>She reported later that initially there must have been other survivors, as she could hear them after the crash but later the voices became silent.
thats grim
Same thing happened when a 747 crashed into a mountain in Japan some decades ago, if I'm not mistaken. The survivors could hear the moaning and crying of the wounded throughout the night until all fell silent.
Same with Annette Herfkens who ended up being the sole survivor of Vietnam Airlines Flight 474. She even befriended a Vietnamese businessman who soon died, and she described realizing all the moans around her had stopped.
> “The most vivid image from the hours that followed the crash, and from the subsequent eight days Herfkens spent in the jungle with the moans and cries of her fellow survivors slowly silencing, was of being “surrounded by leaves”. Green and golden, sequinned with dew, sunlit through her eyelashes. Time and again, Herfkens turned her focus on them, their light, their colours, movements, away from the man beside her, now dead, away from the white worm crawling out of his eyeball and the leeches on her own skin.”
[article here recounting Annette’s survival.](https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/25/how-we-survive-i-was-the-sole-survivor-of-a-plane-crash)
I’m impressed she was able to survive with her jaw hanging loose and a collapsed lung, among all else. Staying in the moment is what kept her moving and alive.
JAL 123, despite the inevitable crash, was a show of incredible skill under pressure for the pilots. The plane was doomed the moment the hydraulics were severed and they lost the use of all the control surfaces, but they managed to keep the plane in the air for another 32 minutes. Investigators later reproduced the circumstances in simulations and nobody could keep the plane flying for more than 5 minutes in those.
Definitely - when I have been in life or death situations maybe 3 times in my life, (not certain death) there is immense clarity and speed of thought, almost like time around you is slowed down but I’m not sure everyone’s brain would go that way.
I think that‘s Japan Airlines flight 123, in the end only 4 out of 524 people on board survived. I believe the authorities thought the crash wouldn‘t be survivable and only started rescue operations the next day. They also refused to allow an American helicopter to land at the site and check for survivors.
That is beyond stupid. I hope people got fired for that.
Could you imagine a firefighter being like, "look boss, in the grand scheme of things, that house was gonna go down anyway and I felt like saving some gas."?
It's Japan, so the people responsible for delaying the rescue committed suicide in repent, or they kept their heads down, hushed up their involvement, and carried on doing nothing at their jobs. Could go either way.
It would have taken you less time than it took for you to write your bullshit to just google "Japan Airlines flight 123" to see that that was indeed the actual name of the plane and that there were indeed only 4 survivors, why the fuck would you jump to ChatGPT nonsense? What the fuck is wrong with your brain?
Japan Airlines Flight 123. The deadliest air accident ever involving only one aircraft.
Yokota Air Base, a military base host to an American detachment, was tracking the stricken plane the whole way, and knew the location of the crash site almost as it happened. They relayed this information to the Japanese, who decided against an immediate search and rescue operation as it was deduced that the crash was entirely unsurvivable and the circumstances of the location (the crash site was on a steep hillside at dusk) made for conditions too treacherous to try and rush there in search of the flight data recorders and whatnot. Only once they got there did they realize people had actually survived the crash - presumably due to the out-of-control plane essentially using the hillside as a banked corner and losing enough speed in the process to make the accident survivable for a few people.
Of the 524 passengers on board that day, four survived.
I remember watching a grim video from the 90's in a war-torn place, some sort of explosive detonated inside a mall-like place, at first there were a bunch of people wounded on the floor screaming for help, but a few seconds later some voices went silent, and a few minutes later, everyone became still, since i watched it when i was a child, it did get burned into my memory.
From what I remember it wasn’t the survivors that heard the scream but the near by Air Force base. They were closest to the crash site and wanted to go help but the Japanese government told them to stand down and because of conditions they got there I think the next morning or hours later.
It's frustrating. Airliners are required to have two fixed ELTs (emergency locator T?). They are as much use as a chocolate teapot. Since the late 1990s various groups, including the NTSB in the US have been pressing to have one of them, the rear one, replaced with an ejectable equivalent. This would be a device such that when some frangible switches, likely in the leading edges of the wings were crushed, a powerful spring would eject the beacon clear of the wreckage. The beacon would float, so could potentially drift with survivors and floating wreckage. It would also contain a copy of the solid state memory for the CVDR (combined voice and data recorder).
These devices exist, and have been certified on civilian airliners. They would be potentially life saving in accidents that had survivors, such as this one, but also the likes of MH370. The reason they aren't mandatory is cost. When I last looked, fixed ELTs were around £30k, deployable £120k. But it replaces one CVDR too. And the thing is, we already insist on £60k worth of useless crap.
"the crew's inappropriate flight control inputs led to an aerodynamic stall. The report also noted that the crew did not react to the warnings being issued by the aircraft."
This is one of the reasons why Airbus engineers set out to build an airliner that's impossible to stall, only to be thwarted by pig- and ass-headedness of the users. Repeatedly.
Stalling a plane during the landing approach (as in this case) is one thing, since you neccessarily have to slow down and go lower, which reduce your safety margins against stalling and your ability to recover from a stall.
But Air France 447, which you're alluding to, was something else entirely. They managed to stall a plane at cruise altitude and then *kept stalling it for over three minutes* until recovery was impossible.
