Originally Posted by
suninmyeyes
Just a suggestion as I have seen a similar thing happen on a 777. One pilot is manually flying and the aircraft is on an intercept heading for the localiser. He asks the other pilot to arm the localiser. The P2 accidentally pushes the button next to it which is the autopilot engage button. The buttons are identical, small and square. The autopilot then engages and will maintain the same heading and descent rate and they will go through the localiser.
The pilot flying then thinks the controls have frozen. It is a busy time for the crew and there is a high workload. The warning you hear is the config warning which is probably because land flap was selected just before the gear had locked down. You then hear the autopilot disconnect warning which is at the point where things probably started to return to normal where the crew realised what had happened. I am not saying this is exactly what happened but from my experience and the noises it would be a plausible scenario.
I too think it is unlikely that there was a major control problem with the 777 and that is was more likely to be finger trouble. However we are all human and it would be wrong to specifically blame Air France. The autopilot engage buttons for both Captain and copilot, the autothrottle engage button and the localiser and approach buttons are all the same small square button. Yes on takeoff at Lagos the Air France crew accidentally pushed the autopilot engage button instead of the autothrottle button and thought the controls had jammed and rejected the takeoff bursting tires. They are not the only airline to have done that and Boeing have changed the logic to stop that particular error being made again.
suninyoureyes,
All very plausible, but since when are people not checking their FMAs any more? I just don‘t get it, especially on heavy jets where in reality you only end up after having learned the job and learned from mistakes one made on smaller jets. At AF it takes years to get onto the triple fleet….
And, as was said before, any control or flightcontrols problem would have lead to extensive checklist work after the missed, and that did not happen.
This event should be cleared up asap.