# Airbus A330 control system/ Air France flight 447 **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 10, 2011, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770 "2011-12-10T22:09:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/101 "2022-10-11T16:47:02Z")
> [@iamnotbatman](#): > > My understanding is that the only instrument that wasn’t working was the airspeed, correct? The artificial horizon, the altitude, that was all working, right? Shouldn’t they have been able to see that they were pointing too far above the horizon in a situation where they were worried about stalling? It’s been a while, but… Airspeed is indicated by the air pressure pushing against the pitot tube. AT first, the tube iced and froze and gave no reading. During the descent, they were IIRC effectively “pancaking”, falling flat-ish downward rather than the nose leading the direction of travel, so the airspeed indicator would not really have told them anything meaningful. What would it indicate, a (confusing) slow forward motion despite the rapid descent and full engines? > [@PastTense](#): > > I don’t think manslaughter is appropriate. Perhaps criminal negligence would be more appropriate? Is there such a crime in French law? Basically, a design where the two joysticks cancelled each other out with no feedback to indicate the conflict - is an obvious, in this case lethal, design flaw. If one had been the decider or the pilots had felt the conflict, maybe things would have been different. As it was, the result that it did basically nether of the pilots’ commands is disconcerting. There’s the whole issue of the “Alternate Law” system and training required to understand this that may also play into the severity of charges. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/102 "2022-10-12T03:26:10Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > I don’t think manslaughter is appropriate. Why not? ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/103 "2022-10-12T04:15:33Z")
I have mostly forgotten what I have read about the crash but my impression was that it was basically a situation of general incompetence all around–the manufacturer, the airline and the pilots: not a criminal situation. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/104 "2022-10-12T04:38:33Z")
Incompetence… or recklessness? And I’m not just being coy: one way to get to manslaughter, at least in the US, is by a showing of recklessness resulting in death. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/105 "2022-10-12T05:02:51Z")
Yeah, it sounds totally accidental and unintentional. Calling this a crime is taking it too far. Bonin was utterly inept in his handling of the aircraft, but nobody here intended anyone’s death. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/106 "2022-10-12T11:00:19Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > Basically, a design where the two joysticks cancelled each other out with no feedback to indicate the conflict - is an obvious, in this case lethal, design flaw. Not _no_ feedback: > **[Air France Flight 447 | Side-stick control issue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Side-stick_control_issue)** > > In April 2012 in The Daily Telegraph, British journalist Nick Ross published a comparison of Airbus and Boeing flight controls; unlike the control yoke used on Boeing flight decks, the Airbus side-stick controls give little visual feedback and no sensory or tactile feedback to the second pilot. The cockpit synthetic voice, however, does give an aural message 'Dual Input' whenever opposite inputs are initiated by the pilots. Ross reasoned that this might in part explain why the PF's \[pilot fl In a... So the crew got an audio “dual input” warning message, although admittedly it seems this wasn’t enough to get their attention. If there are a bunch of other alarms going off, and the crew is already on mental overload, it’s not terribly surprising that they didn’t notice it. Boeing’s “tug-of-war” yoke linkage, which also puts both yokes out in plain view, would have made it much harder for Dubois to miss Bonin’s counterproductive control inputs. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/107 "2022-10-12T12:29:31Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Yeah, it sounds totally accidental and unintentional. Calling this a crime is taking it too far. > > Bonin was utterly inept in his handling of the aircraft, but nobody here intended anyone’s death. Maybe an apt comparison would be the Pinto or Crown Vic fuel tank configuration - an engineering flaw resulting in immolation of occupants. As I said, a design flaw that resulted in a large number of deaths, the same as the aircraft essentially deciding to ignore both critical controls by averaging them out. It may not have been the only cause, nor even a primary cause, but it certainly was a key factor. At what point does incompetence (in design) rise to the level of “criminal negligence causing death”? I’m also wondering if there’s a legal and translation difference that is giving is “manslaughter” instead of “criminal negligence”? I don’t know the nuances of French criminal law. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/108 "2022-10-12T12:52:46Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > nobody here intended anyone’s death Well, indeed - that’s why the charge is manslaughter, not murder, right? Having said that, my general view is that bringing criminal charges is not typically conducive to the promotion of increased air safety. No doubt if I were a friend or relative of a passenger on AF447 I would be pretty pissed off (hell, I’m not, but I’m _still_ pretty pissed off that it happened), but what good will criminal penalties bring? If the design was unsafe, fix it. If the training was inadequate, fix it. Both much better uses of time and money. Thankfully, aviation safety has come a long way and is still improving. According to [this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_aircraft_accidents_and_incidents), there have been no commercial flights with a higher number of fatalities since AF447 where the cause was pilot error and/or failure of aircraft systems (MH17 was shot down and MH370 was almost certainly pilot suicide/homicide). ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/109 "2022-10-12T13:10:55Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Yeah, it sounds totally accidental and unintentional. Calling this a crime is taking it too far. > > Bonin was utterly inept in his handling of the aircraft, but nobody here intended anyone’s death. According to the news articles, they’ve been charged with « involuntary manslaughter ». I don’t know anything about French criminal law, but that doesn’t sound like an allegation that anyone intended the deaths. ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/110 "2022-10-12T16:59:57Z")
Admiral Cloudberg has great analysis and is always entertaining to read: > **[The Long Way Down: The crash of Air France flight 447](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-crash-of-air-france-flight-447-8a7678c37982)** > > The story of the infamous disappearance of an Airbus A330 over the Atlantic, and the fundamentally human mistakes which led to the tragedy. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2023, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770/111 "2023-04-17T16:06:08Z")
> **[Airbus and Air France cleared of involuntary manslaughter changes over 2009...](https://aviationsourcenews.com/airline/airbus-and-air-france-cleared-of-involuntary-manslaughter-changes-over-2009-crash/)** > > A French court has found Airbus and Air France not guilty of involuntary manslaughter with regards to the 2009 fatal crash of Flight 447. It’s strange there even was a criminal trial. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airbus-a330-control-system-air-france-flight-447/605770.md?page=5)