Well the reason is because most of the time it is the pilot's who crash the airplane, not the airplane itself. This is the case which most are talking about which is why did they get themselves in this storm in the first place and why did they react like they did when it began hitting the fan. Again, I myself wonder what was on their radar before all this happened and did they know that they were getting into that bad of a storm.

Knowing good and well the effects of radar attenuation, they decided to fly through a thunderstorm ("weak" or not). I know that 20NM separation isn't always possible or practical, but to knowingly penetrate a strong radar return at 30-odd-thousand feet... I can't get my head around that. I share your suspicions. Though another contributing issue, I believe, is the fact that the pitot/static anti-ice wasn't up to the task... As far as Al's last post is concerned: Absolutely. Competent pilots would have at least made a comment like "we're stalling". Rather or not the human mind could deal with the rest is unclear to me.

Publishing what he says is the first full transcript of the pilots' voice recordings, French aviation author Jean-Pierre Otelli describes a scene in the Airbus SAS cockpit

http://news.business...1BABSGKON8A8NGF

http://news.business...1BABSGKON8A8NGF

what is an "Airbus SAS" cockpit?

"I just wonder what the radar screen looked like for the pilots. As I've said in my posts about this AF accident before, it is very easy for some cells to be hidden by other fairly strong returns and by the time you see the cell you are already in it. Yes they knew about the weather ahead of time but they were crossing the ITC so storms are a regularity and they were most likely picking there way through it all. " No one else had radar attenuation,or they ALL wouldn'thave deviated around the cells.http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/trajectoires/trajectoires010609.html

http://news.business...1BABSGKON8A8NGF

That's a great post, and the info is scary! A partial quote of the article:

Otelli's presentation of the night's events showcase the relative inexperience of the pilot who was controlling the plane. At 32 years of age, he was the youngest and least tested, with less than a third of the flight hours of the captain who was almost twice his age, and only a handful of flights to South America.When the captain prepared to leave the cockpit for routine crew rest, he asked the young pilot if he had a full airline pilot's license, rather than just a commercial pilot license, Otelli's account shows. The captain returned to the flight deck in the last moments of the flight, but never resumed control.

Cheers, - jahman.

Just because nobody else had attenuation affecting their signals doesn't mean AF447's radar was working as well, but even if it was, another question would be: Just how experienced was the guy driving at interpreting stuff beyond the backscatter of lighter rain in front of the big badass storm, when the aircraft went straight in there? Al

...If you read the accident report you see that at one point the Airbus became so slow that the computers considered that speed wrong and hence there was no speed displayed at all. When the pilots pushed the stick forward they just gained enough speed to trigger the Airbus to display the (way too low) speed again together with the stall warning. When they released the forward pressure the speed reduced again and the stall warning stopped.Just releasing the forward pressure wouldn't result in a pitch up if the Airbus wouldn't have had trimmed the stabilizer fully nose up in the meantime by itself!The effect of full forward stick with a full nose up trimmed stabilizer is very weak.Pulling the side stick back doesn't do much and pushing it forward triggers the stall warning, That's quite some confusing information which doesn't make much sense either.This 'weird' Airbus behaviour coupled with turbulence and thunderstorms all around plus the knowledge that the Airbus isn't always predictable makes it IMO almost impossible to make the correct decision within a short time span given the additional 'none', 'wrong' and 'conflicting' information from the computers.I would really appreciate if some 'pilots' think before posting something like 'they really need to initiate some basic flying skill instruction at AF' . BTW, calling the AF crew Curly Larry & Moe is simply disgusting.

Some excellent points you raise here with the voice of experience! The situation you describe sounds extremely dangerous because aircraft feedback to the pilot gets reversed. Perhaps regulations covering aircraft certification requirements need to be expanded to make sure situations like these do not occur. Ever. For RW airline pilots out there, what's company policy on getting the Captain back into the cockpit when needing to traverse CB areas? The ITCZ seems like a dangerous place when active, so is it OK for the Captain to be reading a book or sleeping during the traverse? Since AF447, has AF's policy changed in this regard? What about other airlines? Cheers, - jahman.

