Here’s what I said at the end of my last post:

Remember, the pilots were already working to pick their way through the worst of the storms. Add to that the loss of the autopilot, dozens of failure messages, and inconsistent speed readings and it seems like the answer might be simple. The pilots may have been so distracted that they forgot to do the one thing they needed to do to survive: fly the airplane. Once the final report is issued, look for training changes to come out of this and possibly even some changes in the way Airbus puts its airplane logic together.

Sure enough, the focus of the latest report is on training and puts a lot of the blame on Air France, but there is some discussion about aircraft logic as well. This has been enough for the investigators to push out safety recommendations, though not without controversy.

Throughout this 3rd interim report, a picture of normalcy is painted throughout the beginning of the flight. It was noted that when the Captain left to take his rest, he didn’t leave “clear operational instructions” and there was “no explicit task-sharing” between the two remaining pilots, but the crew composition was fine and the aircraft weight and balance was within the proper limits.

As mentioned in the last report, the crew was well aware of the weather ahead and had made course corrections to avoid the worst of it. That’s when things got ugly.

According to the report, the aircraft was flying at the “upper limit of a slightly turbulent cloud layer” when the autopilot disconnected. It’s believed that this happened because the pitot tubes froze over and that gave the aircraft incorrect speed information. When the system can’t make sense of the information it’s being fed, it shuts off autopilot and the pilots have to fly the airplane. Turbulence, however, was not a problem. The plane was perfectly flyable, but poor decision-making fed by weak training brought the airplane down.

Proper procedures were not followed for dealing with unreliable airspeed indication. To make things worse, neither of the two copilots had been trained to properly handle manual flying at high altitude. Despite the stall warning, the pilots continued to apply nose-up pressure, the opposite of what they should have done. In less than a minute, the plane went from being correctable to operating outside the design limits because of the improper recovery efforts by the pilots.

About 1 minute and 30 seconds after the autopilot disconnected, the Captain came back into the cockpit. At this point, stall warnings were going on and off and the airplane was still at 35,000 feet. Unfortunately, it was also losing 10,000 feet per minute as forward speed just disappeared. At times, the aircraft rolled from side to side as the pilots struggled to get the airplane under control. Those in the back must have felt sheer terror. The pilots never made an announcement to the passengers, and soon after, they all plunged into the Atlantic. I get goose bumps just thinking about how awful that must have been.

So after all that, what have we learned? We know the aircraft functioned properly. Were it not for the pitot tubes freezing over, this would have been a routine flight. Even when the pitot tubes failed, had the pilots been able to properly fly the aircraft manually, the passengers probably wouldn’t have even known there was an issue. Out of this, the French accident investigators have released safety recommendations that will need to be implemented by regulators in order to go into effect.

The main recommendation is around training. The idea is to make sure that all pilots have the proper training for manual flight at high altitudes, a skill which is rarely used in commercial aviation today. There is also additional training suggested around stall avoidance and recovery. Additionally, it’s suggested that the role of relief captain should be better-defined when the Captain is on rest. This way, there will be less confusion and more defined task-sharing if something goes wrong.

But the blame wasn’t solely on the training and pilots. One recommendation for aircraft manufacturers is to look at including an angle of attack indicator that pilots can see on the flight deck. There is an indicator showing the angle of the aircraft to the ground, but there isn’t one that shows the angle of the wing as compared to the direction of the air (angle of attack). That could have helped the pilots in their recovery efforts.

One recommendation not made was to revisit the way stall warnings are handled on the A330 aircraft. In fact, the pilots union at Air France is so angry about this being left out that it has decided to stop cooperating with the investigation. The on-and-off nature of the stall warning may have simply added to the confusion, and made it more difficult for the pilots to make the right moves. The investigators say that there wasn’t enough evidence to include this just yet, but it will be discussed in some form in the final report.

Regardless of what comes out in the final report, the picture is already very clear. It seems that current pilot training standards were not enough to help these pilots get out of an entirely recoverable situation. Were the Brazilians running this investigation, they probably would have already filed criminal charges against anyone they could, but the French handle this properly. Find the problem, fix the holes, and make sure that something like this never happens again.

