How the Very First Airbus A320 Crashed at an Airshow
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Air France Flight 296Q was a chartered flight of a new Airbus A320-111 operated by Air France for Air Charter International. On 26 June 1988, the plane crashed while making a low pass over Mulhouse-Habsheim Airfield as part of the Habsheim Air Show. The cause of the crash has been the source of major controversy.
This was the first fatal crash of an Airbus A320.
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How the Very First A320 Crashed | Air France 296Q
The problem wasn't that the pilots reacted too late, but that they were 'reacting' to a situation at all, rather than controlling it. That they took such a risk with a plane full of passengers is scandalous, and tbh I wasn't expecting there to be so few fatalities after that fireball so they got off lightly
The fact that the pilots also did not ensure that everyone got out alive after an accident they caused just speaks to every stereotype of French cowardice.
Tell it to those who DID lose their lives, and their loved ones! 😢😢
Such a sad story. Incredible that the A320 went on to become the best-selling aircraft in the world despite this incident occurring at a critical stage of release. Just goes to prove what a good job Airbus did developing the plane.
The A320 is the best selling aircraft of all time? I had no idea! That’s DEFINITELY a testament to Airbus and their development and marketing of the aircraft type. Especially after an event such as this!
I think if that would happen today, with hundreds of cameras filming and making pictures that would then flooding social media, RUclips and so on, the type would just be doomed. Back then people might have seen the video on the news and probably forgotten about it a week later and never thought about it, when they would take their first flight in a A320 years later.
“Incredible that the A320 went on to become the best-selling aircraft in the world despite this incident occurring at a critical stage of release” which is exactly why the fdr cover-up is a viable theory.
@@AzovAzza This event only happened because of criminally acting pilots!
You can destroy every aircraft if you fly it braking the rules.
@@pmfx65 plane is European junk
During the investigation they reportedly tested to see what would happen if the aircraft was a 737 with no computer overides. The flew the 737 on the same path and same angle of attack and speed as the A320 and then increased to TOGA thrust and pitched up when the AF pilots did, the result was a stall and the plane crashed before the trees
interesting, so much for pinning it on Airbus
I can imagine. Makes sense, aerodynamically!
I was going to ask if hitting TOGA could have made a difference, but I ended up looking it up in the report directly, and of course they did try that. The report says that the plane was just too slow for the engines to ramp up to TOGA thrust in time to escape the obstacles: "the engines, at flight idle when go-around was initiated, could not instantly supply high thrust due to their inertia". They also mention how much thrust they eventually achieved, but much too late: "The engine speeds increased at least up to 91% (last value obtained by spectral analysis of the sound track of the video recording of the accident) but, at that time, the rear section of the fuselage had already hit the trees, creating additional drag which prevented the
aircraft from gaining height". They had no time: "first contact with the trees was made 5 seconds after initiating go-around".
Don’t the two aircraft have different aerodynamics and lift properties?
@@vociferon-heraldofthewinte7763 I don’t think enough of a difference to affect the result too much. I can’t remember the exact details of the simulator test and can no longer find it but I would presume they would take the aircraft differences into account.
Never gave much thought to the meaning of your channel logo (orange background with two white stripes) until… 10:15.
precisely ;)
@@AirspaceVideos
Wow!
So it’s because of what the flight recorders look like?
I never understood the justification behind flights like this. This is something you do when you are bored in MS Flight Simulator..
Italian naval captains and French pilots: avoid at all costs if you value your life.
I think that stunts like this should have been practiced before allowing passengers onboard.
After this accident it was legislated that flights like this could no longer take passengers
true
Exactly my thoughts
@@hayleyxyz
That’s good to know!
Why were they were passengers at all, if it’s an airshow?
That bothered me a lot. 🥴🥺
I can’t imagine what they were thinking. It’s impressive that the aircraft recovered from this. And it’s good so many survived…it doesn’t look all that survivable from the footage.
Agreed - Seeing that fireball I originally thought there would be no survivors. Haunting.
I agree. I'm getting bored by people coming up with conspiracies based on blurry photos trying to find alternative explanations for situations where it's so obvious that poor decisions have been made, regardless of the outcome. I also remember seeing this footage as a child and finding it hard to believe people survived this.