The misnomer here is that the plane was "stalled." It wasn't. The plane was completely under control perfectly wings level, nose up right where they had it commanded for the entire four minutes down from 37,000'. Ironically, if the plane was allowed to depart by the fbw, then it would have at least been able to achieve a nose down attitude and recover. They all might still be alive.

Two things that are quite unbelievable. First they chose to fly directly through an intense thunderstorm. Mistake no.1. Mistake no.2 shows such a lack of basic pilot skill (i.e. 3 pilots not identifying the stall) Air France will probably face enormous damages in the courts.voloiberista

The original post suggests that these are the transcripts of the final 2 minutes of the CVR. Recordings stopped at 2:14:28,4. The already published CVR transcripts in Interim Report number 23 are:2:14:05Watch out you’re pitching up there (CAP)I’m pitching up? (PNF)Well we need to we are at four thousand feet (PF) 2:14:18Go on pull (CAP)Let’s go pull up pull up pull up (PF) 2:14:26(Ten) degrees pitch attitude (CAP) I can't find these in the original post .

I think if it were me riding the airplane down in a situation where it wasn't responding as expected to pilot inputs for several minutes (quite literally, a lifetime), I'd punch off both FACs, throw the gear down, and fly the d***ed thing myself in Direct Law using known pitch and power settings, rather than continuing to try and make the computer behave while I rode it all the way down to the drink. This wasn't really a "think quick" situation...the crew had plenty of time to recognize that the acft was not responding as they intended and to take control themselves. That they apparently didn't even try does not speak well to their training and standardization programs. My opinion is that those AF pilots were passengers on their own jet because they lacked the knowledge, skill, and/or ability to punch off the automation and take control of the jet themselves to the maximum extent possible. My gut feel, having flown both analog "steam-driven" and fully automated glass jets is that pilots today are becoming far too timid when it comes to turning off the automation and doing the "pilot stuff" they're paid so handsomely for. There have been enough bizarre flight control incidents with the 'bus that the prospect of overriding the automation to the max extent allowed shouldn't be unthinkable--especially after several minutes of nonresponse with the ground (water) coming up fast. At any rate, Darwin would seem to have sorted this one out. Whether anyone else learns from this remains to be seen. So far, it seems that many of those responsible are more concerned about keeping the details out of the public eye rather than preventing the next automation induced mishap.

The misnomer here is that the plane was "stalled." It wasn't. The plane was completely under control perfectly wings level, nose up right where they had it commanded for the entire four minutes down from 37,000'. Ironically, if the plane was allowed to depart by the fbw, then it would have at least been able to achieve a nose down attitude and recover. They all might still be alive.

I'm afraid you are completely mistaken. The a/c was in a classic stalled attitude. The automatic systems had long given up and had handed control over to the pilots who did not recognise they were in a stall. Had they initiated a proper stall recovery then they would have saved the day.Every properly trained pilot will know 1. How to recover from a stall and 2. How to identify a stall.In the UK you practice these manouvres even in your sleep until they become totally automatic and instinctive.In modern automated a/c pilots are lulled into a false sense of security with everything being done for them by computers. It is good practice to always be on top of what the a/c wants to do even when the computersare flying it. Things rarely go wrong but they "do" go wrong so a pilot must always be prepared for that event. These guys weren't!vololiberista

I may be glib, but I am not completely mistaken. The popular media understanding is that it was a stall and that is fine. Though they were only very close to a full stall; they weren't fully stalled to the point of getting the nose drop. If you ever actually full stall a swept wing jet, you will tumble. I've done it in training. They weren't tumbling. They were however, flying so slowly that there was no amount of thrust in those engines to keep them from descending at 15000fpm. The autopilot had given up when the initial airspeed indication failure occured as it could not fly the plane without that knowledge. However, there were still fly by wire laws in effect during the descent and they appear to have kept the plane at the edge of flyability during the descent. My point is if there weren't such flight envelope protections in the Airbus fly by wire, the plane might have been able to depart controlled flight, nose over and perhaps have had a chance at recovery despite the pilots at the controls.