[Photo of Sister Ship to Crashed Airplane via Flickr user Tab59|CC 2.0]

Photo of Sister Ship to Crashed Airplane via Flickr user Tab59|CC 2.0

The French accident investigation group, the BEA, has put out an update on its investigation around what caused Air France 447 to crash (pdf) in the Atlantic back in 2009. Flightglobal has a good minute-by-minute breakdown of what all of the technical verbiage means, but let’s focus here on a few key points.

Pilots Were Not Inexperienced
One thing that has been picked up on elsewhere is that the Captain was not in the cockpit when this all started happening. That’s true, and it’s not a surprise. That’s why there are three pilots on longer flights like these. They rotate taking rest and this was the Captain’s turn. Does that mean that there were two inexperienced fools manning the controls? No. The co-pilots were highly trained and should have been able to handle this situation without needing the Captain. As Flight notes, one of the co-pilots had more time on the A330 than the Captain himself (just not in command). Experience shouldn’t have been the issue.

Turbulence Was Not a Factor
The aircraft went down in an area near strong equatorial storms, so many people assumed that the storms and the likely associated turbulence played a role. That no longer appears to be the case. The pilots were actively working their way around the storms, and while there was turbulence around, it doesn’t appear to have been anything severe. The storm likely did play a role in that it caused the pitot tubes to freeze over. Let’s talk about that . . .

Frozen Pitot Tubes Are the Likely Trigger
I don’t believe this has been officially confirmed, but the belief remains that the pitot tubes froze and that kicked off the problems on the airplane. Pitot tubes are little pokey-looking things that stick off the side of the airplane and measure airspeed. If the pitot tubes froze as expected, then speed readings would have been erratic and incorrect. That would have caused the airplane to shut off the autopilot as happened here. While it is a serious issue, it shouldn’t have cause and accident on its own.

Ultimately, the Pilots Screwed Up
Regardless of what happened with the pitot tubes, what happened next seems just unbelievable and certainly casts a great deal of blame on the pilots even though we won’t have the final report until next year. About 10 minutes before the autopilot shut off, the pilots noted that they couldn’t climb any higher than the 35,000 feet they were at because of their weight and the relatively warm air outside. In other words, if they climbed higher, they wouldn’t be able to generate enough lift. That makes what happens next even more strange.

When the autopilot shut off, the pilots should have worked to keep the plane flying as it was. After all, there wasn’t an actual speed problem but just a speed measurement issue. The engines worked just fine, so it should have been quite possible to keep the airplane on its path. That’s not what happened. Over the next four minutes, the pilots pulled the airplane into a climb and right into a stall and that led to the crash into the ocean. This goes against one of the most basic rules of flight.

When an airplane stalls, that means its angle of attack (the angle of the wing as compared to the direction of the air) is too great. Fixing it is pretty straightforward and it’s something that gets trained at very basic levels. As the FAA says in its Airplane Flying Handbook:

Reducing the angle of attack is the only way of recovering from a stall regardless of the amount of power used.

That means pushing the airplane’s nose down until the air once again runs smoothly over the wings. If you’re at 35,000 feet, don’t worry about losing altitude. Just get the airplane back into normal flight. How do you know if you’re in a stall? This is where the Boeing vs Airbus people will start their “mine is better than yours” fight.

On Boeing airplanes, the control column actually shakes to warn the pilot. (It’s known, unsurprisingly, as a stick shaker.) But most Airbus types, including the A330 that crashed here, operate with little joysticks on the side and these don’t have stick shakers. Instead, there is a very loud verbal warning repeated multiple times. Either way, it shouldn’t be missed. But don’t Airbus airplanes have greater automation to prevent these things anyway? Not in this case.

Airbus normally has automation protection that prevents pilots from doing something stupid like going into a steep climb in a situation like this, but those protections weren’t in effect because of the inaccurate airspeed readings. That pushed the airplane into Alternate Law which shuts down many of the protections that are in place during Normal Law.

When the Captain got back into the cockpit, the airplane had an angle of attack at an incredibly high 40 degrees and it was losing 10,000 feet per minute in altitude. Despite his best efforts to recover, it was a failed effort. The airplane hit the water with its nose up 16 degrees but still losing more than 10,000 feet per minute in altitude. I can’t imagine how awful those few minutes were for the passengers.

