private airplanes.
I feel you are neglecting the 2 other important issues. The cpt leaves knowing they are entering a storm and gives controls to the least experienced. Bonin does not indicate that he has been pulling the nose up until they almost crash. The cpt leaving is slightly understandable. Bonin not telling his inputs was the problem. It doesnt matter how experienced you are if you dont know what bonin is doing
The fear and tension drenching Bonin's voice from the start of the CVR is frightening to hear. I believe Bonin's terror of the oncoming thunderstorm conditions is the seed of this appalling air disaster.
williamlee0 yeah I think that’s it. Don’t they have training for this beforehand? Dubois was calm and more experienced which would have reassured him a bit
Obviously Bonin responded incorrectly to a stall - and for you non-flyers, stall recovery is the 2nd thing you’re taught in any flight training, right after “Where’s the restroom in this flight school.” But what’s equally weird is his initial pulling back the stick and causing the stall. After all, a stall didn’t just happen - Bonin 100% created a stall out of nothing. Something mildly stressful happens and the guy responds by pulling back the stick for no reason. As far as I know there’s simply no rationalization for doing that, there was no indication that they went pitch down or were losing altitude. It was not a case of flying the instruments or anything rational.
Bonin was paralysed with fear and froze with his has on the joystick so didn't realise that he was doing it. The pilots had a few thousand hours experience but how many hours in a crisis?
Can Not Imagine The Terror That CONSUMED These People as They Watched The Altimeter Count Down to The Plane SMASHING into Middle of Ocean in Pitch Dark Night
This aircrash hurts me the most, I know the Swiss Air 111 made me fear fire onboard but Air France 447 really breaks me, I can't just forget about it. I was watching the search & recovery of the black boxes, terrifying to see the wreckage beneath the sea 😢. Rest well everyone 💔
The CVR was badly damaged and almost beyond repair, needing very special treatment to restore the recording. Also the FDR didn't record data from Bonin's sidestick and it was all pieced together from the other data. We were very close to simply never knowing what happened.
@@halfbakedproductions7887 I'm glad we did find out the truth at the end, I'm wondering about the MH370 black boxes, they've been in the ocean for 10 years 😭💔
Experience speaks at 12:42 They should've woke the captain up earlier! Or Bonin could've given the controls to Robert! As simple as that! A silly mistake had cost dearly! RIP all aboard AF447 :(
The captain leave the cockpit @ 2h03 , @2h08 the pitot tubes was obstructed by the ice and the auto pilot disengaged , the problem started right now because Bonin assume the controls and start pushing the nose up cause staling . @2h10 the pitot tubes are working fine again .... between 2h08 and 2h10 bonin just need to fly leveled to avoid all this tragedy :( dubois back @ 2h11 just 3 minutes after problems started ! its hard to dubois save something . no one realises the bonin are pushing the nose . when he share the info it was to late ....
It annoys me every single time I watch videos of this particular crash, if they hadn't of crashed he should of been banned for life from flying for not understanding basics of flying a plane
No because then a grease fire would break out and Bonin would have simply stood there in the middle of the kitchen with a blank stare in his eyes while blindly throwing even more grease onto the fire.
That's a bit harsh. While I do put full responsibility on Bonin for the crash, maybe he would have done alright with a different profession. Who knows?
We're not going to know the truth of what happened in the cockpit of AF447 until BEA release the original voice recordings. We know that the pilots of Japan flight 123 were heroes because the voice recordings show us this. But the lack of the AF447 recordings leave many questions unanswered, and make the situation far far worse for Air France. The continuing questions, people posting even a few days ago, nearly a decade after the crash, show that people do not trust the interpretation of the transcript that has been offered. BEA need to release the full original voice recordings for AF447, and bring closure to this whole tragedy.
@Sal Drays No we don't. BEA /AF refuse to release the full audio recordings, or any recordings for that matter. Why do we have the full recording of JA123? We have full recordings of many serious incidents. This one, so dependent on human error, should be made available to the public. The excuse they give is 'privacy' which is blatantly false given that the transcript has been published. There is nothing left to hide but the reality of the voices whose intonation and rhythm will tell us a lot more than the words on the page.
@Sal Drays Not according to William Langewiesche. It's just over 2 hours long, on a self-erasing loop. Have a look at his article 'The Human Factor'. It's worth a read.
Oh the elementary mistakes. Of course we can say that now but with the exception of Bonin these were veteran pilots. It’s sad because in the last few seconds DuBois figures out what’s going on but it’s too late. Bonin should’ve NEVER been a pilot of a major airline. He should’ve been a diesel mechanic or something.
From the transcript: 02:14:25. Pierre: Mais qu’est-ce qui se passe!!? (But what’s happening!!?) - 02:14:25. David: On est morts!!! (We are dead!!!) Those were Robert's last words. Damn.. having read the full analysis I can say communication break down and lack of training was the main cause of this crash. The communication between Pierre Bonin and David Robert was horrendous. There was none! They failed to eve use the Unreliable Airspeed Indication/ADR check procedure. They didn’t they grab the emergency procedure handbook (Quick Reference Handbook) and look for the unreliable anemometric data check-list. It's like their minds went completely blank. At least the pilots on Aeroperú flight 603 communicated and used resources (going through check lists) to try to understand how to deal with a plane with instruments giving a failty reading. Reading that transcript is like night and day with the transcript from this flight.
When I heard about this crash I was thinking to myself, "why couldn't they save the plane when they were stalling at such a high altitude?" So I came upon this video to find the answer. Turned out they actually could save the plane, they just didn't know what was going on. Totally avoidable. Sad one.
@@gabrielpreda8889 It isn't real the real flight recording was never released and will never be released. And no way this sounds like the real recording there is not much panic in the voices of the pilot as there was in the real recording. The real recording was pretty graphic as far as I know .
The Pilot saw the storm ahead of them and instead of assuring their safety he went on a break. Thunderstorm and turbulence are very critical that is why they turn on the fasten seatbelt sign, but an idiot and irresponsible Pilot took a nap. RIP to those passengers.
We must keep in mind the strenght of regulations about works and rest that are effective in Europe: if a pilot remains awake too much, there are very severe sanctions ( in money and other penalties)
Larry,Curly and Moe trying to fly a plane, they didn't think about having to actually fly the plane that's the autopilots job. Basic flight school training all pilots should know how to deal with stall and recovery.
For exactly this situation the „Airspeed unreliable“ Checklist was made and printed to the QNH (or whatever it called in the A330 QNH!) Basic Pitch and power Settings = stable flight @ stable speed @ stable altitude! No matter what the Instruments are showing once you realize that you lost one or more indications.
Well first mistake was flying through the storm. If they just went around it like everyone else, these overpaid people would still be relaxing behind the autopilot.
Commenting on this incident again, but after listening to the description of events here I am certain pure fear came over the pilots especially below 10000ft & PNF now given priority to be PF realises the 4000ft mark & it’s not possible. Knowing he has to get the nose down but there out of time. I believe the actual CVR is disturbing & probably why has not been released. I cannot imagine the feeling of what they where going through & knowing. Once the ground proximity warning started I cannot imagine & they have no visual just knowing there height is disappearing & GPW blaring. This can never happen again & flying is safer today because of AF447. We owe our improved air transport safety to all those we lost here, they will never be forgotten.
What surprises me is that for all it's sophistication, the A330 doesn't have a stick-pusher of some sort that physically forces the nose down in a stall, or at least something that prevents the pilots from doing the exact opposite during one. These have been around for many decades, and I believe still exist on a few commercial aircraft today. The Bombardier DH-8, and ATR-42 for example.
