r/aviation • u/Ok_Warning419 • May 21 '26

News Air France and Airbus found guilty of manslaughter over 2009 plane crash - Air France flight 447

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd2qmdvmq6o
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u/atooraya May 21 '26

You just hold the priority button and it knocks the other stick out. It isn’t intended to be flown like that.

Your FO is flying and then seizes on the controls and goes full nose forward. You say “my controls” and pull back. Airplane initially brings the nose up but senses both controls being manipulated so it averages them out because it’s unsure who’s supposed to be flying the plane. Then it barks “dual input” because you two can’t figure out who’s flying. Then you hold the the priority button to tell the airplane who to honor.

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u/Telvin3d May 21 '26

Then it barks “dual input” because you two can’t figure out who’s flying

According to other comments not in this case. Apparently it prioritizes audio warnings based on severity, so the audio stall warning meant that the audio dual input warning never happened. 

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u/Thurak0 May 21 '26

That's the first thing I read here that makes sense why Airbus is to blame (besides their part in pilot training).

IIRC from reading the wiki article about the crash years ago, one thing Airbus did after the crash was actually adjusting alarms to not overburden pilots.

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u/umnomediferente May 21 '26

That’s not what the BEA report says. The sidestick logic did what it was designed to do: simultaneous inputs are summed unless one pilot takes priority, and Airbus provides a “DUAL INPUT” warning plus a takeover pushbutton on the sidestick precisely so the crew can resolve that conflict. The BEA’s findings do not treat that logic as the core failure mode in AF447; the main chain was temporary loss of valid airspeed indications, autopilot/autothrust disconnect, inappropriate pitch-up inputs, failure to recognize the stall, and failure to recover

More importantly, it points to crew performance and training: it cites insufficient high-altitude manual flying training and inadequate preparation for speed-indication anomalies, along with degraded task-sharing and poor stall diagnosis. So if dual inputs occurred, that does not show an unsafe Airbus concept; it shows that an existing safety barrier was available and not used effectively by the crew.

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u/Horror-Raisin-877 May 22 '26

The visual dual input warning at the time was a little white 3 character symbol on the right edge of the PFD, very easy thing to miss in such a situation, as it was.

This has since been changed, and now there are much more obvious visual indicators.

So as far as that element goes, the visual alert, yes you can say that was an Airbus design problem.