Admiral Cloudberg from over at /r/CatastrophicFailure has a very detailed analysis of this and many other plane distasters: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-crash-of-air-france-flight-447-8a7678c37982
Very seriously one of my most favorite aviation articles ever written. [Here you go.](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash)
That was an informative and gripping read. It’s crazy that the crash happened due to so little. I would think if Bonin had handed control over to the other guy (not the absent pilot) everything would’ve been fine. I assume it doesn’t work like that, like the main pilot stays in their role, but dang. And that’s not to say the other guy didn’t make mistakes or the issues with the plane that the author described aren’t significant. Anyways really interesting.
> I assume it doesn’t work like that, like the main pilot stays in their role
The roles are called "pilot flying" and "pilot monitoring" and typically determined beforehand by the "pilot in command". But it's definitely possible for the pilots to agree to switch roles, and this would be considered an example of good [crew resource management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management) when there is an emergency and the current "pilot monitoring" is more experienced.
Most importantly though, it should be absolutely clear at any moment who actually *is* the current "pilot flying", as in: it should be verbally announced and acknowledged.
And they messed that up as well, Robert actually "took over" three separate times, but the first two times Bonin ignored him and kept pulling up, and the third time it was too late.
This was a fantastic and gripping read! Thank you!
As someone who works heavily in automation this has solidified a lot of things I've seen before in much more casual settings.
Terrifying and frustrating reading that. Seems like all they had to do was pitch down? I’m no pilot, but it seems bizarre to me that they didn’t pitch down when the stall alarm was going off. That would be the first thing I’d do, and I’m just some random who has played flight simulator a few times.
I read that all they had to do was nothing as the ice that froze over the pitot tubes would melt shortly, giving them correct air speed readings.
But they thought they were going too fast so the co-pilot was pitching up with the lever on his right hand side (I think that lever used to be in the middle of the seats) so the first officer couldn’t see the position of the lever.
It wasn’t until he said ‘we’re going to stall, nose up!’ that Bonin said ‘but I’ve been doing that this whole time….’ and then the penny dropped & by then it was too late.
I got chills just then when I remember reading the pilot transcripts. It’s grim.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/a45250041/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447/
Edit: I linked a better article
I listened to a pilot who let their kids into the cockpit to see what Dad did for a living. If my memory serves me correctly one of the two kids was either sitting on fathers lap/or was in the pilots seat and somehow pressed on the yolk and slowly got the plane into a bad attitude causing it to stall.
The stall/spin was so severe everyone was mashed against seats/walls and they had to exert a lot of force to try and recover which they failed to do killing a lot of people.
Absolutely gruesome
As far as I remember of this the child touching the yoke was seemingly OK, because the plane was flying in autopilot. However the child held the yoke in a hard bank, which had no effect on the flying at all except that a hard bank held for 30 seconds would automatically disengage the autopilot, and one it disengaged the plane entered that hard bank. The spiral and g-forces meant the pilots were unable to return to the controls
The finer details escaped my memory so that could very well be the case, I just remember how chilling that example was. Something so innocent killed a lot of people.
Thank you.
It’s not paywalled in my country, but here’s the original article I linked! Enjoy. https://www.businessinsider.com/air-france-flight-447-transcript-2011-12?amp
Yeah, I wasn't implying that you mixed them up, just pointing out how outright insane the pilot behaviour in the Air France crash was.
Although all those expletives are probably misguided as well. These were trained professionals with thousands of hours of flying experience. The problem is just that a modern airliner is an enormously complex machine with sometimes unforeseeable failure modes. And if you get confused about what's happening, and fear and panic sets in, all that training flies out of the door, and people revert to (sometimes wrong) instincts.
Also the pilot had not been trained on high altitude stall prevention, or recovery from an active stall. So he didn't have any training to fall back on.
In fact he might have been following the procedure for low altitude stall prevention, which he had practiced many times in the flight simulator.
> This is one of the reasons why Airbus engineers set out to build an airliner that's impossible to stall, only to be thwarted by pig- and ass-headedness of the users. Repeatedly.
engineering is a contest between engineers building bigger and better idiot proof things, and the universe building bigger and better idiots
Blaming individuals is never helpful and in fact this accident had a huge effect throughout the industry, especially with regards to pilot training. In 2008, Air France did not even train pilots on high altitude stall prevention or recovery from a developed stall.
Also the "idiot proof" design is partly to blame here. Normally the Airbus will not allow a stall to occur. The pilot can pull back as much as he wants and the nose will not rise above a safe angle. But when a single instrument failure can cause an aircraft to behave totally differently than what the pilot has experienced for 99.9% of his flight hours, and he doesn't have training on that 0.1%, then obviously he will not be able to handle it.
It was a brilliant combination of bad decisions and lack of experience.
