Feeling of embarrassment after BEA press release on AIR FRANCE ELEVEN serious incident

KEY POINTS

1. The co-pilot is surprised for six seconds that he is tilted to the left, when the average steering wheel position is 6° left??What is happening to him? He is the only one flying, the captain does not touch the controls! And what about flying the plane with the Fly Director’s bars? Unable to ? follow the green ??
2. The commander voices his surprise at the deviation of the "flight path" (surely glide path) which means there wasn’t any reason to go-around. So then why the co-pilot?suddenly raised?the aircraft attitude of 12°, within 2 seconds ? Did he think himself a reason to go-around? Without expressing it? Or worst did he act unconsciously??Or a kind of sudden incapacity?

Reflecting on these two points can only lead to a certain feeling of unease

At 07:51:06, the co-pilot expressed his astonishment?with respect to the aeroplane’s bank angle. The roll inputs were?amplified and the average position of the wheel was at around 6° to the left.

The captain voiced his surprise with respect to the deviation from the flight path.

Up until the go-around, the flight path had?remained within the operator’s stabilization criteria.?

The recorded parameters show that the two pilots then simultaneously made inputs on the controls.

Known facts at this stage after press release

The aircraft suddenly climbed 1000' in 15", whereas?nothing seems to justify a go-around in this precise context of an ILS 26L approach at Roissy this April 5. It is true that pilot can perform a go-around at any time, but it is not done in any way, and above all control tower must immediately be warned ! The stakes in terms of safety, in this case in terms of vertical separation of aircraft and risk of collision, are high.

Moreover, the consequence of this sudden and brutal climb was the remarkable reaction of the TWR controller who immediately ordered Air France 73 HW, which had just taken off, to STOP IMMEDIATELY at 1500'. An air traffic controller never gives orders, but instructions, which the pilot may refuse, but if the controller uses the term IMMEDIATELY it is an IMPERATIVE order THAT MUST BE OBSERVED instantly.

This morning the controller was able to enforce a 500' separation between the two aircraft within seconds. A separation of 500' is completely out of the norm, normal separation being 1000'. That's how urgent it was ! It also shows the controller's coolness and professionalism. And it's good to emphasize this. Professionalism marked by the fact that he did not try to understand this 2000' level (dangerous for traffic), but remained conscious of his first priority, the vertical separation in between?aircrafts. Because he could not understand at first the behaviour of AF 011, which was totally unsuited to the circumstances. The captain of AF 011 was well aware of this when he piteously justified and apologised.?

That is one reality !?

The other reality is that the graphs issued from the AF 011 DFDR , published by the BEA in its press release, clearly show that it was the first officer flying, that his handling suddenly became catastrophic, to the point of pitching up his aircraft to 24° of attitude without any reason, while tilting it up to 30° to the left, and never coming back to level, and gaining 1000' of altitude, creating the dangerous situation explained above. Captain did not intervene by taking over the controls to continue the approach, which was perfectly possible, and when he did it was too late, and they were forced to go-around. To say, as the BEA does, that the plane went-around without being able to adequately explain it, shows its embarrassment and therefore masks the fact that first officer seems to have "gone off the rails" and here we find ourselves in the psycho-medical field. Of course pilots should be suspended, and they certainly are. Air France cannot afford not to implement these conservatory measures, just a few months before having to face ??Rio-Paris?? trial, which will take place from 8 October to 8 December 2022.

This is the second time that an Air France aircraft has experienced an unexplained nose-up attitude, which we know is caused by the co-pilot at the controls.?

Decrypted chart from French BEA

What the BEA has not yet done is to synchronise this graph with the CVR records, especially the terrible radio exchanges with the control tower. Nevertheless, the coloured arrows make it possible to point out these exchanges on the graph.?