Air France accident investigator calls for technological, procedural changes

The latest chapter in what has become a serial report on the investigation into that Air France A330 accident in the South Atlantic contains some interesting recommendations.

Noting that the aircraft was basically under the control of the most junior pilot for the duration of the crisis that resulted in the accident, the French investigator has recommended formal procedures should be in place to ensure senior tech crew take full control of any such situation. In this case, the senior captain had returned to the flight deck, but he did not take the controls.

The investigator also recommended that pilot training should include "regular specific exercises aimed at manual airplane handling, including approach to and recovery from stalls at high altitude".

On the technology side, there was a recommendation that cameras should be mounted on the flight deck and recordings integrated into the CVR 'black box' to assist with accident investigations. This, of course, is a proposal that has surfaced before, but has been sidelined by vociferous objections from the pilot community.

And aircraft manufacturers are urged to fit angle of attack indicators to provide crews with confirmation of stall conditions, should they exist. That's a simple solution to misinterpreting the signals during a high-altitide stall in the dark.

The investigator has also recommended that data transmission during emergencies be improved, so that future investigtions should not be so dependent on recovery of the black boxes. The technology exists to achieve this.

And this should include mandatory activation of an ELT to help locate an aircraft, as the search for the AF A330 in this case became the most extensive and time consuming on record. This particular aircraft transmitted its position by satellite only every 10 minutes - and the crash occurred right in the middle of that cycle.