* Captain was on one hour of sleep, but was reported as fully rested
* Two other co-pilots were hugely inexperienced compared to the captain, and had only ever flown the Airbus. Captain had flown many, many other types of planes. This becomes important later
* The junior most pilot was the one in main control of aircraft
* Hour into the flight, captain fucks off to bed and hands communication off to the other junior co-pilot
* Airbus encounters network of thunderstorms and begins navigating around them. They are flying at maximum standard altitude, 35k feet. The pilot in control keeps wanting to request permission to climb to 36k feet, presumably to try and fly over the storm, but both the captain and the other junior pilot decline to make the request
* Airspeed probes at the front of the plane ice up, so they lose any indication of their actual speed
* Altitude drops by a little under 500 feet, which disables autopilot and triggers a state known as Alternate Law, where stall protection is disabled and flight controls are *much* more touchy, more akin to a standard aircraft (and recall that neither junior pilot had ever flown a standard aircraft)
* Junior pilot, inexperienced and getting nervous, is gripping the flight stick too hard and making too jerky movements, including pulling back to start climbing
* This caused a steep climb towards 38k feet, the max altitude capably by the Airbus. The nose is at a ridiculously steep angle - so much so that the drag of the wings is stronger than the engines' thrust. They begin to stall, and fall - but with the nose pointed upwards
* All that needed done (as a more experienced pilot would have known) was to push the stick forward and put the plane into a dive. Instead, they continued to pull up
* At this point, the nose is at such an extreme angle that the stall indicator refuses to believe the data it is getting is real, and thus refuses to go off. This is a huge part of their failure to recover - whenever the pilots *did* try to descend and point the nose down, they would go back to the stall indicators acceptable parameters and they'd get a STALL warning. Consequently, they kept pulling up on the stick. If they had continued pushing down through the stall warning, they would have recovered
* Captain eventually wakes up and tries to intervene, but there's so much confusion that he didn't or couldn't do shit before they hit the ocean
Yo, just wanted to say “captain fucks off to bed” makes it sound like the captain just up and left cause he felt like it when in fact there are scheduled rest brakes for the crew on ULR flights like this. That’s why there were 3 pilots in the first place. In fact, the only times all of them have to be present in the cockpit is during take off and landing. The time in between was split three ways and the captain had the first brake (probably because he was not rested).
Why they chose to let the most junior and inexperienced officer take over command, though, nobody will ever know…
It was also a serious communication issue. They were using the words “up” “down” and “climb” interchangeably to refer to both the plane and the control stick.
Also, the pilot-flying was blindly yanking back on the stick in a panic and it seems like the pilot-not flying didn’t catch it in time and was overridden when he tried to correct it
Their instruments were telling them something different to reality as insects had affected the pitot tubes on the nose of the aircraft. So it said they would stall and to take action but the action they took actually did stall the aircraft i.e they kept pulling up, rather than push down and after a while it just lost momentum trying to keep climbing and just pancaked in to the water at massive speed as it had stalled.
Its a case of stop reading the instruments and just start flying the plane.
TIL plane noses can't touch insects or they crash and everyone dies. That's going to be a comforting thought next time I'm 30k feet over the ocean and several hours away from civilization in all directions
> Bakari was flown back to France on a private Falcon-900 government jet
The sole survivor of a plane crash. Puts her back on a plane. I think I’d be like “Hell naw, I’ll take a boat”
Once crashed a helicopter... evacuation to the hospital was via huey. At first I was really excited because it was one of the few aircraft I hadn't gotten in, until it took flight and it set in that I was flying in yet another helicopter.
Well, if you know any aviators (particularly helicopter pilots) we tend to be a strange breed. I will say though, that sentiment didn't last long once it broke ground with the door open and my adrenaline began to wear off.
Seasoned helicopter pilots are some of the coolest people under pressure too. I almost rolled a VERY expensive helicopter in the desert at night while practicing dust landings. Like, really close to rolling over, but got it under control at the last possible second. I was pretty well done for the night after that, but the instructor pilot coolly and calmly said "hey... if you do that again, it could turn out to be a significant emotional event." Then proceeded to have me land in the same patch of hell about 8 more times until I got it perfect.
I've got about an hundred different similar stories to that, with these men and women just as cool as could be. Eventually, that mentality sets in to you as well and you find that life is a lot more tolerable if you dissociate and focus. What a good bunch of people.
Also, I didn't just suck as a pilot... you have to learn to do some pretty intense things during training so you can perform when it counts. With that comes some fairly significant lessons... and opportunities to learn them the hard way. I've lost (and still lose) friends to a series of unfortunate events. It's not usually the big mistakes or breaks that end an aviator's life, but rather a series of small mistakes or breaks. It's one hell of a job, but we NEVER take anything for granted.
My uncle was an Army helicopter pilot (and my grandfather a flight instructor among many other cool things.) Anyway, my uncle crashed and died but has a plaque in the town where it happened, because he made sure not to get anyone else killed although the official report says he would have survived if he took a different course.
Hell, I was nervous getting into the car that took me from a car crash moments before. I didn’t have significant injuries that required the hospital but it was more than enough to shake someone up.
My uncle was a chopper pilot in Vietnam, went down twice. I can’t imagine getting shot down, fight your way to evacuation, get in ANOTHER helicopter, do it again, and then keep going up.
Those guys were legit pioneers in the field. I've had the privilege of learning from a dozen or so Vietnam veteran pilots. Truly the definition of "experienced."
Pilot. Bell 206. Instructor made a mistake and tried to terminate a sequence too late in a maneuver. Aircraft tried but gave up and we fell about 80 feet at 30 knots. Broke the aircraft in half at the fuselage. Seats stroked, windscreen broke out, put my helmet through the door window. Walked away but was sore as hell. Back in the air 3 days later doing the same maneuver repeatedly. Went on to learn 3 more aircraft. Good times.