Not well versed on Airbus (or Boeing) autopilot systems. But I do know that the A310 was delivered with an automatic system like you describe, where it forces the nose down during a stall event if A/P is on (not sure what occurs if A/P is off). This was a contributing factor to the crash of Aeroflot 593. A/P was enabled for pitch, but disengaged (at the time) for roll. Not sure if Airbus omitted that system from the A330. I think in this case, the A/P was disengaged, so it might not have mattered. Not a pilot, just stating what I remember.
Well, under normal circumstances if all systems work normaly you can't push an A330 into a stall. The problem is, if you lose the airspeed indication like in this case this protection is lost. By the way, you don't find stick pushers in modern aircraft anymore because these suckers also caused some accidents.
@@shi01 Thanks. It just baffles me that with how modern of an aircraft the A330 is, one single pilot was able to just pull back on the joystick/yoke during a stall, and that was enough to make the aircraft unrecoverable and crash. Now, I'm sure there were alarms going off, but likely several of them, but still.
can you have music playing in the cockpit while cruising? I'm guessing sitting in the cockpit while on autopilot over an ocean at night is pretty boring, it might help you stay awake?
@@manusmacgearailt667 whatched a video to that by "CaptainJoe". He stated it is possible and allowed as long as you hear everything else (rest of the (cockpit-)crew, ATC, engine- and alarmsounds,... so he doesn't do it (anymore) since it's quite annoying always having to brake the music
This is absolutely chilling. Just imagine being in the cockpit as the terror of the situation emerges; and at least those in the cabin didn’t know the full horror.
Its so so sad. On one hand I get the outrage at Bonin, but another part of me cant imagine having to deal with something of this magnitude while having a panic attack..sirens are always scary and Im sure that only caused more panic..but.. that's also why Im not in a role where people could lose their lives, just sad that these are the consequences of a panicked man. Most of us go home and kick ourselves at worst maybe get written up/fired for doing stupid things, but that wouldve been a blessing for them.
Guess None of These Pilots Ever Heard of a Pitot Tube and What Can Cause Them to Clog...None of Them Even Mention Pitot Tube as Possible Problem...Very Interesting
Co pilot was over his head from the handoff to manual...it scares the shit out of me when he is asking questions that seem like normal pilot scenarios.godbless them all
Seems the one actually trying to understand and trying to fix and not panicking was the Robert. Bonin was panicked. Robert sounded a capable person, maybe the captain didn't like that so much, that's why he named Bonin. In my opinion the Captain made a bad move naming Bonin instead Robert, sometimes it is just ego, sometimes he was just trying to make the new pilot confident, but not any of those are arguments to do that on a commercial airplane. No one trains in production.
bonin was the co-pilot, robert was the second officer! second officer is the 3 pilot in command his objective is to replace the co-pilot and captain in flight when they are tired or if something happen to them! the captain gave the commando to co-pilot because he was the co pilot of the flight not because he didnt like robert
The plane would have stabilized its self if both pilot’s just stopped putting inputs on the side stick. Plans are built to fly not crash. So just leave it alone, and the A330 would have recovered it’s self.
@@aobk84x yes, but even the expert in the footage points out that when the A/P shuts off you keep the plane where it is, rather than deviating. the plane was flying fine until the A/P shut off and instead of maintaining speed/altitude they started fucking with the controls. Bonin makes a remark early on in the recording that he thinks they're going too fast, which i wonder is maybe why he pulled the nose up so much to begin with. as soon as he lost airspeed indicator he freaked out and it cost everyone their lives.
@@mirrepoix i believe bonin was the only one in control. Also the airbus dual input system averages the inputs and bonin was pulling the stick entire time so if roberts was pushing the stick down it would have been a neutral input.
The reason they haven't released the original recording is probably because at 4000 feet you can hear Robert choking Bonin yelling, "keep your f****ng hands off the stick!" I know that pilots are trained to be calm in tough situations, but it seems to me that they had their composure together "too well" for what was unfolding. Pilot or not I'd be losing my shit knowing that I'm about to end up on the ocean floor. There's definitely much more to the CVR transcript than this!!!!
The thing is though, the reason I think he pulled back on the side stick is because he though that they were gaining speed (as he said), so he pitched up. I also believe they didn't understand that the pitot tube was frozen. Remember they flew in the dark, it's quite easy to get spatial disorientation and espacially when you are instruments are gone, add that with heavy turbulence and a stall, and all the warnings going off at the same time.. It all happened in around 3 minutes. Better CRM and better training would have prevented this, so sad.
I don't think it takes any piloting expertise to understand the basic concept of pitching the nose down to regain control when the aircraft enters a stall situation.
Hundred percent agree on that! When you hold the nose up for several minutes, while hearing the stall alarm for 70 or more times.... I think there's a clue there maybe??
From what I understand of what was said by the experts afterwards, once the blocked pitot tube was cleared and able to give correct readings, the plane could have been put back into automatic mode and the disaster would not have happened. It was in fact the pilots who downed the plane because they were doing all the wrong things, and especially Bonin who kept the side-stick raised to maintain the plane's nose up which was in the end its undoing, as it sent the plane into a stall that was not recoverable. By the time the co-pilot spotted this, it was too late to do anything. As for the captain, he was bloody useless. He might as well have carried on sleeping! Tragic event.
13:06-13:11 Dubois and Robert - Watch out You’re pitching up there. I’m pitching up? You’re pitching up. I’m pitching up? You’re pitching up! Is the worst part, gives me goosebumps, panic and helplessness could be observed in their voices. These are the last few seconds of their lives but remarkably nobody screamed. Feel so sad for passengers and air stewardesses. Captain was most at fault, then dumb and overconfident Bonin and Robert should have acted earlier. 4th culprit was the girl whom captain Dubois was doing. Which took an extra 70 seconds for him to get to cockpit and start comprehending what’s going on. Also he could have operated during the storm but he was probably getting hornier and left command over to inexperienced guy who ultimately took over 200 with him.
Prinz Vidar I know but the voice actors must have tried to imitate the real recordings. I looked up for the real one everywhere but guess BEI never let people hear their last voices. I think the pilots were more panicked then what these documentaries recordings make them sound.
Me neither, that company scares the Shit out of me, Imaging those cases where it was a close call but without letting the public know about it…. I‘m pretty sure a lot of dangerous cases!!!!😳😳😳
I read a few things about this. This is a very confusing and a complex situation. I am not expert but I believe it was mainly a lack of cooperation among the crew members. The first co-pilot wasn't doing the right thing and the second wasn't helping the situation. Even when the captain came back from his rest, he was still telling the co-pilot what to do (instead he could've taken over) and the co-pilot was incompetent in doing that e.g. not sharing what he was doing as he was raising the nose up. Probably due to a lack of CRM and bad culture. Also experienced pilots say they would want to avoid going into the stormy weather. In this case, it was quite big one. There is more psychology than the knowledge involved as the pilots were experienced enough to handle this. The 'stall' warning when he was doing the right thing (nose down) caused a negative reinforcement and made him not do the right thing. He couldn't handle the situation, also didn't report what he was doing. I understand there are other failures (pitot tube malfunction) but I'd hardly believe that would cause the plane to fall. All the main parts were functioning properly. However, It's easier said than done because once you have disbelief in the intruments you use, you have no way of sorting what's really going on. The whole thing took 4 minutes. It's just unbelievable and shows how demanding this job is when push comes to shove.
My point of view is different. The accident started before the warning the warnings started to trigger . 1) the captain left the cockpit when the weather started to deteriorate. Leaving the aircraft in the middle of a storm to a low experienced f\o 2) the other f/o on the lhs got an arrogant behavior to the junior f/o not helping him at all in . Not technically nor psychology. 3) late stall recognition. after 58 warning Why inside the cockpit there was such a low cooperation ? did something happened before btw the 3? maybe on ground ? some behavior during the layover .? something to cut the mood of a crew ? 4) I wish I could have heard the voice recorder of the crew inbound flight to Rio.
