Leaks allege pilot error in ’09 crash
The main pilots’ union at Air France and relatives of the 228 people who died in the mid-Atlantic crash of Air France Flight 447 two years ago strongly condemned reports yesterday suggesting that crucial errors by the jet’s crew might have led to the disaster.
In recent days, a series of reports have surfaced in the European and US media purporting to describe details that accident investigators have gleaned from the data contained in the plane’s so-called black box recorders, which were successfully downloaded last week.
Some of those reports, citing anonymous sources, have suggested the data indicate the crew reacted to a cascade of system failures on the Airbus A330-200 jet exactly as they had been trained to do, while others have said there was evidence the pilots failed to follow standard procedures.
“Every day there’s a new leak,’’ said Jean-Louis Barber, president of the Air France branch of France’s main pilots’ union, Syndicat Nationale des Pilotes de Ligne, which represents 80 percent of Air France’s pilots
For the past week, technical investigators at the nation’s Bureau of Investigations and Analyses have been poring over more than 1,300 pieces of flight data and two hours of cockpit voice recordings. The bureau is expected to publish a brief chronology of the events captured on the recorders Friday.
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