 The aircraft involved in the accident, taking off from Joint Base Andrews 6 months before the crash | |
| Accident | |
|---|---|
| Date | 1 June 2009 |
| Summary | Entered high-altitude stall; impacted ocean |
| Site | Atlantic Ocean near waypoint TASIL [1]: 9 3°03′57″N 30°33′42″W / 3.06583°N 30.56167°W |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Airbus A330-203[a] |
| Operator | Air France |
| IATA flight No. | AF447 |
| ICAO flight No. | AFR447 |
| Call sign | AIRFRANS 447 |
| Registration | F-GZCP |
| Flight origin | Rio de Janeiro/Galeão International Airport |
| Destination | Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle |
| Occupants | 228 |
| Passengers | 216 |
| Crew | 12 |
| Fatalities | 228 |
| Survivors | 0 |
Air France Flight 447 (AF447/AFR447)[b] was a scheduled international passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France. On 1 June 2009, inconsistent airspeed indications led to the pilots inadvertently stalling the Airbus A330 serving the flight. They failed to recover the plane from the stall, and the plane crashed into the mid Atlantic Ocean at 02:14 UTC, killing all 228 passengers and crew on board.[2]
The Brazilian Navy recovered the first major wreckage and two bodies from the sea within five days of the accident, but the investigation by France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) was initially hampered because the aircraft's flight recorders were not recovered from the ocean floor until May 2011, nearly two years after the accident.[3]
The BEA's final report, released at a press conference on 5 July 2012, concluded that the aircraft suffered temporary inconsistencies between the airspeed measurements—likely resulting from ice crystals obstructing the aircraft's pitot tubes—which caused the autopilot to disconnect. The crew reacted incorrectly to the abnormality, causing the aircraft to enter an aerodynamic stall which the pilots failed to correct.[2]: 79 [4]: 7 [5] The accident is the deadliest in the history of Air France, as well as the deadliest aviation accident involving the Airbus A330.[6]
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