Bonin should never have been left in control going into that storm which the Captain knew was going to be electrical and pretty fierce. Instead he wanted his rest. The other co-pilot had just had a few hours rest so should have been put in the right hand seat especially as he was the 2nd most senior. I do believe that the typical French arrogant attitude and ego got in the way. Bonin should have just admitted he didn't know what to do after the Pitots froze and the autopilot disabled and that Robert should have taken over. Why on earth he didnt tell his co-pilot he pulled the nose lever up none of us will ever know because he would have instantly corrected it...every pilot should know (bar Bonin for some reason) that lifting the nose in that weather at that speed will cause it to stall. Also, one of them should have hammered on the Captain's door and let him take control. Instead they just spent 3 vital minutes looking at each other not knowing what to do until it was too late. RIP.
The problem is air France protocols and pilot training. I think it was drummed into the pilots that when it's time to rest at x amount of time you do it irrespective of what is going on around you. The worst part of this tragedy is the lack of communication about what inputs each pilot is making. Bonin pulled back on that stick without robert knowing until it was too late. Why did Airbus install a system that allows each pilot to make inputs without the other pilot's knowing such an input is being made? There is a catalogue of errors from the manufacturer, to the airline and all the way down to the pilots. A senseless tragedy indeed.
I don’t understand why, when the captain came back to the flight deck, he didn’t just relief one of the less experienced pilots and took control himself?
After sleep a pilot is not allowed to touch the controls for 20 minutes. You wouldn't want a sleep drunk pilot mishandling the aircraft, especially in an emergency. Robert should have pushed the override button on his sidestick and pointed it forward. And accompany it with "I have control", or something along those lines, waaay before when he did
Apparently his way of fooling around in the skies, at the expense of hundreds of lives. The actions, and non-actions of the crew make me seriously doubt whether this was really an accident or something far worse
After watching a lot of air plane crash videos it seems that you absolutely completely totally need a bare minimum of at least 10.000 flight hours to know that you have to pitch the nose down to get out of stalling. If you only have 3.000 or 6.000 hours you have no clue at all about that fact.
He was actually trying to figure the problem in jump seat. The two first officer did not figure out why plane was stalling and captain i guess could have taken the seat but even if he take seat there is a very little chance he figure sooner and save the plane while 2 other F/O idiots ruin it.
To all who commenting it was the co pilots fault: The captain did not avoid the storm and left the cabin to get a nap even though he realizes the co pilot was nervous. As a captain you should keep an eye on your co pilots when they are feeling uncomfortable and help them.
Yeah at the end of the day it was the captain fault, but still you can’t pretend that little mistake Bonin made killed everybody in that plane. Was the point of all that training to make a little mistake like that? A professional turn into an amateur in seconds, he shouldn’t even be flying a plane yet.
Ok, no airspeed. I get a little confusion. But as soon as the stall warning goes off, Bonin should have immediately understood it was caused by his inputs on the aircraft. The fact that he never put 2 and 2 together... hard to comprehend a trained pilot wouldn't quickly figure that out.
Many Foreign Carriers send their guys to initial pilot training in the US, then put them in the right seat of an airliner right out of flight school with less than 250 hours in their logbook. THAT is the problem. All airline pilots need to be a CFI for a year before getting in the cockpit of an airliner. No one knows how to fly anymore. They let the computer do all of the flying.
I've done a lot of research into air disasters and this is one of the ones that has shocked me the most. I remember watching it on the news back then when it happened, and looking at it again from time to time. The way these individual, little bad decisions compounded into the final crash, is pure nightmare fuel. You could save it nearly at any point: avoiding the storm in the first place, having the captain on duty while going throught it, letting the more experienced first officer take control of the plane when he left, or just NOT putting the nose up when you have a stall warning over you, just keep it steady and stable... Astonishing.
@@bloopnation yeah, like it doesn't make sense at all
At one time I questioned that it was a Murder suicide. His mistakes were so juvenile that it couldn't have been on accident. We don't know him. We know nothing about him at all. Someone then replied. "But his wife was on board and they had 2 boys back home in France." Umm......this certainly isn't the first time that murder suicide has involved a spouse. It usually does.
@@petermiller1276I would think the investigators looked into this, but the crash was attributed to pilot error, not murder suicide.
They were overconfident in Airbus capabilities, I mean they even made a comment earlier in the flight stating as such. It's just sad these planes are so automated these days when manual control is needed they are like fish out of water. Was it intentional? You can never say for certain, but the possibility always exists.
1. the captain leaves the cockpit in stormy weather conditions
2. the crew member with least experience is taking over
3. the then flying pilot has no idea/feeling on what to do after the AP turns off
4. strange smell, sound and lightning distracts the crew
5. the captain needs endless 54s to get back into the cockpit when the plane already stalls
6. instruments show incomplete or erratic information
7. pilot flying loses control, gets in "panic", cramps the stick back and even tries to lock in the air brakes
8. when the captain arrives he does not take over the stalling plane but observes the situation
9. the plane has sidesticks which do not coordinate with each other
=> this accident is a tragic chain of bad circumstances, failures and wrong decisions
Good analysis, but I think the third point in number 7 is the key to the crash.
at 2k flight hrs you should be able to operate as someone with 6k
Captain left for his scheduled rest time. Doesnt matter if its stormy or not, whats the point of having 3 pilots if you assume 2 of them are incompetent. If thats the case, he cant leave the flight deck at all then. After coming back, being away for sometime he is basically out of the situation, he cant just storm in and get the pilots who were flying, out of their seats. He is no savior or Jesus Christ. He needs sometime to understand whats happening.
Sometimes you getter a better view of the situation by observing what’s going on .. it must of been horrific for the passengers and crew !!
@Richard NZ I think you, like many other folks I see analyzing this on the internet, are confusing pitch angle with angle of attack. They had over 40* positive AoA in some cases!! The wings and the tail were BOTH stalled, not just the wings. Nobody I've seen that talks about this accident seem to grasp that concept. I've seen so few people that have ANY training or qualifications to speak on this topic, yet everyone acts like they are experts...
Did you also not see the report? The Captain on the ground complained about having only 1 hr of sleep!! How is that for an aggravating factor? There is so much more that was missed it isn't even funny.
Pilotes and investigators must have been in disbelief when they heard this the first time. It is even worse when you realise that it is one man's faulty actions that brought them all down because of no comunication in the cockpit. Horrible!
Steban Noirot Yes it is hard words, to sit safe at home and point the finger. I know about the false readings of their altitude they were given and the loss of speed instruments because of the frozen pitotubes. I know it's easy to say what they should have done afterwards when we know what happend whit the aircraft, but either way, the actions of Bonin is to strange to be explained. If he were told that the plane had lost altitude by a few hundred feet I can understand that he wanted to climb when the autopilot disconnected but why would he climb whit that huge rate, feet/minute? Climbing like a fighterjet the moment he took over, pulling back the stick that much for that long whit the stallwarning going on and still no idea that he was about to stall the aircraft. I just think it's scary that a trained pilots mind can be totally blocked for that long.
Steban Noirot Yes It is kind of strange that captain Dubois sound like he didn't care much at all when he entered the cockpit.
It is likely that they all more or less got in some kind of chock and therefore failed to discover the real problem.
However I think it might be hard for actors to recreate the sence of fear that really will occur in a cockpit when the pilots face the fact that this is it. It is just too disturbing and hard to imagine how any person would feel in this situation. No matter how wrong their actions might have been, no one on that plane wanted it to end like this that night, and surtenly not their families either.
He had muliple stallwarnings and he kept the nose up? How is that not his fault?
Ironically, the airbus is made to prevent pilot error, but the sidestck design only made it worse
@Steban Noirot how is this rude. Was it your family that was killed because someone didn't learn his profession properly.
My colleague was in that flight; a german doctor 😔 very sad especially that this disaster could have been prevented...