"Too low, too slow, and too steep of an angle". --- Good luck recovering from that combination. ---
If the situation doesn't match the plan, go around. The crowd would have doubtless loved to see two successful passes over the field.
So, to make this maneuver successful, they had to go faster and not descend so low?
Or is it that this maneuver was impossible at all in a 320? 🤔🤔
please explain for a layperson here.
Maybe it's not a good idea to try doing "stunt flying" in passenger planes not designed for it?🤔
Especially with unwitting passengers.
New plane without much flight time on it-big hole in the cheese.
Trying to do a stunt in an airliner at low altitude-another big hole.
Not calling the stunt off when situations had changed-holes, holes everywhere.
Trying the stunt at all with little information on the target airfield-this is more hole than cheese.
Any one of the above situations should have made it unconscionable to carry passengers on this flight. I am not a pilot, but I have enough common sense that when handed facts like this, it's reasonably obvious that the person making decisions for that flight was making poor ones.
Also, doing a stunt with passengers on board.
@@MrNicoJac That doesn't affect the cheese model, though. That's just an absolutely terrible idea.
@@ConstantlyDamaged
Ohh, that's how you meant it.
Totally correct!
Sorry, I misinterpreted your intent :)
@@MrNicoJac It's all good.
Every time I hear of this event I think "the woman" who gave her life trying to save two children deserves more recognition.
IMO ALLEGEDLY
Honestly, I would rather have God or a higher power to make that determination of harshly judging the woman's actions. I know many people on RUclips have tried to discount this woman as a hero and simply try to justify without evidence that she was just trying to save her job (to avoid scrutiny by the public). HOWEVER, most would be grifters who want to psychoanalysis a situation for attention. It's a very sad story, and despite how many try to spin this story for their own benefit, 3 human beings were lost tragically. Respect the dead and let God, etc, judge that woman.
Excellent production, thankyou. Like others here, I knew of the incident but never imagined the controversy and unconscionable conduct of the crew, so very sad indeed given those who perished.
I remember watching this video on Mentour Pilot. It's really a sad incident, and the fact that this really ended the market for stunts with passengers on board. In my eyes, it's the turn for commercial planes to just be for flying, aside from some airshows with empty cabins. What the woman did in an attempt to save the children trapped is truly heroic. It's a miracle that such an amount of people survived, it's controlled flight into terrain, you don't expect people to survive from that. The engines were certified for a 5 second spool up from idle to TO/GA. I don't believe what the flight crew did was intentional, it was new technology, and what they were doing is risky. For the ending, well, I do believe that the images hold some credit, but it's stuff from the 1980s, it is what it is. Even if they successfully covered it up, the most important point is that they would learn from it. I'm shifted more towards the final conclusion, but it's also a little mixed.
I am normally inclined towards the pilot side of stories, for I know all too well how easy it is to mislead yourself into a bad situation and not realize it. But a new plane, being deliberately showboated around, with very little flight history, and with a full cabin of passengers onboard? There's no way to overlook this. This is negligence, pure and simple, and if each and every claim made by the captain after the event (and they most assuredly are not) were taken as 100% accurate, it would still be an unprofessional display and a sign that this captain does not belong in the cockpit of a passenger aircraft.
Thanks Airspace, always interesting.
You should watch the Flight Crash Investigation episode on this. Some of the pilots arguments were legit. The timetable on the french investigation report conclusion used time obtained from ATC. Compared to the planes flight data recorder it was offset by 4(!) seconds. This suggests that the engines had enough time to spool, but the plane was in 'landing mode' as it was so close to the ground, which resulted in the pilots not actually getting the commanded thrust (computer override). They did a test on this and proved it as well. The court rejected it nevertheless. Would have been in the French courts interest to sweep it under the rug too :P
Of course there were major bad judgements on the behalf of the pilot as well.
Airbus published a 38 page document about the flight data recorder and why the claims were false. It can still be viewed now
@@tomstravels520 So why did Airbus re-write the control algorithm after this crash?