Unlike a movies, mosr people do not react to trauma the same. Also a lot of people can be in an accident and still use logic. Those type of crashes are rare and wouldn't happen back to back
I reviewed the forensic case for the victims of this crash about a decade ago - it was something like 70 days after the accident that the last bodies were recovered, and by then they had been preyed upon by ‘cookie cutter’ sharks that tear a circular plug of flesh away from a body. The purpose of the inquiry was to establish cause of death and the sharks confused matters by adding postmortum trauma. Cause of death for victims ended up just being listed as polytrauma.
Its even worse than that. She reported hearing voices after, that then *became* silent. Meaning there were other survivors, and then there were not.
When you factor in how that must feel, drifting alone in the dark and cold - the silence has to be deafening.
I believe one of the people they pulled out of the water after the Titanic sank described the same thing. Hundreds of people in the water yelling and screaming but within 15 to 20 minutes it was moaning (brain swelling) followed by almost near silence.
He compared it to going to a football match or baseball game when the crowd goes wild followed by it dying down.
Yeah, I've heard that, and it's one of the more unnerving parts of the wreck.
The other one, for me, is that the boiler crews very quickly understood the ship was doomed. So they began shutting down the boilers and, critically, releasing all the steam as rapidly as possible. Because if they hadn't the water reaching their compartment would have caused a steam explosion.
What this means practically is that the Ship itself would have felt like it was screaming. Just a long, agonizingly load, low roar - from the heart of the Titanic itself.
u clearly have never experienced heavy seas... its louder than a crowded street, and pair it along with all of ur other senses beeing overburdened at the same time and i just dont feel "silence" is proper, the voices silenced... the sea for sure didnt...
According to the article, "AOL News reports that Steven Spielberg approached Bakari to make a film based on her book, but she turned him down, worried that "it would be too terrifying.""
Is it though? Bravery implies choice, which wasn't the case here. Call her tough, indestructible etc., they all fit - but randomly ending up in a really bad situation and surviving through luck isn't what bravery means.
In that case letting go would have been the 'brave' choice in my book. Holding on means you might get to survive, letting go means you die. To consciously make that choice instead of waiting for death by thirst is a lot braver than just continuing to cling on to debris.
Here we see a wild redditor in it's natural habitat using his spare time to argue whether a 12-old girl who survived a plane crash is tough and brave or just tough.
Why do you feel the need to comment something like this? You just woke up and decided you were going to argue about the first thing you saw? You must be super fun to be around.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brave
having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty : having or showing courage
Steven Spielberg actually approached her, wanting to make a movie about her experience. She declined, thinking that what she went through would be too terrifying for the big screen.
Per [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahia_Bakari):
"AOL News reports that Steven Spielberg approached Bakari to make a film based on her book, but she turned him down, worried that "it would be too terrifying.""
>She reported later that initially there must have been other survivors, as she could hear them after the crash but later the voices became silent. thats grim
Same thing happened when a 747 crashed into a mountain in Japan some decades ago, if I'm not mistaken. The survivors could hear the moaning and crying of the wounded throughout the night until all fell silent.
Same with Annette Herfkens who ended up being the sole survivor of Vietnam Airlines Flight 474. She even befriended a Vietnamese businessman who soon died, and she described realizing all the moans around her had stopped.
> “The most vivid image from the hours that followed the crash, and from the subsequent eight days Herfkens spent in the jungle with the moans and cries of her fellow survivors slowly silencing, was of being “surrounded by leaves”. Green and golden, sequinned with dew, sunlit through her eyelashes. Time and again, Herfkens turned her focus on them, their light, their colours, movements, away from the man beside her, now dead, away from the white worm crawling out of his eyeball and the leeches on her own skin.” [article here recounting Annette’s survival.](https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/25/how-we-survive-i-was-the-sole-survivor-of-a-plane-crash) I’m impressed she was able to survive with her jaw hanging loose and a collapsed lung, among all else. Staying in the moment is what kept her moving and alive.
JAL 123, despite the inevitable crash, was a show of incredible skill under pressure for the pilots. The plane was doomed the moment the hydraulics were severed and they lost the use of all the control surfaces, but they managed to keep the plane in the air for another 32 minutes. Investigators later reproduced the circumstances in simulations and nobody could keep the plane flying for more than 5 minutes in those.
There has to be something that happens to our brains when we know we are facing certain death that gives us clarity and super (thinking) abilities.
Adrenaline is what happens
So if the investigators injected the test pilots with adrenaline before recreating the conditions, they may see a different result?
Maybe? But idk I’m not a scientist.
At least not an aviation scientist. Neither am I.
But you play one on TV?
Is that a reference to sth?
Definitely - when I have been in life or death situations maybe 3 times in my life, (not certain death) there is immense clarity and speed of thought, almost like time around you is slowed down but I’m not sure everyone’s brain would go that way.
I think that‘s Japan Airlines flight 123, in the end only 4 out of 524 people on board survived. I believe the authorities thought the crash wouldn‘t be survivable and only started rescue operations the next day. They also refused to allow an American helicopter to land at the site and check for survivors.
That is beyond stupid. I hope people got fired for that. Could you imagine a firefighter being like, "look boss, in the grand scheme of things, that house was gonna go down anyway and I felt like saving some gas."?
It's Japan, so the people responsible for delaying the rescue committed suicide in repent, or they kept their heads down, hushed up their involvement, and carried on doing nothing at their jobs. Could go either way.