My condolences:(
My friends dad was on the flight too :(
Sorry mate. I wish German's were flying the plane.
@@ernstvanstangl1048 yeah no German pilots have ever made chronic intentional flying errors
Sorry for your loss. It's always the hardest when something is this senseless and completely avoidable. He literally caused a perfectly good plane to crash. I feel sad for the friends and family that will have to suffer the pain of the loss and absence of their loved ones for the rest of their lives.
Expert pilots are baffled by what Bonin did, but it's equally baffling the way all three pilots ignored the stall warnings
72 times !
@@patrickbotti2357 75 *
Indeed. As I find it impossible to blame complete ignorance of the drivers in charge, my best guess remains mental panic of the youngest not recognized by the others. Laisser-aller and incompetence are sometimes not fully or swiftly recognized.
Nobody's baffled, it was frozen pitot tubes. This causes the instruments to give inaccurate & contradictory readings. If pilots aren't trained for it, they just follow the instruments straight into the ground.
Nobody's baffled? So why did Sullenberger say, about Bonin holding the nose up and causing a stall, "I just don't know why the pilot did that" ?
After learning about so many aircraft disasters, I always come back to this one because it baffles me how this happened with 3 pilots on board and not one of them could take charge and figure out what was going on, it was like they didnt want to believe what was happening and thought if they ignored the problem it would go away, how could you be a professional and then become paralyzed in the first face of a problem, its absurd
I agree
You'd think they would've known the systems, especially Bonin the co pilot, that if they lose instruments because of the pitot tubes, you just do nothing and keep the plane flying straight and level. You also don't make excessive movements with the side control stick, because of its sensitivity.
What Puzzles Me is How Come Nobody in The Cockpit Even Mentioned Pitot Tubes as Possible Issue...Also How Come This Plane Did Not TELL Them The Pitots Were Clogged?
This pilot did everything he could to crash the plane.....
And he drowned it.
Bonin was nuts. 🥴
He wasn't doing it on purpose he was just panicking because he couldn't see the speed instrument and for some reason thought the plane was hurtling forward faster than it was so he pulled the nose up to try and slow it not realising he made it stall and fall from the sky. Because he's an idiot even at the end at 4000 feet he's telling the captain they need to lift up even though the other two are trying to lift down to get the nose down and out of it.
Facts
TRUTH _ Amazing how many people already know the truth from a video
You'd think that 58 stall warnings would alert three trained pilots that they might be in a... stall.
*Speaking over stall warning*
Bonin: I think we're flying too fast!
Jesus, RIP
they explicitly acknowledged that both of the varios were frozen, therefore they didnt know what to believe and ultimately got confused
preventable for sure, but imagine yourself in that situation - blind and with (possibly) false instruments
S Piderman sorry to say, you didn’t understand the situation ... at high altitudes an aircraft may stall due to high airspeed ... allow me to suggest to google the coffin corner subject. By the way, this only happens in jet airplanes ...
Dan Dddy even if he didn’t believe the instruments at first, if he’s at 35000 feet, the maximum altitude for the aircraft is 38000 feet, and he is pulling up on the stick for several minutes, it follows that the aircraft will stall.
@@armandogotelli7253 "Coffin corner" lol. They weren't flying a space shuttle.
Coffin corner was the reason they stalled...
I get enraged thinking about this incident. It really was truly poor airmanship, and they didn’t even warn anyone.
This is scary. Professionals turning into amateurs in a short amount of time.
Exactly.
Bonin was no professional
@@aamirscorpio7309 Exactly.
Bonin was never a professional, he had just not been tested.
@Emma J absolutely correct. Robert would have saved that plane had he known what Bonin was doing.
This is so sad... when the captain said f*ck, we're going to crash. As a student pilot that comment alone hit the spot.
RIP all who lost their lives.
Captain never said that. Copilot did. Captain was totally unable to help, it's like he accepted death right from the start. He was going thru a divorce, banging a colleague, his kids wouldn't talk to him, he was no longer himself. At least copilot tried to find a solution, but in the end he couldn't counterbalance the stupid actions of this Bonin clown (3rd pilot) pulling back on his stick.
Every time I watch a video of this accident I have some kind of hope that they will make The right decision
I wish that they do, but at the same time I know they wont, cause otherwise I wouldnt be watching this
@@msi4887 same here. nose down, nose down....scary very scary to listen to it
Bonin should have been given a hard slap by the cpt before crashing .
He shouldn't have felt it.
that's extremely dark humor, but it's really funny.
More like KOed
No, he should have been given a hard slap by his flight instructors and the injunction to hand over his pilot's license. That guy clearly wasn't cut for the job.
Hahaha
how is it possible for airline pilots to not understand something as basic as a stall that a cessna pilot learns on day 1?
disastrix47: That's a good question, apparently because the Airbus is so 'intelligent' the computers never let any of its aircraft get into a stall, so the pilots, although understand what a stall is, never need to get out of one . At least that was the theory.
Because they trust too much to aircraft systems. First rule is fly the plane no matter what. When the stall warning came up I cant understand why he was pulling stick to make plane climb. First they thought they were going too fast so they tried to climb OK it can happen without speed indicator in the storm at night. BUT whe the stall warning came up I still cant believe they were so stupid they did not realize that they should push the stick down to gain speed and lift to stop the stall. It does not make any sense and it is beyond me. As someone said in the documentary they crashed with aircraft which was completely flawless. It is very sad. They are trained and they did such a horrible mistake which would not have been made by common aviation enthusiasts who flies in flight simulator on PC..
Overlord Internet is full of people with zero knowledge like you guys. Thats fine,the problem comes when those people feel they can call an air france flight crew stupids or incompetents based on what they feel,or at best on their ppl's 40 flight hours hours .
The stall was of such an extreme degree that it went even out of the warning envelope,and was not giving any stall warning when the pilot was fully pitching up. The few times that the pilot pitched down,and the situation came back into the warning envelope,the stall warning started to ring,and the pilot not understanding the situation,pitched up again to remove the warning,which was in fact removed because it went outside the warning envelope again. Such a difficult situation to recover,almost impossible considering the enivomental situation (stormy weather outside,no visual references,going down at extreme vertical speed,startle effect ecc) and people still compara this situation to the three times they performed a stall manouver in a cessna with the instructor supervising eveything
Too much reliance on the computers and automated systems. Probably thought that the computers wouldn't allow them to stall the aircraft.
there are also various phenomena that pilots can develop during long trips during conditions where visibility is reduced (bad weather or night time)that cause the crew to become disoriented about the direction , speed and attitude of the aircraft. Their mind provides them with a false sense of security when in reality they are in a dangerous situation.
For me, one of the scariest facts is that from this being a normal, uneventful flight without any issues, to crashing into the sea with total loss of life, took only 5 minutes.
I will remember that sobering fact every time I board a plane!
Actually, its a chain of events. It all started with airfrance not replacing the Pitot tubes as they were advised, then the copilot was not trained properly and panicked, and combine that with a storm and the Captain handing him command
There were a few simple reasons for this crash:
1) Once the Pilots lost airspeed Bonin enacted the wrong pitch and power procedure. This led to a stall.
2) Not realising he had made a pitch and power error in response to the stall warnings Bonin then again enacts the wrong stall procedure.
The two procedures Bonin enacts are for low level flying- usually after take off. Both Pilots have been trained on that but not on unreliablel airspeed at high altitude so Bonin thinks he is doing the right thing because that is how memory works. In the manual there is a section showing a table to follow for correct parameters- they never got that far. Once in the stall it was too late really- task saturation, alarms going off everywhere and a fixation on keeping the wings level meant they were confused and going on instinct. I don't think Bonin realised they were genuinely in a stall, there was so much going on. Robert I think was in agreeement with Bonin especially in relation to the pitch angle initially. He tells Bonin to stabalise at 12° angle before the stall. He also seemed to be using memory of low altitude pitch and power. Forget Dubois, by the time he came back he was way to far behind to catch up in time.
