The Human Factor – the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447

Recently there have been many articles and different takes on the AF447 crash. To anyone who is truly interested I would highly recommend to read the official Final Report [1] as it gives a much more nuanced and complete picture than the journalistic dramatizations and heavy handed simplification.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/rapport.final.en.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bea.aero&#x2F;en&#x2F;enquetes&#x2F;flight.af.447&#x2F;rapport.final....</a>

<i>a flight attendant walked in, asking that the temperature in the baggage hold be lowered because she was carrying some meat in her suitcase. Bonin lowered the temperature. Fifteen minutes later a flight attendant called the cockpit on the intercom to report that passengers in the back were cold. Bonin mentioned the meat in the baggage hold.</i><p>This is a bit douchy, no? Or is it common practice?

So it appears that the co-pilot was very agitated and possibly having a mild panic attack, at least from the perspective of the story. On that night, it would appear that he needed to be relieved of duty and someone else handle the flying since the thunderstorm seemed to scare him and make him agitated. Had the captain flown through the storm, I bet 447 would have landed without incident.

I feel like this exact same problem is going to be encountered when automatic cars are introduced. Automatic systems will be good enough to take care of 98% of situations, but in the 2% when the system is just not good enough, the humans will not fare much better, if at all. Good drivers will still exist, average drivers will remain average, while people who should never be in command of a moving vehicle will now be &quot;driving&quot;.Only very few of them will be able to cope with truly critical situations. Of course all of that will be dismissed on the basis of automatic cars saving innumerable human lives, but I believe we will observe the exact same phenomenon.

Being a privat pilot myself, I was fascinated by the story of AF Flight 447 from both a human and technical point of view, since many times, a combination of these two factors would eventually lead to an unpleasant situation.<p>This documentary about AF Flight 447 is the best I found so far: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsgyBqlFixo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TsgyBqlFixo</a><p>...including the last words of the pilots.

&gt; As if the buffet weren’t enough of an indication, the stall warning erupted again, alternating between STALL STALL STALL and a chirping sound.<p>Off topic but how does the airplane know it&#x27;s stalling if the airspeed indicators are not working?

I don&#x27;t have much experience with the 330, but I assume it had some sort of stall-recovery mechanism, like a stick pusher. Why did it not override the pilots&#x27; inputs and force a pitch-down?<p>Also, the 330 is not equipped with pitot heaters? The military aircraft (simulators) that I&#x27;ve messed with will start to complain if you don&#x27;t have the pitot heaters on, well before you ever leave the ground.

From the article: &quot;fourth-generation jets have enabled people who probably never had the skills to begin with and should not have been in the cockpit&quot;<p>To me, as an experienced pilot, that says it all.

We can&#x27;t have a discussion about the human factors in automated systems without talking about Sidney Dekker&#x27;s book The Field Guide To Understand Human Error:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error/dp/0754648257" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error&#x2F;...</a><p>Fantastic read about the futility of placing blame on a single human in a catastrophe like this. It makes a strong case for why more automation often causes more work. Definitely worth checking out, Etsy has applied it to their engineering work by using it to facilitate blameless post mortems:<p><a href="http://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeascraft.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;05&#x2F;22&#x2F;blameless-postmortems&#x2F;</a>