In front of a quiet courtroom, the screen shows an A330 flying between sky and ocean. On the third day of a trial to determine the responsibility of Air France and Air Bus in the 2009 Rio-Paris plane crash, experts recreated the fateful minutes before the plane crashed into the sea at an altitude of 300 meters above sea level. km/h, almost horizontal.

During a trial in Paris presided over by Magistrate Sylvie Donis, the four members of the first panel of experts appointed to investigate the accident began by describing in detail the work done during that lengthy process.

These people were responsible for studying all the information that black boxes collected about that moment, discovered two years after the accident at a depth of 3900 meters.

It won’t be until this Thursday that a decision will be made on whether the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) sound requested by the victims’ families will be heard during the trial, but experts yesterday described to a Paris court the final minutes of AF447’s flight.

misunderstanding

On the night of May 31, 2009, an A330 took off from Rio de Janeiro with 228 people on board, and the flight proceeded normally until the aircraft entered the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), a dangerous meteorological zone at this time of year. characterized by large clouds, thunder and heavy rain.

At this moment, at dawn, the plane was in the hands of two co-pilots, as the captain had gone to rest. At 2:10 UT, three short beeps signal that the autopilot is disengaged. After a series of procedures, one of the co-pilots declares: “I have commands.”

However, according to the report of one of the experts during the session, in just ten seconds, “six alarms followed each other.” The co-pilots quickly realized that they were losing speed, but the readings they received through the instruments in this regard were incorrect. Suddenly, the height was about 122 meters lower than the previously shown 10,700 meters.

“But this was not true,” the expert explained. “It was the freezing effect of the pitot tubes. [sondas de medição de velocidade da aeronave], which, clogged with ice crystals, stopped working in just one minute. In response, the co-pilot forced the plane to climb and sway to the side.” Another alarm was then sounded, warning of the aircraft losing lift “and destabilizing the crew”.

This is followed by the Altitude Deviation Alert, which has already sounded earlier due to a false altitude loss. However, this time the reason was the opposite: the plane climbed to a higher altitude than usual, he said. In the darkness of dawn, “you can imagine that the pilot does not notice” the difference, the expert explains.

However, the continuous loss alarm starts to sound again, this time for 54 seconds. And when the plane reaches an altitude of 11,600 meters, it stops lifting. “We had hectic navigation, completely erratic.” The captain, called by the crew, returns to the cabin. “We lost control of the plane,” he was told.

The plane “fell at a speed of 4.5 km per minute, which was a significant speed,” the expert explained. “For the next two minutes before the impact, misunderstanding reigned, the situation was confusing,” he said.

The ground approach alarm is then sounded and the pilots respond by attempting to raise the aircraft. “There was a dialogue between the crew to the end to try to understand what was going on,” said an expert heard at Wednesday’s meeting.

He concludes that the plane crashed into the sea at a speed of 300 km/h almost horizontally.

After the explanations, the experts released a digital reconstruction, and during those four and a half minutes silence reigned in the room, according to an AFP correspondent.

Despite differences in some of the conclusions between one of the experts and the rest, the conclusions of all clearly cast doubt on the role of Air France and Airbus regarding pitot tube freezing.

Soften to Dor

Among the 489 private charges in this trial, which will last until December 8, is that of Carl de Vivo, 32, and his sister, who lost their mother in the accident.

“We want Airbus and Air France to admit their guilt in this case. Our goal is to ease our pain a little so that they admit that they handled the situation wrong, that they didn’t make a change. [técnicas] required [para evitar o acidente]”, De Vivo told the EFE news agency minutes before the opening of the court.

For De Vivo, who lost his mother as a teenager, this is not compensation, as Air France has already provided it to them, but an admission of guilt by both companies, allowing the family to move on. “What I feel today is sadness, because it is a return to a painful past,” Carl de Vivo added.

This lawsuit comes 13 years after the accident due to a long period of investigation ending in 2019 after several expert opinions in which the case against two multinational corporations was frozen.

The investigating judges then determined that the misinterpretation of the situation by the pilots was to blame for the crash and therefore considered the airline inappropriate. [Air France]the owner of the damaged device or its assembler [Airbus] to court.

However, appeals filed by the families and the French prosecutor’s office allowed the dismissal of the case to be declared invalid thanks to the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal and put Air France and Airbus in the dock.

Both companies will defend their innocence in court.

According to the conclusions of the Civil Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis Authority (BEA), the accident of the Airbus A330 aircraft, which occurred on June 1, 2009, when the aircraft was flying over the Atlantic Ocean, occurred after the aircraft’s airspeed sensors hovered, so the pilots did not receive this information [sobre a velocidade do aparelho] when passing through the turbulence zone.

The pilots did not apply the appropriate protocol and raised the craft until it was level, out of support and in freefall 1150 km off the coast of Recife (Northeast Brazil).

The pilots thought they were gaining altitude when in fact they were losing altitude.

The disaster killed 228 people (216 passengers and 12 crew members) of 33 different nationalities, including an infant and seven children, of which 73 were French and 58 Brazilians.

*With Lusa and AFP