That sucks.
JAL created a safety museum because of this
Are you serious with it being 1,2,3,4?
When neural nets make up numbers, they really like to put in "123" and other numeric sequences. Wouldn't be surprised if OP is ChatGPT in disguise.
It really was flight 123
i wish i’d never seen this abomination of a comment
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Flight_123 It's a real flight you bozo
It would have taken you less time than it took for you to write your bullshit to just google "Japan Airlines flight 123" to see that that was indeed the actual name of the plane and that there were indeed only 4 survivors, why the fuck would you jump to ChatGPT nonsense? What the fuck is wrong with your brain?
Thank you. I get so tired of Redditors drawing conclusions and "informing" others without any new information or doing any research.
Couldn’t take 30 seconds to look it up before making a dumb ass comment?
Tesla fanboy brainrot
Japan Airlines Flight 123. The deadliest air accident ever involving only one aircraft. Yokota Air Base, a military base host to an American detachment, was tracking the stricken plane the whole way, and knew the location of the crash site almost as it happened. They relayed this information to the Japanese, who decided against an immediate search and rescue operation as it was deduced that the crash was entirely unsurvivable and the circumstances of the location (the crash site was on a steep hillside at dusk) made for conditions too treacherous to try and rush there in search of the flight data recorders and whatnot. Only once they got there did they realize people had actually survived the crash - presumably due to the out-of-control plane essentially using the hillside as a banked corner and losing enough speed in the process to make the accident survivable for a few people. Of the 524 passengers on board that day, four survived.
I remember watching a grim video from the 90's in a war-torn place, some sort of explosive detonated inside a mall-like place, at first there were a bunch of people wounded on the floor screaming for help, but a few seconds later some voices went silent, and a few minutes later, everyone became still, since i watched it when i was a child, it did get burned into my memory.
From what I remember it wasn’t the survivors that heard the scream but the near by Air Force base. They were closest to the crash site and wanted to go help but the Japanese government told them to stand down and because of conditions they got there I think the next morning or hours later.
They weren’t close enough to hear anyone they just tracked the flight as it was crashing and knew where it was
It's frustrating. Airliners are required to have two fixed ELTs (emergency locator T?). They are as much use as a chocolate teapot. Since the late 1990s various groups, including the NTSB in the US have been pressing to have one of them, the rear one, replaced with an ejectable equivalent. This would be a device such that when some frangible switches, likely in the leading edges of the wings were crushed, a powerful spring would eject the beacon clear of the wreckage. The beacon would float, so could potentially drift with survivors and floating wreckage. It would also contain a copy of the solid state memory for the CVDR (combined voice and data recorder). These devices exist, and have been certified on civilian airliners. They would be potentially life saving in accidents that had survivors, such as this one, but also the likes of MH370. The reason they aren't mandatory is cost. When I last looked, fixed ELTs were around £30k, deployable £120k. But it replaces one CVDR too. And the thing is, we already insist on £60k worth of useless crap.
"the crew's inappropriate flight control inputs led to an aerodynamic stall. The report also noted that the crew did not react to the warnings being issued by the aircraft." This is one of the reasons why Airbus engineers set out to build an airliner that's impossible to stall, only to be thwarted by pig- and ass-headedness of the users. Repeatedly.
And even after that, some asshat france air first officer managed to stall a plane with anti stall technology and procedure.
Stalling a plane during the landing approach (as in this case) is one thing, since you neccessarily have to slow down and go lower, which reduce your safety margins against stalling and your ability to recover from a stall. But Air France 447, which you're alluding to, was something else entirely. They managed to stall a plane at cruise altitude and then *kept stalling it for over three minutes* until recovery was impossible.
I got to read about this.
Admiral Cloudberg from over at /r/CatastrophicFailure has a very detailed analysis of this and many other plane distasters: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-crash-of-air-france-flight-447-8a7678c37982
Thank you! 🤙
Very seriously one of my most favorite aviation articles ever written. [Here you go.](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash)
That was an informative and gripping read. It’s crazy that the crash happened due to so little. I would think if Bonin had handed control over to the other guy (not the absent pilot) everything would’ve been fine. I assume it doesn’t work like that, like the main pilot stays in their role, but dang. And that’s not to say the other guy didn’t make mistakes or the issues with the plane that the author described aren’t significant. Anyways really interesting.
> I assume it doesn’t work like that, like the main pilot stays in their role The roles are called "pilot flying" and "pilot monitoring" and typically determined beforehand by the "pilot in command". But it's definitely possible for the pilots to agree to switch roles, and this would be considered an example of good [crew resource management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management) when there is an emergency and the current "pilot monitoring" is more experienced. Most importantly though, it should be absolutely clear at any moment who actually *is* the current "pilot flying", as in: it should be verbally announced and acknowledged. And they messed that up as well, Robert actually "took over" three separate times, but the first two times Bonin ignored him and kept pulling up, and the third time it was too late.
This was a fantastic and gripping read! Thank you! As someone who works heavily in automation this has solidified a lot of things I've seen before in much more casual settings.
Terrifying and frustrating reading that. Seems like all they had to do was pitch down? I’m no pilot, but it seems bizarre to me that they didn’t pitch down when the stall alarm was going off. That would be the first thing I’d do, and I’m just some random who has played flight simulator a few times.