But the Pilots Aren’t To Be Blamed Completely
The final report hasn’t been issued and won’t be until next year, but it’s easy to see from this that the pilots and the pitot tubes were the two biggest contributors. Why did the pilots continue to apply nose-up pressure when that was the exact opposite of what would have happened? We’ll never know what was running through their heads, but it’s easy to see that they could have been distracted.

Remember, the pilots were already working to pick their way through the worst of the storms. Add to that the loss of the autopilot, dozens of failure messages, and inconsistent speed readings and it seems like the answer might be simple. The pilots may have been so distracted that they forgot to do the one thing they needed to do to survive: fly the airplane. Once the final report is issued, look for training changes to come out of this and possibly even some changes in the way Airbus puts its airplane logic together.

When you see headlines like “As Mubarak hangs on to power, Cairo’s residents fear lawlessness,” and “Looting Engulfs Cairo, Other Egyptian Cities,” it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to go to Cairo for tourism in the immediate future. Stories are surfacing about mass chaos in the airports and officials requiring bribes to allow people to get on planes out of the country. It could be months before stability returns. Some airlines recognized that and treated their customers properly. British Airways, for example, posted these options for its customers::

• Change the date of travel to a later date up to 28 February 2011.
• Cancel your booking and obtain a refund to the original form of payment.
• Use the value of your ticket towards the purchase of a new ticket to any other destination.
• If you are due to travel in or out of Cairo you may choose to travel in or out of Sharm El Sheikh.

That’s the kind of flexible policy that should be commended. BA gave its customers a lot of options, regardless of whether the flight was canceled or not. Then there’s Air France. Air France treated this like a weather event and posted this policy:

Despite the current situation in Egypt, our flights to and from Cairo continue to operate. However we are compelled to modify the schedules to comply with the curfew instated by the Egyptian authorities.
Please check your flight schedule on this website by clicking “Flight & destination information”.

Moreover, if you hold a ticket to travel to and from Cairo between January 28 and February 04, 2011, we have implemented commercial instructions that enable you to modify and/or postpone your journey. Please contact your point of sales.

Unless your flight was canceled, the only option for customers was to “modify or postpone” the journey. Air France is looking at this as a simple business issue instead of a complex scenario that demands additional flexibility. Instead of realizing the magnitude of the problem, it simply threw out an inadequate policy and refused to give reservation agents the necessary power to alter it. What’s even more strange is that wholly-owned subsidiary KLM seems to have a more flexible policy, though I didn’t put that to the test.

We had two Cranky Concierge clients that were scheduled to fly Air France to Cairo for a couple days and then go on to Rwanda for some charity work. They thought it would be best to simply bypass Cairo and go straight to Rwanda, but Air France wouldn’t allow it. Air France also wouldn’t give a refund, so the client had two choices. Go as scheduled or postpone the flight to Cairo. The latter obviously wasn’t viable because they still needed to be in Rwanda. Allowing a refund or even putting the funds back into a credit would have been perfectly fine but that also wasn’t allowed. Most of the agents we spoke with were actually Delta agents handling Air France in the US. They were very apologetic but said their hands were tied.

Eventually, after a couple of days of trying, we were able to use our agency relationship to get someone in the Preferred Account Services desk to help mere hours before their scheduled departure from Boston. Those people should be commended, because they were the only ones willing to help. Most travelers don’t have access to those services, however. To make things even more frustrating, we later found the Cairo flight did cancel, but not until hours after our clients would have been on their way to Paris from the US. What a nightmare.

Come on Air France. Even easyJet allowed customers to have a ticket refunded into a credit that could be used anytime in the next year. Your kind of restrictive policy has no place in a very fluid, dangerous situation like this one. These types of crises need quick responses with flexible options.

Let’s start with BA. There’s no question that the strike sucks. A lot of flights have been canceled, but according to BA, all flights that were planned to operate have operated. The cabin crew’s union, however, says that it’s mass chaos. Who to believe? Probably the airline. For example, Unite says “By 2pm, only one flight to JFK airport had departed – normally there are five.” That’s not true. there are normally five flights per day on Saturday but only 3 are scheduled before 2p. Two of those were canceled so yes, only 1 flight operated, but the last two flights which were scheduled after 2p operated as well. I believe that was the plan.

