The investigation opened to determine the causes of the “serious incident” – which occurred in early April when an Air France Boeing 777 narrowly avoided a crash on arrival at Roissy – seems to be heading towards a responsibility of the pilots, according to information disclosed by the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) this Wednesday, April 27.
As a reminder, the crew of flight AF011 New York-Paris had carried out a go-around, as they were preparing to land at Paris Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport. The plane, its 177 passengers and 15 crew members were finally able to land safely after a second approach.
“The plane did anything”?
“We went around so, flight control problem, the plane did almost anything,” the pilot explained to the control tower, according to audio extracts of the exchanges between the cockpit and the tower. posted on the internet and went viral on social media.
The analysis of the black boxes containing the recording of the flight data (FDR) and the conversations in the cockpit (CVR), however, seems to rule out any technical problem.
“No malfunction alarms were triggered during the event. No anomaly was found on the plane,” said the Bureau of Investigations and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety. (BEA).
What prompted the Captain and his co-pilot to abort the descent and go around again? The action – which took place in seconds according to the Bureau of Investigations – was apparently not perceived in the same way by the aircrew and the control tower.
It did not seem justified to go around because “until the go-around, the trajectory remained within the operator’s stabilization criteria”, according to the BEA.
A procedure that goes “in the direction of security”
For its part, the Air France group affirmed that it “continued to provide its full collaboration with the investigation”. The company “recalls that the go-around procedure is defined by aircraft manufacturers and Air France as a normal procedure, which is in line with safety”.
“Crews are trained and regularly practiced in these procedures practiced by all airlines”, she added, recalling “that the safety of flights, of its customers and of its crews is an absolute imperative”.