One particularly sad thing that strikes me is Dubois says to Bonin before Robert returns from his break, you should try and take 20mins when he(Robert) comes back. Bonin says he isn't tired but thanks. If Bonin had taken that offer those fatal 10 minutes when the Captain left the flight deck would not have happened and most likely those 228 people would be alive today. Very sad.
R.I.P
I wish they would release the full 2 hour cockpit voice recording. That would shed a lot of light on the pilot dynamics and psychology that was the single cause of this accident.
Those rotten bastards will never do that, unfortunately.
Yeah, but at least we can gather a lot of information from these few minutes. It’s obvious that they had poor communication. And Bonin seemed spooked by the sights, smells, and turbulence caused by that storm.
I think the cockpit voice recorder recycles every 30 minutes. That’s all they can record.
It’s out the entire recording link after this comment
@@EM.1 thx
This is very unsettling. The pilots didn't know how to handle the misreading which there is a standard protocol and then not being able to get out of a simple stall? That's crazy it's not like the plane was rolling off a wing. The guy that was pulling the stick back basically killed everyone on the plane. Sad. Rip.
What nobody talks about is really that the pilots could have done nothing and still everyone would hVe been ok. Why not maintain same speed same altitude as before if u dont have a good reading. The incompetence here is beyond shocking. First they decided to go thru bad weather knowingly and the captain decided to have a rest during the period he is needed the most
I had a friend who flew that same route just days before on the same airline. He said the turbulence was terrible during the middle of the night.
Ricky Alton I'm glad he made it.
@Joe Ropaio the weather played a huge factor in the accident. I have yet to hear or read one person state that turbulence was what brought the plane down. It wasn't. The pilots were obviously to blame, but the weather is notoriously dangerous around that part of the world. Combine that with poor pilot training, you get results like AF447
Clearly Bonin was having a panic attack... he sure knew how to recover from a stall but he wasn’t in the mental condition to understand and solve the problem.... I will never understand why Robert didn’t take the control sooner... so sad hearing their voices knowing they are all dead, what a tragedy! 😔
Chiara Soldati yes very sad and I believe you are right about the panic attack, cause it is really like the basic of basics to nose down when stalling. One thing though, the conversations in the video are not the real recordings
That's not their voices
I believe this is now a textbook example shown on every flight training. R.I.P. to everyone. This could be avoided so easily.
The only way to avoid this entirely was to either not take off or do what the other aircraft that evening decided to do: divert *around* those thunderstorms and do NOT penetrate them! Once it was decided to penetrate that massive, angry system of well developed storms, their fate was all but sealed. The icing contributed, but what killed those people was the aerodynamic factors that led up to that jet entering a "deep stall" which rendered control inputs from the tail ineffective (pitch and yaw from those surfaces were blanked out due to the deep stall....) Regulators glossed over this. They didn't want to, I am sure, call out Airbus as having a jet that couldn't fly in bad weather, and it is FAR easier to blame dead pilots who can't argue back.
With a Boeing it never happened
This is so sad, hundreds lives gone because one man’s stupidity / incapacity.
Ervira Rosiana it wasnt the captains fault, the pitot tubes froze up so they didnt have a fix on their altitude and angle, for all they knew they were still straight on course until they felt the plane doing things it shouldnt not all the blame rest on the pilots.
Ervira Rosiana and now you've just insulted a dead man for no reason
@@Bingus2255 - What happened to the plane itself was only 30-40% of the problem. Under a more experienced pilot's hands it was 100% manageable. I hate to speak ill of the dead but inexperienced pilot error is what ultimately crashed this plane, nothing else.
The idiot who pulled the stick back is responsible for the crash
@Cindy Tartt Yes Cindy you are only going on the information you are allowed from the documentary little snipets of the pilots conversations. I find it hard to understand that pilot Robert never once checked Bonin on bringing the nose down when they could see they were dropping altitude rapidly and nothing was solving the situation.
Some get Sully or Yusupov. Others get Bonin or Lubitz.
Flying will always be a Russian Roulette for me.
or if you are really unlucky, you get Eldar and his sister.
Also just for shits he should have pushed forward on the stick to see what that would do... You can't pull back forever and never try something else...
Don't mean to single you out, but Bonin did push the stick forward again after their initial climb up to 39000 ft after pulling on the side stick. He managed to get the plane under control for a moment, then pulled back on the stick again until the plane went into a stall. The entire situation here caused by these pilots was unbelievable.
Yes, you would think he would at least have tried that.
He DID try it. Multiple times. The problem, however, is that the stall warning would sound off every time the nose went down, and then go away when the nose went up. I’m shocked that they didn’t mention this in the video.
Kory remember also that all three pilots may have all raised their hands once they saw their final destination rising up to meet them since as American comedian Jay Leno once so eloquently stated:
*raise one hand if you like the French then raise both hands if you ARE French*
Hahaha good point lol
3:47 - Bonin: Thank God we're in an A330, eh
Robert: Dead right.
*OH. THE. IRONY.*
F**k that gave me the shivers
It's not a correct translation, He didnt say "dead right"
@@anastasiyaa_96 You're right. It's waaaaaaaaaaaay off.
they were in a good plane. Too bad the one piloting was that idiot.
kaizersolze this gives new meaning to the term *crashing the party*
This is way better than the 6+ minute version of this cockpit voice recording that's also on RUclips. This has far more audio and fills in some blanks I had not heard before. Nice work. Bonin is definitely to blame.
The full documentary is called Fatal Flight 447 and is 40+ minutes.
The FIRST thing you learn in training is "LOWER THE NOSE" and "FORGET THE INSTRUMENTS...JUST FLY the PLANE.” These are the dumbest pilots ever. Seriously, wtf? Engineers and pilots need to get together more, but I have noticed this is not common practice a lot of the times.
They are all so used to fly technically advanced planes with all those automatisms that they have forgotten the basics. Theere was a push for AF and all other carriers to sendi their piltos train on traditional private airplanes.
I feel you are neglecting the 2 other important issues. The cpt leaves knowing they are entering a storm and gives controls to the least experienced. Bonin does not indicate that he has been pulling the nose up until they almost crash.
The cpt leaving is slightly understandable. Bonin not telling his inputs was the problem. It doesnt matter how experienced you are if you dont know what bonin is doing
STAUHL STAUHL DIDIDIDIDIDIDIDID
i think the second co-pilot did not knew that Bonin was pulling the stick
The fear and tension drenching Bonin's voice from the start of the CVR is frightening to hear. I believe Bonin's terror of the oncoming thunderstorm conditions is the seed of this appalling air disaster.
williamlee0 yeah I think that’s it. Don’t they have training for this beforehand? Dubois was calm and more experienced which would have reassured him a bit
Should have reassured *
Actually what you are hearing on this video is an enactment done by actors from the transcript; the actual CVR has not been released
AF never released the real thing, it would have been so much more informative... All we get is this gentle lil story with a bit of stress.
That's not the real audio recording
How could Dubois not get in his seat. He came in at more than 30000 feet. Inexplicable
Apparently his mind was still somewhere else.
Girlfriend and banging her@@geoffg3268
Turkish harp artist also died in this accident 'Fatma Ceren NECİPOĞLU' ☹
RIP all people in plane...
Obviously Bonin responded incorrectly to a stall - and for you non-flyers, stall recovery is the 2nd thing you’re taught in any flight training, right after “Where’s the restroom in this flight school.” But what’s equally weird is his initial pulling back the stick and causing the stall. After all, a stall didn’t just happen - Bonin 100% created a stall out of nothing. Something mildly stressful happens and the guy responds by pulling back the stick for no reason. As far as I know there’s simply no rationalization for doing that, there was no indication that they went pitch down or were losing altitude. It was not a case of flying the instruments or anything rational.