BA has also done a very good job with its policies here. Anyone who wanted to change or get a refund was welcome to do so without penalty long before they even knew if the strike would actually happen. They have been putting out flight status information 8 full days in advance so you can really know if your flight can be expected to go or not and make alternate plans with plenty of advance notice. We have a Cranky Concierge client flying on the 29th and his flight is going so far. It’s just nice to know that the information is there and they’ve been able to maintain their schedule.

BA CEO Willie Walsh is putting out daily video updates on the strike talking about how things are going (well, in his opinion). The video communication adds a nice touch, I think.

The airline has even gone as far as buying Google keywords. Search for “ba strike” and you’ll see this:

That takes you to a page with BA strike updates. They are also putting updates out via Twitter. It’s been an impressive effort in an awful situation.

Now let’s talk about Air France. It’s just pathetic in comparison. Air France cabin crews have said they’ll strike March 28-31, perfectly timed to overlap with the second half of the BA strike. (French and British cooperating?!? The world is ending.) So how is Air France handling this? They aren’t.

If you go to their website, you won’t even find a mention of the strike, at least not anywhere I’ve found. We have another Cranky Concierge client flying on Air France on May 31, so we decided to look into the possibility of pushing the trip one day to happen after the strike.

First, I tried to tweet Air France to see if they were allowing changes for people traveling during the strike period. I never received a response. So I called Air France a couple days later and they informed me that since they don’t know if the strike will happen, they aren’t allowing any changes. If the strike happens, then you can change. Something tells me that if the strike happens, things will be much worse for passengers on Air France than they have been for BA passengers. Then again, maybe French passengers are used to it since striking is a national tradition.

So, kudos to British Airways for dealing with an awful situation quite well and Air France, boo on you.

• Air France #447, operated by a 4-year-old A330, left Rio at 703p bound for Paris
• The airplane was off the coast of Brazil, beyond radar coverage when it hit some rough weather
• Something bad happened and a bunch of technical faults were automatically sent to Air France, but the pilots never sent a distress message
• The plane never arrived in Paris

Really, that’s all we know. And remember, while there were storms in the area alongside reports of strong turbulence, we have nothing to indicate that turbulence caused the accident. Also, those automated technical fault messages that were received by Air France stating that there had been an electrical problem and pressurization was lost (among other things)? Even if that did happen (false reports are always possible), we still have no clue why any of that happened, and there could be a million explanations.

There were no distress calls from the pilots, and I can only think of three reasons that might happen. Either the radios failed (highly unlikely), the pilots did this on purpose (even more unlikely), or it happened so fast that there wasn’t even time for a radio call (most likely). It makes me sick just thinking about what it was like on that plane toward the end.

I think it’s safe to say that this isn’t going to end up like the TV show “Lost.” This airplane is likely in a million pieces scattered on and in the Atlantic Ocean. At some point, search teams will find a debris field, and they might be able to put together some fact-based theories. But the true jewel here will be the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder; the so-called black boxes. Those might be at the bottom of the ocean, but hopefully they’ll be recovered with good data still retrievable. Without those, it’s going to be incredibly hard to figure out what really happened.

Right now, the list of suspects is long, and it’s certainly baffling. Airplanes just don’t fall out of the sky, not even during severe turbulence. There were other airplanes flying through the area that made it safely, and I’m sure those pilots will be interviewed. For example, Iberia 6024 left Rio for Madrid 20 minutes after the Air France flight. Lufthansa 507 left Sao Paulo for Frankfurt about half an hour before the Air France flight, so they might have been fairly close to each other. Air France itself had another A330 leave Sao Paulo for Paris only 27 minutes later. And these are just some of the aircraft in the neighborhood.

Hopefully we will learn more about what happened here, because none of the theories that keep being flung out there by the media seem to make sense on their own. As always, this will end up being a series of different problems that come together to form a true catastrophe.