@@vociferon-heraldofthewinte7763 I don’t think they did. The pilots had intentionally turned off the alpha floor protection. It used to be 30 seconds now I think it’s 15 seconds is the only difference. It is still inhibited below 100ft
Absolute gibberish. You don’t have a clue what you’re in about.
Tell me you don't directly quote Captain Asseline's comments from the television series Mayday/Air crash investigation without telling me 😂😂
The airplane did exactly what is what told to do.
The engine do, at all times, respond to thrust lever inputs.
The moment he pushed them into the TO/GA detent the engines started to accelerate.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the "landing mode" as it was called in the television series.
The moment they are pushed into that position you are signaling the computer you want full power. And the computer will spool up the engines to that power regardless of altitude 🤷🏻♂️
Because According to your logic a normal go around would be otherwise always impossible in an Airbus aircraft when it is low to the ground.
Yet they were and are thousands of A320's doing go-arounds at very low altitude. Sometimes just inches from the runway surface.
And the computer always respondes.
This theory is only pushed by the Captain himself (in self defense for his reckless actions) and by Boeing-Fans to discredit Airbus.
He just flew too slow, too low and he applied full power way to late to avoid the Forest.
The FDR, as well as the video cleary proof that he was WAY lower than 100 ft !!
Which was the altitude he himself decided to maintain. Yet he didn't maintain that attitude even though the instruments as well as the radio altimeter callouts told him the correct altitude!
He wanted to show off to the two FEMALE flight attendants that were sitting on the two jumpseats behind him and the first officer in the flight deck.
That's what he really did
---> Showing off !
A pilot with just ~140 hours on the type doing such a maneuver is more than just reckless !
To fake the recorder data is simply impossible in the time available. The fakers would have to generate a complete flight record that matched exactly external data such as ADSB , and then know what data to alter to make airbus company look good.
Great video. I hope you keep uploading more frequently!
You really nailed the visual representation on this video!
thank you!
I've seen this clip many times but never understood what actually happened, thanks for the upload!
Interesting. I do remember seeing the crash on TV, it was big headline news in France back then. Good to see a more dispassionate, better informed account years later, putting the emphasis on the flight's lack of preparation and proper briefing. I'm especially baffled to hear that an experienced pair of pilots simply accepted a last second change on unfamiliar terrain and ignored the regulations for minimal flight attitude at an air show (50m for a plane according to currently available DGAC documentation, anything below is for drones or helicopters). How could a professional accept that, knowing there are passengers on board?
There was indeed quite a bit of controversy surrounding the investigation then. Both Airbus and Air France did have something of a reputation of blaming everything on pilot error to cover up maintenance issues or cut corners. I don't know if it was deserved or not, that's just how it was then due to pilots' union narrative and both companies' reluctance to communicate in a open, transparent manner. Which was the style at the time, admittedly.
After seeing quite a few videos on Airspace and other similar channels, I tend to believe the official version. It would appear that the plane's on-board logic behaved as intended, but could not handle unsafe pilot behaviour.
That I recall, the two main points of conspiracy claims are:
- the flight recorder was swapped out.
- it as swapped out to hide a delay in the engines spooling up, this conspiracy claim supposedly bore out by comparing the cockpit transcript with the ATC transcript.
The claim becomes ‘the plane crashed because the engines did not respond timely’.
On the other hand…
…Altitude above you, runway behind you, and airspeed you don’t have can’t help you.
End of the day, the pilot needs to stay ahead of the plane, and this pilot wound up behind it. Whatever defects the plane might or might not have had, he put himself into a situation that offered few options to exit it, and stayed there until it was too late. Conspiracy or not, he screwed up.
final footnote: When the pilot pulled back on the stick the plane actually nosed down, in order to avoid stalling at it’s slow speed - moving the plane closer to disaster. When disaster is looming at you, the perception of time often is altered - that altered perception might explain the claim that the engines were slow to spin up.
The conspiracy claims don't hold water when one looks into it thoroughly, however. The main issue is that at no point was it ever claimed that the "pristine" flight recorder boxes shown in the controversial photograph were the boxes retrieved from the aircraft. It's entirely possible that those boxes were brought to the scene to show the Gendarmerie what they were looking for.
