bound for Paris For my understanding of the details of Air France Flight 447, I am indebted to numerous experts, including William Langewiesche, Steve Casner, Christopher Wickens, and Mica Endsley. I also drew heavily on a number of publications: William Langewiesche, “The Human Factor,” Vanity Fair, October 2014; Nicola Clark, “Report Cites Cockpit Confusion in Air France Crash,” The New York Times, July 6, 2012; Nicola Clark, “Experts Say Pilots Need More Air Crisis Training,” The New York Times, November 21, 2011; Kim Willsher, “Transcripts Detail the Final Moments of Flight from Rio,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2011; Nick Ross and Neil Tweedie, “Air France Flight 447: ‘Damn It, We’re Going to Crash,’?” The Daily Telegraph, May 1, 2012; “Air France Flight 447: When All Else Fails, You Still Have to Fly the Airplane,” Aviation Safety, March 1, 2011; “Concerns over Recovering AF447 Recorders,” Aviation Week, June 3, 2009; Flight Crew Operating Manual, Airbus 330—Systems—Maintenance System; Tim Vasquez, “Air France Flight 447: A Detailed Meteorological Analysis,” Weather Graphics, June 3, 2009, http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/; Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, “Air France Flight #447: Did Weather Play a Role in the Accident?” CIMSS Satellite Blog, June 1, 2009, http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/2601; Richard Woods and Matthew Campbell, “Air France 447: The Computer Crash,” The Times, June 7, 2009; “AF 447 May Have Come Apart Before Crash,” Associated Press, June 3, 2009; Wil S. Hylton, “What Happened to Air France Flight 447?” The New York Times Magazine, May 4, 2011; “Accident Description F-GZC,” Flight Safety Foundation, Web; “List of Passengers Aboard Lost Air France Flight,” Associated Press, June 4, 2009; “Air France Jet ‘Did Not Break Up in Mid-Air,’ Air France Crash: First Official Airbus A330 Report Due by Air Investigations and Analysis Office,” Sky News, July 2, 2009; Matthew Wald, “Clues Point to Speed Issues in Air France Crash,” The New York Times, June 7, 2009; Air France, “AF 447 RIO-PARIS-CDG, Pitot Probes,” October 22, 2011, http://corporate.airfrance.com/en/press/af-447-rio-paris-cdg/pitot-probes/; Edward Cody, “Airbus Recommends Airlines Replace Speed Sensors,” The Washington Post, July 31, 2009; Jeff Wise, “What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447,” Popular Mechanics, December 6, 2011; David Kaminski-Morrow, “AF447 Stalled but Crew Maintained Nose-Up Attitude,” Flight International, May 27, 2011; David Talbot, “Flight 447’s Fatal Attitude Problem,” Technology Review, May 27, 2011; Glenn Pew, “Air France 447—How Did This Happen?” AVweb, May 27, 2011; Bethany Whitfield, “Air France 447 Stalled at High Altitude, Official BEA Report Confirms,” Flying, May 27, 2011; Peter Garrison, “Air France 447: Was It a Deep Stall?” Flying, June 1, 2011; Gerald Traufetter, “Death in the Atlantic: The Last Four Minutes of Air France Flight 447,” Spiegel Online, February 25, 2010; Nic Ross and Jeff Wise, “How Plane Crash Forensics Lead to Safer Aviation,” Popular Mechanics, December 18, 2009; Interim Report on the Accident on 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 Registered F-GZCP Operated by Air France Flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro–Paris (Paris: Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile [BEA], 2012); Interim Report No. 3 on the Accident on 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 registered F-GZCP Operated by Air France Flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro–Paris (Paris: BEA, 2011); Final Report on the Accident on 1st June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 Registered F-GZCP Operated by Air France Flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro–Paris (Paris: BEA, 2012); “Appendix 1 to Final Report on the Accident on 1st June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 Registered F-GZCP Operated by Air France Flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro–Paris” (Paris: BEA, July 2012); Lost: The Mystery of Flight 447, BBC One, June 2010; “Crash of Flight 447,” Nova, 2010, produced by Nacressa Swan; “Air France 447, One Year Out,” Nova, 2010, produced by Peter Tyson.
flying them home Air France has argued that it is inappropriate to blame pilot error as the primary cause for the crash of Flight 447. (This perspective is disputed by numerous aviation experts.) Air France was presented with a complete list of questions regarding details discussed in this chapter. The airline declined to comment on issues that fell outside of those topics discussed in the official report regarding Air France Flight 447 published by the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile, or BEA, which is the French authority responsible for investigating aviation accidents. In a statement, a spokesman for Air France wrote: “It is essential to remember that the BEA investigation report, the only official and public investigation to date, discusses and develops many of the subjects mentioned [in this chapter]. This report is available on the BEA website in English. We can only direct the journalist to this report to supplement our answers.”
rotated responsibilities In response to questions, a spokesman for Air France noted that automation on long-haul aircraft preceded the A330 by twenty years, and that at one time “the crew included a flight engineer, who was responsible for monitoring all aircraft systems during the flight. On modern aircraft, the flight engineer has disappeared, but the requirement of monitoring aircraft systems remains. This is carried out by the pilots. Finally, now as in the past, beyond a certain flight time the crew is reinforced by one or more additional pilots to enable each pilot to take a rest period.”
crashed after takeoff Isabel Wilkerson, “Crash Survivor’s Psychic Pain May Be the Hardest to Heal,” The New York Times, August 22, 1987; Mike Householder, “Survivor of 1987 Mich. Plane Crash Breaks Silence,” Associated Press, May 15, 2013.