The pitos were frozen, maybe the plane was showing lost of speed.
Bonin was paralysed with fear and froze with his has on the joystick so didn't realise that he was doing it. The pilots had a few thousand hours experience but how many hours in a crisis?
Can Not Imagine The Terror That CONSUMED These People as They Watched The Altimeter Count Down to The Plane SMASHING into Middle of Ocean in Pitch Dark Night
This aircrash hurts me the most, I know the Swiss Air 111 made me fear fire onboard but Air France 447 really breaks me, I can't just forget about it. I was watching the search & recovery of the black boxes, terrifying to see the wreckage beneath the sea 😢. Rest well everyone 💔
The CVR was badly damaged and almost beyond repair, needing very special treatment to restore the recording. Also the FDR didn't record data from Bonin's sidestick and it was all pieced together from the other data.
We were very close to simply never knowing what happened.
@@halfbakedproductions7887 I'm glad we did find out the truth at the end, I'm wondering about the MH370 black boxes, they've been in the ocean for 10 years 😭💔
Experience speaks at 12:42 They should've woke the captain up earlier! Or Bonin could've given the controls to Robert! As simple as that! A silly mistake had cost dearly! RIP all aboard AF447 :(
The captain leave the cockpit @ 2h03 , @2h08 the pitot tubes was obstructed by the ice and the auto pilot disengaged , the problem started right now because Bonin assume the controls and start pushing the nose up cause staling . @2h10 the pitot tubes are working fine again .... between 2h08 and 2h10 bonin just need to fly leveled to avoid all this tragedy :( dubois back @ 2h11 just 3 minutes after problems started ! its hard to dubois save something . no one realises the bonin are pushing the nose . when he share the info it was to late ....
It annoys me every single time I watch videos of this particular crash, if they hadn't of crashed he should of been banned for life from flying for not understanding basics of flying a plane
I feel like people like Bonin applying to a pilot school should be given a slap at entrance and sent to flipping burgers.
No because then a grease fire would break out and Bonin would have simply stood there in the middle of the kitchen with a blank stare in his eyes while blindly throwing even more grease onto the fire.
Louis Casas He would make a great politician
🤣yess
That's a bit harsh. While I do put full responsibility on Bonin for the crash, maybe he would have done alright with a different profession. Who knows?
We're not going to know the truth of what happened in the cockpit of AF447 until BEA release the original voice recordings. We know that the pilots of Japan flight 123 were heroes because the voice recordings show us this. But the lack of the AF447 recordings leave many questions unanswered, and make the situation far far worse for Air France. The continuing questions, people posting even a few days ago, nearly a decade after the crash, show that people do not trust the interpretation of the transcript that has been offered.
BEA need to release the full original voice recordings for AF447, and bring closure to this whole tragedy.
i am with you
Very well said. I agree 100%
@Sal Drays No we don't. BEA /AF refuse to release the full audio recordings, or any recordings for that matter. Why do we have the full recording of JA123? We have full recordings of many serious incidents. This one, so dependent on human error, should be made available to the public. The excuse they give is 'privacy' which is blatantly false given that the transcript has been published. There is nothing left to hide but the reality of the voices whose intonation and rhythm will tell us a lot more than the words on the page.
@Sal Drays Not according to William Langewiesche. It's just over 2 hours long, on a self-erasing loop. Have a look at his article 'The Human Factor'. It's worth a read.
@@yggdrasil9039 af will never release the cvr
Oh the elementary mistakes. Of course we can say that now but with the exception of Bonin these were veteran pilots. It’s sad because in the last few seconds DuBois figures out what’s going on but it’s too late. Bonin should’ve NEVER been a pilot of a major airline. He should’ve been a diesel mechanic or something.
apiece ofdirt : well said but even as a mechanic he would have been dangerous. I don’t even know in which job he would have been harmless ...
From the transcript:
02:14:25. Pierre: Mais qu’est-ce qui se passe!!? (But what’s happening!!?)
- 02:14:25. David: On est morts!!! (We are dead!!!)
Those were Robert's last words. Damn.. having read the full analysis I can say communication break down and lack of training was the main cause of this crash. The communication between Pierre Bonin and David Robert was horrendous. There was none!
They failed to eve use the Unreliable Airspeed Indication/ADR check procedure. They didn’t they grab the emergency procedure handbook (Quick Reference Handbook) and look for the unreliable anemometric data check-list. It's like their minds went completely blank.
At least the pilots on Aeroperú flight 603 communicated and used resources (going through check lists) to try to understand how to deal with a plane with instruments giving a failty reading. Reading that transcript is like night and day with the transcript from this flight.
Did this crew got their type rating on a cereal boxe? Even the passive behavior of the captain when he returned is outrageous. Poor guys.
Its actors not the real voices of the pilots
Pramis Montero these are real voices
When I heard about this crash I was thinking to myself, "why couldn't they save the plane when they were stalling at such a high altitude?" So I came upon this video to find the answer. Turned out they actually could save the plane, they just didn't know what was going on. Totally avoidable. Sad one.
This video is very likely not the full story
Everyone thinks this the real Voice recording. Nope , it isn't . The real one wasn't released to the public
Are you sure ? It sounds So real tho
@@gabrielpreda8889 It isn't real the real flight recording was never released and will never be released. And no way this sounds like the real recording there is not much panic in the voices of the pilot as there was in the real recording. The real recording was pretty graphic as far as I know .
It was not stupid Bonin who realised that he was going to crash but Robert! Bonin still could not understand at the eleventh hour!
The Pilot saw the storm ahead of them and instead of assuring their safety he went on a break. Thunderstorm and turbulence are very critical that is why they turn on the fasten seatbelt sign, but an idiot and irresponsible Pilot took a nap. RIP to those passengers.
Well, after all Xin JKM, male pilots have their priorities in order: Nap Time!
Ontop of that it was the senior pilot
We must keep in mind the strenght of regulations about works and rest that are effective in Europe: if a pilot remains awake too much, there are very severe sanctions ( in money and other penalties)
Larry,Curly and Moe trying to fly a plane, they didn't think about having to actually fly the plane that's the autopilots job.
Basic flight school training all pilots should know how to deal with stall and recovery.
For exactly this situation the „Airspeed unreliable“ Checklist was made and printed to the QNH (or whatever it called in the A330 QNH!) Basic Pitch and power Settings = stable flight @ stable speed @ stable altitude! No matter what the Instruments are showing once you realize that you lost one or more indications.
And u know its bad when the computer just gives up after 58 "Stall"warnings, it may as well started praying to.godbless them all
Bad Wheater + Systems Failure + Night Flying + Crew Disorientation = AF 447 Disaster.
Well first mistake was flying through the storm. If they just went around it like everyone else, these overpaid people would still be relaxing behind the autopilot.
Commenting on this incident again, but after listening to the description of events here I am certain pure fear came over the pilots especially below 10000ft & PNF now given priority to be PF realises the 4000ft mark & it’s not possible. Knowing he has to get the nose down but there out of time. I believe the actual CVR is disturbing & probably why has not been released.
I cannot imagine the feeling of what they where going through & knowing. Once the ground proximity warning started I cannot imagine & they have no visual just knowing there height is disappearing & GPW blaring.
This can never happen again & flying is safer today because of AF447. We owe our improved air transport safety to all those we lost here, they will never be forgotten.
What surprises me is that for all it's sophistication, the A330 doesn't have a stick-pusher of some sort that physically forces the nose down in a stall, or at least something that prevents the pilots from doing the exact opposite during one. These have been around for many decades, and I believe still exist on a few commercial aircraft today. The Bombardier DH-8, and ATR-42 for example.