The discrepancy in the transcripts apparently came down to an error on the part of the independent investigator tasked with checking. He used the radio transmit event to attempt to sync things up, but because he was new to the A320's systems he mistook pressing the RT button for releasing it (The A320's DFDR logs both events).
"Altitude above you, runway behind you and air speed you don't have" deserves to be a comment all of its own.
I thought it was the pilots claiming it wasn't their fault
Pitching down when the pilot wanted to Pitch up certainly did not moved it closer to disaster.... the airspeed at this moment was around 120kn , with a quite high angle of attack,and the tail already striked some treetops.
so the plane basically saved itself otherwise if it had actually stalled the landing could ve been much tougher.
Glad to hear that the sentencing of the captain was increased after he appealed. Killing three people and then being unable to accept a small slap on the wrist by spending 6 months in a French prison is pretty crazy.
Even if the aircraft was partly at fault, the pilot still deserves all of the blame for flying the plane in a situation it was never designed for with 136 souls on board.
Unbelievable arrogance and lack.of common sense with that level of experience...
I agree with your assessment. I doubt that there was any dishonesty on the part of Airbus. Doing this with passengers on board was very poor judgment, IMO.
Indeed, but it was commonplace back then. Good thing that carrying passengers on demo flights is banned these days.
@@AirspaceVideos Absolutely!
@@AirspaceVideos I'm reminded of Air New Zealand Flight 901. Have you covered that one?
I haven't yet!
@@AirspaceVideos I look forward to it.
The best plane demonstration ever. I'll take 300 units please
What do you expect? Incompetent pilots.
Thanks for explaining so clearly , great video as always.
Alot of things went wrong that day
Both on tbe pilots and plane. Not to mention the french authority to mess with the case for their company interests
Nothing whatsoever went wrong with the plane. You’re misinformed.
Why were there passengers in the plane?
Because that was allowed back then. It isn't anymore for obvious reasons!
It happened to be a very controversial flight in that most of the passengers won their tickets by a raffle organised by local businesses, including several children, so many of them had never been on an aircraft before in their lifetime. Of the 130 pax, Among the many first time flyers included. The passengers included journalists, first-time flyers, and several children, one of whom was quadriplegic. They were joined at Mulhouse and assisted by a standard company of four flight attendants, bringing the total number of occupants to 136. I have seen Captain Michel Asseline a few times on TV documentaries at that time, 1988, as I was based in CDG for a few seasons. Asseline had picked the aircraft up from the factory two days earlier, and it had accumulated just 22 flight hours. Asseline, a former air force pilot, was keen to demonstrate its capabilities. He held a high level position at Air France in charge of introducing the A320 to its fleet, and he was impressed with its performance. That is why he had even been making frequent appearances on TV and in the newspapers to promote the plane. So it was just a coincident in my opinion that the aircraft was so full of people that day. But I'm not French, so I could be wrong.
‘Rules are written in blood’
Sad, but depressingly true.
When I first heard of this story, I thought that maybe Airbus had tampered with them FDRs, however, many years older and wiser now, I think it likely that the pilots, unfamiliar with the aircraft, and full of adrenaline, simply overestimated how quickly the engines should respond. A horrible wasteful accident which was completely unnecessary.
@Musiker The pilots were not unfamiliar with the aircraft. The Captain had 138 flying hours on the A320 and the First Officer had 44 flying hours on it. Hardly unfamiliar. Both were very experienced pilots both having over 10,000 flying hours each. Not ignoring the fact they were to blame for the crash.
20 years in prison would have been more appropriate, 3 lives gone due to incompetence and neglect.
I like the way you describe. Very sad about the incident, but most of them surviving is really a wonder! Great video!!
Had it been a landing on 34R, it would have been an unstable approach and a go around should / would have been called. The fact the crew were thinking the demo was to happen on runway 02, then finding out it’s 34R and not going around or even adjusting altitude to 100 ft instead of 30 ft, I think was because their mindset was “put on a show”. Perhaps even some target fixation type “tunnel vision”(?) So, they went ahead flying unstable and too low and slow which led to catastrophe. Crew clearly to blame. There is a saying in law “the facts speak for themselves”. The A320 ends up as a fireball & total wreck and was in perfect working order. The crash was therefore directly as a result of the crew’s (mainly the captain’s) poor decisions and mistakes.