Last October, I asked you all whether we should fly Air France or Air Tahiti Nui down. Air France won out, and that’s what we did thanks to a slightly lower business class fare ($2825.41 per person) and a better schedule. This was the first time I’ve ever paid for a business class ticket outright, so my expectations may have been higher than normal, but it just wasn’t up to snuff.

Our flight out was at 1030p, so we decided to get there at 830p so we’d have a little time in the lounge beforehand. There was no line to check in at that time, but Terminal 2 at LAX still doesn’t have inline baggage screening. So we had to lug our bags over to the machine and drop them off. Though the TSA said we could leave, there was a huge pile of bags and we didn’t trust them. We waited.

Flight crews kept dropping their bags off and then more people on other flights came as well and had to wait in a long line to even drop their bags off. It took us 20 minutes before we saw our bag go through the machine, and only then did we make our way through a short but slow security line on our way to the lounge.

The lounge is currently the Northwest lounge, but Northwest should be heading for greener pastures (Delta’s terminal) in June. I assume Air France/KLM will become the primary tenant, and I hope they’ll do some serious work on the place. One thing they can’t fix is that it’s too small. Our one flight with a couple stragglers from other Northwest flights basically filled the place up.

What they can fix is the awful state of the lounge. The rugs are threadbare, the seating and tables are old and scratched up, and the lighting is bad. We did have some wine to pass the time, but the enjoyment was dampened when I had to sit on a table to drink it.

As we finished our drinks, they called our flight for boarding, so we headed down and used the premium cabin boarding line. The agent apparently decided we weren’t premium enough and tried to push us out of the way to allow first class passengers ahead of us. Ok.

Once in the air, my wife, Kirsten, and I had another drink, so we had a bit of a nice buzz going as we played with the entertainment system. It wasn’t particularly easy to navigate. Yes, it had movies, music, etc, but getting around them was somewhat clunky. And it’s not organized very well. For example, something in “latest” movies that was a comedy couldn’t also be found under “comedy,” so it required some hunting and pecking, even though the selection was fairly limited.

As I got into my movie (The Wrestler – great flick), dinner was served. I wasn’t very hungry, but since it was dinner time in Tahiti, I decided to at least have something. The foie gras appetizer was ok, and the beef was actually pretty good. Kirsten, however, had that night’s special which was lamb, and I thought that was really good. Still, since I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t really pay too much attention to the food. Kirsten, on the other hand, paid close attention and didn’t think it was very good.

After the meal, I tried to sleep, but that wasn’t going to happen. This was my first time in an angled lie-flat seat and I just couldn’t sleep in it. I kept sliding down in my pants, and the amount of weight that ended up being put on my feet into the footrest prevented me from getting comfortable. It just didn’t feel flat to me. I put the bed back into a cradle-style position and had slightly more success, sleeping on and off for a couple hours.

About an hour and a half out, they woke us all up for breakfast. Now, I understand airlines feel the need to bracket you on both ends with food, but breakfast at midnight Tahitian time (same as Hawai’i time – 3 hours behind LA) made very little sense. Still I was actually feeling hungry at this point, so I had some – it was just a croissant with some fruit.

Around 3a, we started our descent into the black night. This was probably the worst possible flight for sightseeing on the ground and the descent was no different. It was only about 2 minutes before landing that I saw my first light on land, and we touched down at 345a into an airport that was just waking up.

After getting our bags, we entered into the worst part of the trip – the wait for our next flight. We had about 2 hours in a hot, humid, still airport before our 6a trip out to another island and we had nothing to do but wait. I’ll have more on the interisland flights in a later report, but let’s skip ahead to the return on Air France two weeks later.

We were told to get to the airport around 2 hours before departure, but we thought about not taking that warning too seriously. I’m really glad we did, because it was a complete mess over there.

It took 20 minutes to return the car we had rented for a day, and then it was another 30 minutes in the premium check-in line before we reached an agent to check Kirsten’s bag. (As usual, I only carried on, even for a two week trip.) The economy line was much worse (at left) and there were a lot of angry people around as the line barely moved.

Once checked in, we went to the lounge which is shared by all carriers at the airport. This one was much nicer than the one in LA with big comfy chairs and plenty of room. (It was recently expanded.) I took this shot out the window with Moorea in the background. Yes, it was hard to leave this place.