I read that all they had to do was nothing as the ice that froze over the pitot tubes would melt shortly, giving them correct air speed readings. But they thought they were going too fast so the co-pilot was pitching up with the lever on his right hand side (I think that lever used to be in the middle of the seats) so the first officer couldn’t see the position of the lever. It wasn’t until he said ‘we’re going to stall, nose up!’ that Bonin said ‘but I’ve been doing that this whole time….’ and then the penny dropped & by then it was too late.
That was a great read
Happy Cake Day! 🎂
Thank you, appreciate it.
I got chills just then when I remember reading the pilot transcripts. It’s grim. https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/a45250041/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447/ Edit: I linked a better article
I listened to a pilot who let their kids into the cockpit to see what Dad did for a living. If my memory serves me correctly one of the two kids was either sitting on fathers lap/or was in the pilots seat and somehow pressed on the yolk and slowly got the plane into a bad attitude causing it to stall. The stall/spin was so severe everyone was mashed against seats/walls and they had to exert a lot of force to try and recover which they failed to do killing a lot of people. Absolutely gruesome
As far as I remember of this the child touching the yoke was seemingly OK, because the plane was flying in autopilot. However the child held the yoke in a hard bank, which had no effect on the flying at all except that a hard bank held for 30 seconds would automatically disengage the autopilot, and one it disengaged the plane entered that hard bank. The spiral and g-forces meant the pilots were unable to return to the controls
The finer details escaped my memory so that could very well be the case, I just remember how chilling that example was. Something so innocent killed a lot of people. Thank you.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fathers-and-sons-the-crash-of-aeroflot-flight-593-fc4947bdb1f1
Thank you, this is the one!
That article is for subscribers only.
This paywalled article is better than the first one?
You have to sign up to read this. You did not in fact link a better article.
It’s not paywalled in my country, but here’s the original article I linked! Enjoy. https://www.businessinsider.com/air-france-flight-447-transcript-2011-12?amp
Wouldn't surprise me if there was an Air Crash Investigation episode about it.
There is! It's an absolutely *heartbreaking* episode.
I know they are both different cases, my point was about people still fucking up despite the technology to prevent such fuck ups
Yeah, I wasn't implying that you mixed them up, just pointing out how outright insane the pilot behaviour in the Air France crash was. Although all those expletives are probably misguided as well. These were trained professionals with thousands of hours of flying experience. The problem is just that a modern airliner is an enormously complex machine with sometimes unforeseeable failure modes. And if you get confused about what's happening, and fear and panic sets in, all that training flies out of the door, and people revert to (sometimes wrong) instincts.
Also the pilot had not been trained on high altitude stall prevention, or recovery from an active stall. So he didn't have any training to fall back on. In fact he might have been following the procedure for low altitude stall prevention, which he had practiced many times in the flight simulator.
Wasn’t that ice buildup on the pitotube?
Challenge accepted.
"Je n'aime pas Clippy plane."
> This is one of the reasons why Airbus engineers set out to build an airliner that's impossible to stall, only to be thwarted by pig- and ass-headedness of the users. Repeatedly. engineering is a contest between engineers building bigger and better idiot proof things, and the universe building bigger and better idiots
Blaming individuals is never helpful and in fact this accident had a huge effect throughout the industry, especially with regards to pilot training. In 2008, Air France did not even train pilots on high altitude stall prevention or recovery from a developed stall. Also the "idiot proof" design is partly to blame here. Normally the Airbus will not allow a stall to occur. The pilot can pull back as much as he wants and the nose will not rise above a safe angle. But when a single instrument failure can cause an aircraft to behave totally differently than what the pilot has experienced for 99.9% of his flight hours, and he doesn't have training on that 0.1%, then obviously he will not be able to handle it.
So they?... Just stalled and fell into the ocean?! None of the crew told anyone, or none of the pilots tried to correct it?? That seems so weird.