As we usually learn when it comes to an accident, more than one thing has to go wrong, but I think that mechanical and human factors played a role. The thing about humans is that we factor in what we can do but don't always allow for enough error in case our machinery malfunctions. Regulations are supposed to help us mitigate that additional risk but we are all more prone to assume that a reasonable person would have been able to create a better outcome. It's always easier to blame the person since we all know people are fallible and, as such, there will always been things the person could have done, but mechanical things do always come into play. Something has to start going wrong or at least confuse the pilots because otherwise it would be a normal flight from point A to point B.
So, to make this maneuver successful, they had to go faster and not descend so low?
Or is it that this maneuver was impossible at all in a 320?
🤔🤔
It sounds like they were relying the aircraft’s automated fly by wire to take over the unstable landing. It’s apparent this didn’t work, the pilots failed to take control at critical phase of flight.
Captain appeals 6 month sentence...OK, have 10 months then!
Poor trees... 😭
Why were they were passengers at all, if it’s an airshow?
That makes no sense and bothered me a lot. 🥴🥺
so interesting that this plane was unmanned and flown by a computer. i just showed my grandchildren this video, then dug out one of my old remote control planes and let them play with the rc. they thought they were real uav operators
Pilots were playing with people's lives. 🤬🤬🤬
I thought it was an air show. I didn’t know they had passengers onboard. That was horrible.😮
By the way, what conspiracy theories is the captain refering to? I difn't spot any.
Deliberate unnecessary risky maneuvers in an unfamiliar airport environment is a mortal sin of a pilot.
0:01, in this buisness we call that foreshadowing
Wow, that captain seems like a jerk
Yep. And it didn't help that his last name was Asseline
@@jeffreycharlton335 well that is where he put it that day!
Two children trapped in their seat and only one person tried to help them! 😢
She's a hero in my eyes, yet many people on RUclips are utterly sick in the head thinking that this woman wasn't a hero for trying to save these two children. They are a bunch of psychoanalysis grifters who want attention for their gaslighting of a horrible tragedy.
They changed runways.
The incident was caused by that.
They didn't know the trees were there.
They failed to brief and then failed to action what little they had planned.
I wouldn't retract any statement I've ever made.
But... as for this episode... I've never wanted to be a pilot, and I'm not in the captain's skin, so I leave the retractions for them pilots!
Yes, pilots to blame. Next…
I agree with your assessment
French Authorities would never do anything to protect a company in which they have a majority share. Oh no. And fly-by wire systems never do anything wrong (like retarding the engines despite pilot input). Oh no. And the gaps in the records of the boxes' data - nothing to see here.
Anyone for a Max ?
The FBW performed as designed. You’ve completely misunderstood what happened. The engines were at low power because the pilots put them at low power.
Not enuff spool bruz
wow i didn't think this is the issue when a plane crashes, this is so sad just 2 little ones and a woman died
this maneuver is called Alpha-max ig as shown in the documentary pilot vs plane.
unmanned
imagine their parent's situation....
It looks to me as if the plane thought it was in landing mode.
There’s no such thing. But in many ways, yes, the pilot’s set the aircraft up for a landing. And it landed exactly where they aimed.
@@hepphepps8356 , the A340 I fly goes into landing mode when I first set it up in approach mode and the plane gets to within 400 feet of the ground.
You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.
It only looks like that if you don’t know what you’re taking about.
This event is the reason I have never and will never fly on any aircraft designed and built by Airbus.
You must have misunderstood the core message here - the aircraft was not to blame, the pilot was.
By the way, if the same thing had been attempted in a 737, it would have stalled and crashed when the pilots pulled it past alpha max when trying to go around.