Not well versed on Airbus (or Boeing) autopilot systems. But I do know that the A310 was delivered with an automatic system like you describe, where it forces the nose down during a stall event if A/P is on (not sure what occurs if A/P is off). This was a contributing factor to the crash of Aeroflot 593. A/P was enabled for pitch, but disengaged (at the time) for roll. Not sure if Airbus omitted that system from the A330. I think in this case, the A/P was disengaged, so it might not have mattered. Not a pilot, just stating what I remember.
Well, under normal circumstances if all systems work normaly you can't push an A330 into a stall. The problem is, if you lose the airspeed indication like in this case this protection is lost.
By the way, you don't find stick pushers in modern aircraft anymore because these suckers also caused some accidents.
It's from 1993. It's like calling an SNES "sophisticated".
@@shi01 Thanks. It just baffles me that with how modern of an aircraft the A330 is, one single pilot was able to just pull back on the joystick/yoke during a stall, and that was enough to make the aircraft unrecoverable and crash. Now, I'm sure there were alarms going off, but likely several of them, but still.
@@twiff3rino28 Thanks for clarifying.
This is heartbreaking...rip for all the passengers and cabin crew
Did they have this sinister music on in the cockpit?
Naw. They were listening to Snoop Doggy Dogs, Bitches Ain't Shit but Hoez & Tricks.
Real answer: it was quiet no music to avoid mental problem
@@annoyingguyoninternet1631 😂
can you have music playing in the cockpit while cruising?
I'm guessing sitting in the cockpit while on autopilot over an ocean at night is pretty boring, it might help you stay awake?
@@manusmacgearailt667 whatched a video to that by "CaptainJoe".
He stated it is possible and allowed as long as you hear everything else (rest of the (cockpit-)crew, ATC, engine- and alarmsounds,... so he doesn't do it (anymore) since it's quite annoying always having to brake the music
There is something really spooky to me when the alarm kept saying "stall stall stall".
the captain must have been very dissapointed
This is absolutely chilling. Just imagine being in the cockpit as the terror of the situation emerges; and at least those in the cabin didn’t know the full horror.
They did. The plane dropped like a stone. Creating a deafening
noise plus they would have seen the position of the isle was pointing up. Awful.
Its so so sad. On one hand I get the outrage at Bonin, but another part of me cant imagine having to deal with something of this magnitude while having a panic attack..sirens are always scary and Im sure that only caused more panic..but.. that's also why Im not in a role where people could lose their lives, just sad that these are the consequences of a panicked man. Most of us go home and kick ourselves at worst maybe get written up/fired for doing stupid things, but that wouldve been a blessing for them.
The captain's mind was still somewhere else for most of the time he was back to the cockpit.
He was banging his girlfriend
aircraft hit the water at 250 km/h horizontal speed and 200 km/h vertical speed, dive angle 45 deg, this being a real impact speed of approx 400 km/h
45degrees??
Elapsed time 10:27. Is the height of this pilot’s inexperience.
”..No? Ok.”
Not the original recording
Could only imagine the fear in the real recordings, especially when they realise Bonin has been pulling up the whole time.
RIP to all innocent souls on that flight :'( very sad & heart breaking
The flight computer when terrain say pull up but when come to stall never say push stick forward to stop stall and power up
If only Robert would've told Bonin to let him have the controls earlier, before they hit 20,000 ft, I believe they would've recovered.
Nope because Bonin had the stick in his hands all the time...
I've read speculation from experts and senior pilots that the point of no return was likely 20-25k feet. Anything below that was already too late.
Guess None of These Pilots Ever Heard of a Pitot Tube and What Can Cause Them to Clog...None of Them Even Mention Pitot Tube as Possible Problem...Very Interesting
That is very scary. The situation in the first place but more than anything that three pilots couldn't identify the problem in such a long time.
5 min is not a long time
Co pilot was over his head from the handoff to manual...it scares the shit out of me when he is asking questions that seem like normal pilot scenarios.godbless them all
Seems the one actually trying to understand and trying to fix and not panicking was the Robert. Bonin was panicked. Robert sounded a capable person, maybe the captain didn't like that so much, that's why he named Bonin. In my opinion the Captain made a bad move naming Bonin instead Robert, sometimes it is just ego, sometimes he was just trying to make the new pilot confident, but not any of those are arguments to do that on a commercial airplane. No one trains in production.
bonin was the co-pilot, robert was the second officer!
second officer is the 3 pilot in command his objective is to replace the co-pilot and captain in flight when they are tired or if something happen to them!
the captain gave the commando to co-pilot because he was the co pilot of the flight not because he didnt like robert
I don’t understand how you could fly for more than 100 days and respond to a stall by pulling the stick back. It makes no sense.
John C I could be wrong but I think he actually started pulling back as soon as he took the controls.
Bonin should have been a flight attendant.
David Learmont & others did a great job of narrating here.
wow, so many lessons from this crash.
The plane would have stabilized its self if both pilot’s just stopped putting inputs on the side stick. Plans are built to fly not crash. So just leave it alone, and the A330 would have recovered it’s self.
Amr Tawdi the auto pilot shuts off early on because it has contracting airspeed
@@aobk84x yes, but even the expert in the footage points out that when the A/P shuts off you keep the plane where it is, rather than deviating. the plane was flying fine until the A/P shut off and instead of maintaining speed/altitude they started fucking with the controls. Bonin makes a remark early on in the recording that he thinks they're going too fast, which i wonder is maybe why he pulled the nose up so much to begin with. as soon as he lost airspeed indicator he freaked out and it cost everyone their lives.
Yes you are right regardless of what the AP is doing. Try to keep the plane level (not banking) but otherwise just fly the darn thing.
@@mirrepoix i believe bonin was the only one in control. Also the airbus dual input system averages the inputs and bonin was pulling the stick entire time so if roberts was pushing the stick down it would have been a neutral input.
This whole event was *A COMPLETE CLUSTERFUCK SHIT SHOW* from the moment that the Captain *ABSENTMINDEDLY left that seat during the storm.*
Lol, the captain was too chilled.
This is so true though the captain was unconcerned and cynical
The reason they haven't released the original recording is probably because at 4000 feet you can hear Robert choking Bonin yelling, "keep your f****ng hands off the stick!" I know that pilots are trained to be calm in tough situations, but it seems to me that they had their composure together "too well" for what was unfolding. Pilot or not I'd be losing my shit knowing that I'm about to end up on the ocean floor. There's definitely much more to the CVR transcript than this!!!!
Is there the transcript somewhere?
Yes it's released but I don't think it's the full transcript just bits and pieces.@@diegoyuiop
Whoever did these captions was hella lazy yo.
It makes you wonder if any of them knew how to fly a plane !
The thing is though, the reason I think he pulled back on the side stick is because he though that they were gaining speed (as he said), so he pitched up. I also believe they didn't understand that the pitot tube was frozen. Remember they flew in the dark, it's quite easy to get spatial disorientation and espacially when you are instruments are gone, add that with heavy turbulence and a stall, and all the warnings going off at the same time.. It all happened in around 3 minutes. Better CRM and better training would have prevented this, so sad.
Everyone is an expert on youtube. So amazing
I don't think it takes any piloting expertise to understand the basic concept of pitching the nose down to regain control when the aircraft enters a stall situation.
Yea yeah right! I think its pretty basic knowledge NOT to go full nose up in a stall.
Hundred percent agree on that! When you hold the nose up for several minutes, while hearing the stall alarm for 70 or more times.... I think there's a clue there maybe??
Marcolepsie
RUclips has an overpopulation of two groups of people:
1) aircraft safety experts
2) embarrassing atheists
So true, sofa pilots criticising him when he was in fear
From what I understand of what was said by the experts afterwards, once the blocked pitot tube was cleared and able to give correct readings, the plane could have been put back into automatic mode and the disaster would not have happened. It was in fact the pilots who downed the plane because they were doing all the wrong things, and especially Bonin who kept the side-stick raised to maintain the plane's nose up which was in the end its undoing, as it sent the plane into a stall that was not recoverable. By the time the co-pilot spotted this, it was too late to do anything. As for the captain, he was bloody useless. He might as well have carried on sleeping! Tragic event.