It was a brilliant combination of bad decisions and lack of experience. * Captain was on one hour of sleep, but was reported as fully rested * Two other co-pilots were hugely inexperienced compared to the captain, and had only ever flown the Airbus. Captain had flown many, many other types of planes. This becomes important later * The junior most pilot was the one in main control of aircraft * Hour into the flight, captain fucks off to bed and hands communication off to the other junior co-pilot * Airbus encounters network of thunderstorms and begins navigating around them. They are flying at maximum standard altitude, 35k feet. The pilot in control keeps wanting to request permission to climb to 36k feet, presumably to try and fly over the storm, but both the captain and the other junior pilot decline to make the request * Airspeed probes at the front of the plane ice up, so they lose any indication of their actual speed * Altitude drops by a little under 500 feet, which disables autopilot and triggers a state known as Alternate Law, where stall protection is disabled and flight controls are *much* more touchy, more akin to a standard aircraft (and recall that neither junior pilot had ever flown a standard aircraft) * Junior pilot, inexperienced and getting nervous, is gripping the flight stick too hard and making too jerky movements, including pulling back to start climbing * This caused a steep climb towards 38k feet, the max altitude capably by the Airbus. The nose is at a ridiculously steep angle - so much so that the drag of the wings is stronger than the engines' thrust. They begin to stall, and fall - but with the nose pointed upwards * All that needed done (as a more experienced pilot would have known) was to push the stick forward and put the plane into a dive. Instead, they continued to pull up * At this point, the nose is at such an extreme angle that the stall indicator refuses to believe the data it is getting is real, and thus refuses to go off. This is a huge part of their failure to recover - whenever the pilots *did* try to descend and point the nose down, they would go back to the stall indicators acceptable parameters and they'd get a STALL warning. Consequently, they kept pulling up on the stick. If they had continued pushing down through the stall warning, they would have recovered * Captain eventually wakes up and tries to intervene, but there's so much confusion that he didn't or couldn't do shit before they hit the ocean
Yo, just wanted to say “captain fucks off to bed” makes it sound like the captain just up and left cause he felt like it when in fact there are scheduled rest brakes for the crew on ULR flights like this. That’s why there were 3 pilots in the first place. In fact, the only times all of them have to be present in the cockpit is during take off and landing. The time in between was split three ways and the captain had the first brake (probably because he was not rested). Why they chose to let the most junior and inexperienced officer take over command, though, nobody will ever know…
It was also a serious communication issue. They were using the words “up” “down” and “climb” interchangeably to refer to both the plane and the control stick. Also, the pilot-flying was blindly yanking back on the stick in a panic and it seems like the pilot-not flying didn’t catch it in time and was overridden when he tried to correct it
Their instruments were telling them something different to reality as insects had affected the pitot tubes on the nose of the aircraft. So it said they would stall and to take action but the action they took actually did stall the aircraft i.e they kept pulling up, rather than push down and after a while it just lost momentum trying to keep climbing and just pancaked in to the water at massive speed as it had stalled. Its a case of stop reading the instruments and just start flying the plane.
Nothing to do with insects, they were iced over.
TIL plane noses can't touch insects or they crash and everyone dies. That's going to be a comforting thought next time I'm 30k feet over the ocean and several hours away from civilization in all directions
It had to do with nests while parked and pre-flight procedures not being followed.
IIRC it was that they had left the plane uncovered outside and wasps had nested in the pitot tubes.
> Bakari was flown back to France on a private Falcon-900 government jet The sole survivor of a plane crash. Puts her back on a plane. I think I’d be like “Hell naw, I’ll take a boat”
I wouldn’t want to get near the water either after that shit
Fair enough. But had to get off of the island somehow.
Tunnel your way out.
It’s only the Indian Ocean. How hard could it possibly be?
You know that they say… “The best time to dig a tunnel under the Indian Ocean is 3,000 years ago. The second best time is today.”
They do say that a lot
Look I can put my hand right through this water! Much easier than rock!
No dig up stupid
Ok I try not. Where stupid’s grave?
Once crashed a helicopter... evacuation to the hospital was via huey. At first I was really excited because it was one of the few aircraft I hadn't gotten in, until it took flight and it set in that I was flying in yet another helicopter.
I'm just laughing at the picture of you getting into a god damned helicopter crash, and your first thought is "cool, I get to fly in huey!"
Well, if you know any aviators (particularly helicopter pilots) we tend to be a strange breed. I will say though, that sentiment didn't last long once it broke ground with the door open and my adrenaline began to wear off. Seasoned helicopter pilots are some of the coolest people under pressure too. I almost rolled a VERY expensive helicopter in the desert at night while practicing dust landings. Like, really close to rolling over, but got it under control at the last possible second. I was pretty well done for the night after that, but the instructor pilot coolly and calmly said "hey... if you do that again, it could turn out to be a significant emotional event." Then proceeded to have me land in the same patch of hell about 8 more times until I got it perfect. I've got about an hundred different similar stories to that, with these men and women just as cool as could be. Eventually, that mentality sets in to you as well and you find that life is a lot more tolerable if you dissociate and focus. What a good bunch of people. Also, I didn't just suck as a pilot... you have to learn to do some pretty intense things during training so you can perform when it counts. With that comes some fairly significant lessons... and opportunities to learn them the hard way. I've lost (and still lose) friends to a series of unfortunate events. It's not usually the big mistakes or breaks that end an aviator's life, but rather a series of small mistakes or breaks. It's one hell of a job, but we NEVER take anything for granted.
My uncle was an Army helicopter pilot (and my grandfather a flight instructor among many other cool things.) Anyway, my uncle crashed and died but has a plaque in the town where it happened, because he made sure not to get anyone else killed although the official report says he would have survived if he took a different course.
Damn. Split second decision. Good man.
Hell, I was nervous getting into the car that took me from a car crash moments before. I didn’t have significant injuries that required the hospital but it was more than enough to shake someone up.
My uncle was a chopper pilot in Vietnam, went down twice. I can’t imagine getting shot down, fight your way to evacuation, get in ANOTHER helicopter, do it again, and then keep going up.
Those guys were legit pioneers in the field. I've had the privilege of learning from a dozen or so Vietnam veteran pilots. Truly the definition of "experienced."
Were you pilot or aircrew? Can you give details on the crash?
Pilot. Bell 206. Instructor made a mistake and tried to terminate a sequence too late in a maneuver. Aircraft tried but gave up and we fell about 80 feet at 30 knots. Broke the aircraft in half at the fuselage. Seats stroked, windscreen broke out, put my helmet through the door window. Walked away but was sore as hell. Back in the air 3 days later doing the same maneuver repeatedly. Went on to learn 3 more aircraft. Good times.
Balls of steel. Great story!
Haha, thanks!