One hundred and one people Ninety-nine people were killed instantly in this crash. Two later died from complications.
into the Everglades Ken Kaye, “Flight 401 1972 Jumbo Jet Crash Was Worst Aviation Disaster in State History,” Sun Sentinel, December 29, 1992.
other human errors Aviation Safety Network, NTSB records.
ascended by three thousand feet In response to questions, a spokesman for Air France wrote: “It has not been shown by the BEA that the action to pitch up is the result of the pilot’s actions faced with the rolling of the aircraft, but rather the loss of altitude read, the vertical speed on descent of 600 ft per minute, the noise, the pitch that had diminished during the seconds before etc.”
said Bonin In response to questions, a spokesman for Air France wrote: “What is written is true, but does not throw light comprehensively on this phase because of the lack of some essential elements, such as the fact that the STALL alarm went off twice at the beginning of the incident which may have led the pilots to doubt its validity when it went off repeatedly. The BEA report stated that audio alarms are not ‘unmissable’ and that on the contrary they are often the first to be ignored.”
watching the kids Zheng Wang and John M. Tchernev, “The ‘Myth’ of Media Multitasking: Reciprocal Dynamics of Media Multitasking, Personal Needs, and Gratifications,” Journal of Communication 62, no. 3 (2012): 493–513; Daniel T. Willingham, Cognition: The Thinking Animal, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, 2007).
by automation Juergan Kiefer et al., “Cognitive Heuristics in Multitasking Performance,” Center of Human-Machine Systems, Technische Universit?t Berlin, 2014, http://www.prometei.de/fileadmin/prometei.de/publikationen/Kiefer_eurocogsci2007.pdf.
automaticity and focus Barnaby Marsh et al., “Cognitive Heuristics: Reasoning the Fast and Frugal Way,” in The Nature of Reasoning, eds. J. P. Leighton and R. J. Sternberg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); “Human Performance,” Aerostudents, http://aerostudents.com/files/humanMachineSystems/humanPerformance.pdf.
misstep can be tragic For more on this topic, I particularly recommend Martin Sarter, Ben Givens, and John P. Bruno, “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Sustained Attention: Where Top-Down Meets Bottom-Up,” Brain Research Reviews 35, no. 2 (2001): 146–60; Michael I. Posner and Steven E. Petersen, “The Attention System of the Human Brain,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 13, no. 1 (1990): 25–42; Eric I. Knudsen, “Fundamental Components of Attention,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 30 (2007): 57–78; Steven E. Petersen and Michael I. Posner, “The Attention System of the Human Brain: 20 Years After,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 35 (2012): 73; Raja Parasuraman, Robert Molloy, and Indramani L. Singh, “Performance Consequences of Automation-Induced ‘Complacency,’?” The International Journal of Aviation Psychology 3, no. 1 (1993): 1–23; Raymond S. Nickerson et al., Handbook of Applied Cognition, ed. Francis T. Durso (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2007); Christopher D. Wickens, “Attention in Aviation,” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institute of Aviation, Research Gate, February 1987, http://www.researchgate.net/publication/4683852_Attention_in_aviation; Christopher D. Wickens, “The Psychology of Aviation Surprise: An 8 Year Update Regarding the Noticing of Black Swans,” Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, 2009.
critical than ever before Ludwig Reinhold Geissler, “The Measurement of Attention,” The American Journal of Psychology (1909): 473–529; William A. Johnston and Steven P. Heinz, “Flexibility and Capacity Demands of Attention,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 107, no. 4 (1978): 420; Robin A. Barr, “How Do We Focus Our Attention?” The American Journal of Psychology (1981): 591–603.
panicked attention G. R. Dirkin, “Cognitive Tunneling: Use of Visual Information Under Stress,” Perceptual and Motor Skills 56, no. 1 (1983): 191–98; David C. Foyle, Susan R. Dowell, and Becky L. Hooey, “Cognitive Tunneling in Head-Up Display (HUD) Superimposed Symbology: Effects of Information Location” (2001); Adrien Mack and Irvin Rock, Inattentional Blindness (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000); Steven B. Most, Brian J. Scholl, Daniel J. Simons, and Erin R. Clifford, “What You See Is What You Get: Sustained Inattentional Blindness and the Capture of Awareness,” Psychological Review 112, no. 1 (2005): 217–42; Daniel J. Simons, “Attentional Capture and Inattentional Blindness,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4, no. 4 (2000): 147–55; Gustav Kuhn and Benjamin W. Tatler, “Misdirected by the Gap: The Relationship Between Inattentional Blindness and Attentional Misdirection,” Consciousness and Cognition 20, no. 2 (2011): 432–36; William J. Horrey and Christopher D. Wickens, “Examining the Impact of Cell Phone Conversations on Driving Using Meta-Analytic Techniques,” Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 48, no. 1 (2006): 196–205.
red light ahead G. D. Logan, “An Instance Theory of Attention and Memory,” Psychological Review 109 (2002): 376–400; D. L. Strayer and F. A. Drews, “Attention,” Handbook of Applied Cognition, ed. Francis T. Durso (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2007); A. D. Baddeley, “Selective Attention and Performance in Dangerous Environments,” British Journal of Psychology 63 (1972): 537–46; E. Goldstein, Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience (Independence, Ky.: Cengage Learning, 2014).