13:53 It was at this moment that he knew HE FUCKED UP !
Wow. So this whole time while he had the nose up he was the one stalling the aircraft
Nobody noticed i think, but I speak french, and the way they're talking doesn't seem natural at all. I think this is a audio reconstitution.
This is the legit black box audio recording. I don’t know what you’re talking about or your knowledge of French. This is authentic.
13:06-13:11 Dubois and Robert -
Watch out You’re pitching up there.
I’m pitching up?
You’re pitching up.
I’m pitching up?
You’re pitching up!
Is the worst part, gives me goosebumps, panic and helplessness could be observed in their voices. These are the last few seconds of their lives but remarkably nobody screamed. Feel so sad for passengers and air stewardesses. Captain was most at fault, then dumb and overconfident Bonin and Robert should have acted earlier. 4th culprit was the girl whom captain Dubois was doing. Which took an extra 70 seconds for him to get to cockpit and start comprehending what’s going on. Also he could have operated during the storm but he was probably getting hornier and left command over to inexperienced guy who ultimately took over 200 with him.
those are actors. Not the actual recordings.
Prinz Vidar I know but the voice actors must have tried to imitate the real recordings. I looked up for the real one everywhere but guess BEI never let people hear their last voices. I think the pilots were more panicked then what these documentaries recordings make them sound.
@Anks Shrivastava it’s on tailstrike website. Down this comment I post you the link.
@Anks Shrivastava CVR recording transcription
www.tailstrike.com/010609.pdf
E M thanks man didn’t see it before.
Reason why I’ll NEVER fly Airfrance. Useless
Me neither, that company scares the Shit out of me, Imaging those cases where it was a close call but without letting the public know about it…. I‘m pretty sure a lot of dangerous cases!!!!😳😳😳
I read a few things about this. This is a very confusing and a complex situation.
I am not expert but I believe it was mainly a lack of cooperation among the crew members. The first co-pilot wasn't doing the right thing and the second wasn't helping the situation. Even when the captain came back from his rest, he was still telling the co-pilot what to do (instead he could've taken over) and the co-pilot was incompetent in doing that e.g. not sharing what he was doing as he was raising the nose up. Probably due to a lack of CRM and bad culture. Also experienced pilots say they would want to avoid going into the stormy weather. In this case, it was quite big one.
There is more psychology than the knowledge involved as the pilots were experienced enough to handle this.
The 'stall' warning when he was doing the right thing (nose down) caused a negative reinforcement and made him not do the right thing. He couldn't handle the situation, also didn't report what he was doing. I understand there are other failures (pitot tube malfunction) but I'd hardly believe that would cause the plane to fall. All the main parts were functioning properly. However, It's easier said than done because once you have disbelief in the intruments you use, you have no way of sorting what's really going on.
The whole thing took 4 minutes. It's just unbelievable and shows how demanding this job is when push comes to shove.
My point of view is different.
The accident started before the warning the warnings started to trigger .
1) the captain left the cockpit when the weather started to deteriorate. Leaving the aircraft in the middle of a storm to a low experienced f\o
2) the other f/o on the lhs got an arrogant behavior to the junior f/o not helping him at all in . Not technically nor psychology.
3) late stall recognition. after 58 warning
Why inside the cockpit there was such a low cooperation ? did something happened before btw the 3? maybe on ground ?
some behavior during the layover .? something to cut the mood of a crew ?
4) I wish I could have heard the voice recorder of the crew inbound flight to Rio.
Truly staggering incompetence from the French pilots!........particularly Bonin!
*You know if this pilot is on a boeing they know whats up..........steering wheel issues*
Bonin should never have been left in control going into that storm which the Captain knew was going to be electrical and pretty fierce. Instead he wanted his rest. The other co-pilot had just had a few hours rest so should have been put in the right hand seat especially as he was the 2nd most senior. I do believe that the typical French arrogant attitude and ego got in the way. Bonin should have just admitted he didn't know what to do after the Pitots froze and the autopilot disabled and that Robert should have taken over. Why on earth he didnt tell his co-pilot he pulled the nose lever up none of us will ever know because he would have instantly corrected it...every pilot should know (bar Bonin for some reason) that lifting the nose in that weather at that speed will cause it to stall. Also, one of them should have hammered on the Captain's door and let him take control. Instead they just spent 3 vital minutes looking at each other not knowing what to do until it was too late. RIP.
The problem is air France protocols and pilot training. I think it was drummed into the pilots that when it's time to rest at x amount of time you do it irrespective of what is going on around you. The worst part of this tragedy is the lack of communication about what inputs each pilot is making. Bonin pulled back on that stick without robert knowing until it was too late. Why did Airbus install a system that allows each pilot to make inputs without the other pilot's knowing such an input is being made? There is a catalogue of errors from the manufacturer, to the airline and all the way down to the pilots. A senseless tragedy indeed.
I don’t understand why, when the captain came back to the flight deck, he didn’t just relief one of the less experienced pilots and took control himself?
After sleep a pilot is not allowed to touch the controls for 20 minutes. You wouldn't want a sleep drunk pilot mishandling the aircraft, especially in an emergency. Robert should have pushed the override button on his sidestick and pointed it forward. And accompany it with "I have control", or something along those lines, waaay before when he did
crazymonkeyVII fair enough, thanks for sharing
crazymonkeyVII 15 minutes but close u nailed iy
“Thank God we’re in an A330 huh?”
I’m flying in one in just a week...hopefully my pilot isn’t as irresponsible as Bonin.
Bonin - applying the air brakes wtf !
Apparently his way of fooling around in the skies, at the expense of hundreds of lives. The actions, and non-actions of the crew make me seriously doubt whether this was really an accident or something far worse
@@jussiuutaniemi3767bonin was probably suicidal and was pulling the stick on purpose just like that egyptair flight.
After watching a lot of air plane crash videos it seems that you absolutely completely totally need a bare minimum of at least 10.000 flight hours to know that you have to pitch the nose down to get out of stalling. If you only have 3.000 or 6.000 hours you have no clue at all about that fact.
Captain also responsible
Why he kept sitting at jump seat ...
Wt a pity .......
He was actually trying to figure the problem in jump seat. The two first officer did not figure out why plane was stalling and captain i guess could have taken the seat but even if he take seat there is a very little chance he figure sooner and save the plane while 2 other F/O idiots ruin it.
To all who commenting it was the co pilots fault:
The captain did not avoid the storm and left the cabin to get a nap even though he realizes the co pilot was nervous.
As a captain you should keep an eye on your co pilots when they are feeling uncomfortable and help them.
Yeah at the end of the day it was the captain fault, but still you can’t pretend that little mistake Bonin made killed everybody in that plane. Was the point of all that training to make a little mistake like that? A professional turn into an amateur in seconds, he shouldn’t even be flying a plane yet.
Well, the Real Pilot was sleeping in the middle of the storm. What a irresponsibility!!!!
Ok, no airspeed. I get a little confusion. But as soon as the stall warning goes off, Bonin should have immediately understood it was caused by his inputs on the aircraft.
The fact that he never put 2 and 2 together... hard to comprehend a trained pilot wouldn't quickly figure that out.
It's incomprehensible the lack of knowledge of those Pilots. Its a Company tranning unforgivable failure.
Many Foreign Carriers send their guys to initial pilot training in the US, then put them in the right seat of an airliner right out of flight school with less than 250 hours in their logbook. THAT is the problem. All airline pilots need to be a CFI for a year before getting in the cockpit of an airliner. No one knows how to fly anymore. They let the computer do all of the flying.