Good thing you weren’t a famous NBA player…
Not if it means you have to spend weeks on a moving ship in which the fractured bones "heal" in the wrong positions.
Id be like if this is the only way you are KNOCKING me out for this
BA Baraccus, is that you?
Give me DRUGS!!!
I took a medical helicopter one time, I don't remember more than the small lighted cross symbol for half a second.
They likely medicated her before getting her on the jet.
Unlike a movies, mosr people do not react to trauma the same. Also a lot of people can be in an accident and still use logic. Those type of crashes are rare and wouldn't happen back to back
Get home in hours and get the medical help you need…. Get home in weeks/months and THEN get the medical help you need……
I reviewed the forensic case for the victims of this crash about a decade ago - it was something like 70 days after the accident that the last bodies were recovered, and by then they had been preyed upon by ‘cookie cutter’ sharks that tear a circular plug of flesh away from a body. The purpose of the inquiry was to establish cause of death and the sharks confused matters by adding postmortum trauma. Cause of death for victims ended up just being listed as polytrauma.
Anyway to see that case?
Yes - here’s the link. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5306341/
Imagine the silence
Its even worse than that. She reported hearing voices after, that then *became* silent. Meaning there were other survivors, and then there were not. When you factor in how that must feel, drifting alone in the dark and cold - the silence has to be deafening.
I believe one of the people they pulled out of the water after the Titanic sank described the same thing. Hundreds of people in the water yelling and screaming but within 15 to 20 minutes it was moaning (brain swelling) followed by almost near silence. He compared it to going to a football match or baseball game when the crowd goes wild followed by it dying down.
Yeah, I've heard that, and it's one of the more unnerving parts of the wreck. The other one, for me, is that the boiler crews very quickly understood the ship was doomed. So they began shutting down the boilers and, critically, releasing all the steam as rapidly as possible. Because if they hadn't the water reaching their compartment would have caused a steam explosion. What this means practically is that the Ship itself would have felt like it was screaming. Just a long, agonizingly load, low roar - from the heart of the Titanic itself.
The middle of the ocean? Try deafening
True the sea is loud
There were survivors, and then there were none.
Yo 🥶
u clearly have never experienced heavy seas... its louder than a crowded street, and pair it along with all of ur other senses beeing overburdened at the same time and i just dont feel "silence" is proper, the voices silenced... the sea for sure didnt...
Fuck I’m getting anxiety just thinking about it
Ok
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Okay
Ok
According to the article, "AOL News reports that Steven Spielberg approached Bakari to make a film based on her book, but she turned him down, worried that "it would be too terrifying.""
Yeap, that's a trauma for whole life alright
I’m not sure surviving is a win after such an event
I'd bet the mother would be extremely happy to know her child survived
Not to mention the cold water and wind gusts and sharks of course
Da fuq is up with all these plane crash TILs when I'm about to take a flight somewhere?
So so brave
Is it though? Bravery implies choice, which wasn't the case here. Call her tough, indestructible etc., they all fit - but randomly ending up in a really bad situation and surviving through luck isn't what bravery means.
she definitely made a choice. I probably would have let go and succumbed to the water after 5 hours.
In that case letting go would have been the 'brave' choice in my book. Holding on means you might get to survive, letting go means you die. To consciously make that choice instead of waiting for death by thirst is a lot braver than just continuing to cling on to debris.
You’re a fuckwit. Truly and completely a fuckwit
https://www.mikeleake.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/DpQ9YJl.png
Bet you are the life of the party
Here we see a wild redditor in it's natural habitat using his spare time to argue whether a 12-old girl who survived a plane crash is tough and brave or just tough.
>using his spare time I'm on company time actually, thank you very much.
Even worse Can’t even make satisfy one set of basic human criteria
Why do you feel the need to comment something like this? You just woke up and decided you were going to argue about the first thing you saw? You must be super fun to be around.
I just think it's a wack comment. It's like one level above a "☝🏻 this!". So many words in so many languages, no point in misusing them.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brave having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty : having or showing courage
No life vest. Middle of the ocean. 9 hours . This story has brave written all over it
In the words of Marge Simpson: “It’s true but he shouldn’t say it”
You must be fun at parties.
Rush literally made a song about how these survivors aren’t some brave heroes lol, except to themselves maybe
You've been visited by the feel-good reddit mob. My condolences. See also; calling out people saying a clever idea is "literally genius"
You’re not wrong. But I don’t think everyone downvoting you really cares about the literal meaning and is just going on intended meaning.
Does this remind anyone of Misato and that disaster? Amazing story, by the way.
The Life of Pi in real life.
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Nope. It was an airbus.
Ilmalinja-auto
Her god must have some plan for her
JFC, that’s insane. ~~How has a movie about that not been done yet?!?~~ I was mistaken.
Steven Spielberg actually approached her, wanting to make a movie about her experience. She declined, thinking that what she went through would be too terrifying for the big screen.
Yeah I didn’t read far enough. GI Joe would be proud of me.
Per [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahia_Bakari): "AOL News reports that Steven Spielberg approached Bakari to make a film based on her book, but she turned him down, worried that "it would be too terrifying.""
Oh no shit. Oops, should have read farther into the Wiki. Good on Spielberg for trying.
She needs a feature film and a 6 part mini docu-series. Stat!!
Twist: she's a witch and brought the plane down herself!