So by that logic you’d not fly any aircraft by a manufacturer that crashed due to pilot incompetence. Pretty sure that includes Boeing on that list
@@AirspaceVideos Having been a senior level IT programmer/analyst across a 35+ year career, I can say with some authority that I am not alone among the professionals in my field that feel that Airbus' fly by wire hardware and software systems have always ridden the edge to this day between predictable and unpredictable behavior. Boeing's resistance to such levels of automation and detachment from a pilot's abilities is appreciated by many in the IT field because it speaks to the risks that Airbus decided to take.
that might well be true, but it is an incomplete risk assessment. Would you rather fly on a plane that has automation that can be overridden or a plane manufactured by a corrupt company that decided to cut corners and throw decades of aeronautic wisdom in the wind just for profit's sake?
@@BrokebackBob and yet there have been several accident that wouldn’t happen on an Airbus due to the self awareness of the computers and the protection limits. And yet if the computer does do something it shouldn’t (like QF72) the pilots CAN override by forcing it into Altn Law to disable the protections
Airbus did completely re-write the Alpha-floor protection algorithm, partly as a result of this accident.
Yes if there was no fault of the aircraft’s control systems, why was the algorithm re-written?
The only change that has been made since is you used to have to disable alpha floor by holding the disconnect button for 30 seconds, now it’s 15. It’s still disabled automatically below 100ft
They didn’t change it.
Its appalling that two vulnerable children (and a person attempting to rescue them) died. Escape procedures need to be accessible to all, or else its just ableist. A seatbelt should never be a death trap.
👍✈✈👍
Was there any survivors
Most of the people survived , apart from 3-5 people
WTFV 😡
No.
yeah the pilot died and they sentenced his dead body
It crashed mainly because the aircraft didn't let the pilots to pitch more than 15 degree due to slow speed even though the pilots applied max toga 6 seconds before in contact with trees.
Well yes, but keep in mind that these protections dont come out of nowhere. If you decrease the speed below Alpha Max on a 737, you'll just stall
That limitation is actually what would make the A320 most likely to recover from that situation out of aircraft of similar size and thrust-to-weight ratio (such as the 737). The angle of attack on the A320 is limited to the angle of attack where the wings generate maximum lift, known as the critical angle of attack. Increasing the angle of attack further will only decrease lift, while at the same time causing a substantial increase in drag. This is known as an aerodynamic stall. A human is significantly less precise than a computer, so for a human to command maximum lift from the wings without stalling the aircraft, they must fly the plane at an angle of attack which is quite a bit less than the critical to do so safely, which means that the wings won't generate as much lift as they could. In the A320, because the computer is what is limiting the angle of attack, that limit can be set much closer to the critical without putting the aircraft in danger of stalling because the computer can maintain that value with much more precision than any human ever could. This means that the lift generated by the wings is much closer to the maximum lift which results in improved climb performance
yes sir!
@@ogaibo1316 It crashed because the captain was an over confident risk taker idiot, (along with all the other holes in the Swiss cheese model). Take away the 2 pilots from the chain of errors and most likely, that accident doesn't happen. or at least they should have gone down beforehand and practiced the detail. I believe, from my French colleagues, that Captain is still trying in the courts, to claim he was in the right. Okay, regarding prison and fines, with the punishments, he got the longest end of the stick, while some got nothing, but he's fighting a lost cause.
It would have crashed sooner had the pilots been able to pitch up more, lol. Increasing the AOA further would have caused a stall, dooming the plane.
Aircraft don't fly straight where the nose is pointed, especially not at lower thrust settings. Increasing AOA only improves lift to a point.
On the F-GFKC, the registration number of the aircraft damaged, there were no "winglets". The Airbus shown on your video is not a A320 ! It's an A318 not exactly represented...
Go and find an A320-100 which has no wing tip fences or sharklets for MSFS2020 and let me know when you find one. Also an A318 is much shorter and only has 1 overwing door. This aircraft in the Sim is an A320Neo
As Stated at the beginning of the video
Relax lol, it's an illustrative video
A320 neo mate not an a318, there isn't the exact same model as fkc
@@tomstravels520 should use Fenix A320, it still have fences but much closer to the real aircraft compared to NEO.
Didn't understand why the planned manoeuvre didn't work in reality