Aviation News Item: 00255

5th Oct 2009

Source: ubmaviationnews.com

Air France (AF) pilots, organised in the Spaf pilot union, have conducted their own investigation into the AF A330 accident on June 1 and have concluded it could have been avoided. Extracts from their report, which is to be filed with the French judicial authorities in due course, were published in Le Journal du Dimanche yesterday, October 4. The report claims that Airbus, Air France, EASA and other aviation authorities including the BEA, the French air accident investigation authority, paid insufficient attention to the problems with Pitot tube icing that had been known for years prior to the accident, which killed all 228 onboard. Even though they acknowledge that the accident did not happen as the result of a single cause, the pilots claim the aircraft would not have crashed without the failure of the Pitot tubes. Another contributing factor was that the pilots of AF447 did not have the latest weather information at the time of their departure and they could have flown along a calmer route.

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