I think if it were me riding the airplane down in a situation where it wasn't responding as expected to pilot inputs for several minutes (quite literally, a lifetime), I'd punch off both FACs, throw the gear down, and fly the d***ed thing myself in Direct Law using known pitch and power settings, rather than continuing to try and make the computer behave while I rode it all the way down to the drink. This wasn't really a "think quick" situation...the crew had plenty of time to recognize that the acft was not responding as they intended and to take control themselves. That they apparently didn't even try does not speak well to their training and standardization programs. My opinion is that those AF pilots were passengers on their own jet because they lacked the knowledge, skill, and/or ability to punch off the automation and take control of the jet themselves to the maximum extent possible. My gut feel, having flown both analog "steam-driven" and fully automated glass jets is that pilots today are becoming far too timid when it comes to turning off the automation and doing the "pilot stuff" they're paid so handsomely for. There have been enough bizarre flight control incidents with the 'bus that the prospect of overriding the automation to the max extent allowed shouldn't be unthinkable--especially after several minutes of nonresponse with the ground (water) coming up fast. At any rate, Darwin would seem to have sorted this one out. Whether anyone else learns from this remains to be seen. So far, it seems that many of those responsible are more concerned about keeping the details out of the public eye rather than preventing the next automation induced mishap.

I couldn't agree more (even though I don't fly the large aircraft you do). Your phrase "those AF pilots were passengers on their own jet" stands out. As I was reading your post I remembered the antics of 2001: A Space Odissey's HAL-9000 evil computer and how the crew had to fight for their lives to switch it off.

The original post suggests that these are the transcripts of the final 2 minutes of the CVR. Recordings stopped at 2:14:28,4. The already published CVR transcripts in Interim Report number 23 are:2:14:05Watch out you’re pitching up there (CAP)I’m pitching up? (PNF)Well we need to we are at four thousand feet (PF) 2:14:18Go on pull (CAP)Let’s go pull up pull up pull up (PF) 2:14:26(Ten) degrees pitch attitude (CAP) I can't find these in the original post .

Just checked the CNN source to (again) make sure I had the correct transcript: Recall the thread's title: "The crew's last 2 minutes that AF and the govt don't want you to hear". It would seem then the exchange you mention is prior to the last 2 minutes, as I would suspect the "PNF: Damn it! We're going to crash! It can't be true!" bit has got to be very near the bitter end. The last exchanges as stated from the BEA Report Nº 3 somehow seem uncanny as they are too "calm and collected" seconds before they knew they were going into the sea. I do trust CNN and especially Ricard Quest: They would be foolish to publish such damning information were they not reasonably satisfied the information to be true. Finally, Richard Quest says AF and the BEA are "roundly condemning the publication of these last two minutes ... for being outside the legal framework" (0:56 of the video), thus validating contents and timeline of this part of the transcript (as I cited in the opening paragraph of my OP, btw...). Cheers, - jahman.

I may be glib, but I am not completely mistaken. The popular media understanding is that it was a stall and that is fine. Though they were only very close to a full stall; they weren't fully stalled to the point of getting the nose drop. If you ever actually full stall a swept wing jet, you will tumble. I've done it in training. They weren't tumbling. They were however, flying so slowly that there was no amount of thrust in those engines to keep them from descending at 15000fpm. The autopilot had given up when the initial airspeed indication failure occured as it could not fly the plane without that knowledge. However, there were still fly by wire laws in effect during the descent and they appear to have kept the plane at the edge of flyability during the descent. My point is if there weren't such flight envelope protections in the Airbus fly by wire, the plane might have been able to depart controlled flight, nose over and perhaps have had a chance at recovery despite the pilots at the controls.

This is incorrect. Given their TAS, VS and Pitch their AoA was around 60º, way beyond a mere stall into "deep stall" territory. The flight path alone was like 45º (TAS = VS), and increases to 60º as you add 15º nose-up pitch (all ballpark numbers as I'm not bothering to check the accident report). You need to check your fundamentals because angle of attack is the only reason a healthy airfoil will stall. Cheers, - jahman.