Soon they called boarding, so we went downstairs to find the absurdly numbered gate 61. There are basically five or six doors in a holdroom and for some reason they decided they needed a gate 61. It’s not fooling anyone into thinking this is a big airport.

So he came on and knew the problem right away. He dug in and pulled out a dirty fork, knife, and spoon and said it happens all the time. Nasty. It still wouldn’t close, however, but at least it wasn’t sticking out as far. I felt bad thinking I was holding up the plane to fix the tray, but they assured me that wasn’t the case. They were still waiting for nine passengers to show up – they were stuck in that horrible line at the ticket counter. They said this was pretty normal.

We finally got in the air and headed north. It was a nice morning, but apparently Air France thought it was time to serve lunch. So we had a full lunch service, and I had the lamb this time which was pretty good. I had a little morning scotch (why not?) and settled in for a day of watching movies.

Kirsten also wanted to watch movies, but her headphones weren’t working right (the noise-canceling feature was cutting in and out). The design Air France uses for their seat has the headphones built in to it so you can’t swap them out. Instead, they brought a coach headset forward to plug into an extra jack that’s in each seat. At least they were very apologetic, but it was an inferior headset.

After the meal, the flight attendants basically disappeared into the galley and didn’t check on us much at all for the bulk of the flight. To be fair, about halfway through, we plowed into some nasty turbulence that didn’t let up for probably about an hour. (Thank you, weather.com for your mapping goodness.)

This was some pretty rough stuff that would probably be categorized as moderate turbulence, if not a little worse for brief periods. So for quite awhile, the crew couldn’t get up. But even when that was done, I still had to get up to ask for a drink refill. (After turbulence like that, I needed another drink. I am somewhat of an anxious flier, believe it or not.)

We did see them again when they served a light meal a couple hours out of LA. And when they finished, they even tried to take my half-full glass of scotch for some unknown reason. I wasn’t having any of that.

Toward the end, one of the flight attendants did come around and personally asked how everyone was doing – just some small talk that was a nice gesture. They also handed out a survey to a select few which I filled out just as we were crossing the coast. We came in from the south and then landed on the north runways.

It was easy to get through immigration but the customs lines were incredibly long and there were a lot of tired and angry faces patiently waiting to get out of there after long flights. About 20 minutes later, we were on our way home.

I’ll have the rest of the trip ready for you soon.

Premium Voyageur just sounds fancy, right? I mean, without that last “u” in there, it’s just plain, old “Premium Voyager,” and that would have been boring. Of course I’m kidding. I don’t care what you call it as long as the product is good. Take a look:

They’ve gone with a shell seat that will apparently recline into itself (up to 123 degrees). The seat is about an inch or two wider than average – about 19 inches – and the armrests are wider so you don’t have to fight your neighbor. A 38 inch seat pitch seems to be about standard for premium economy. (Note: I’m talking about a real premium economy class and not United’s Economy Plus.) Some amenities come from business (now branded Affaires) class. You get a little travel kit when you fly, and you’ll get a bottle of water, noise-reducing headphones, and a better pillow and blanket. The food, however, is strictly coach class.

As you would probably hope, the benefit isn’t just on the aircraft. You get priority check-in at the airport, priority baggage delivery, and all that other fun stuff that comes with being a premium traveler.

Overall, it looks like they’ve done a nice job As budgets tighten, many business class travelers may look at this as a decent option. They gave some sample pricing of about $1,400 on a roundtrip from Paris to New York, so that can save thousands over a higher class of service.

But I’d bet they’re really looking at this as an opportunity for coach passengers to buy up. At least, that’s how the seat map looks. The business and first class cabins are keeping the same number of seats while the coach cabin loses. On a 777, coach loses 50 seats in coach and gains 28 Premium Voyageur instead.

These seats will be up for sale on some routes on April 1 with installations starting soon after. Looks like Paris to New York, Tokyo, and Osaka will get outfitted first.

I believe that’s one of the biggest registrations I’ve seen painted on a modern airplane. Still, it looks pretty good to me. This shot comes courtesy of Guillaume Besnard. Click to see more of his photos. I’ll be back on Monday as usual.