HI
The New Zealand pilots' union says it feels more confident about the French investigation of the Air New Zealand Airbus crash now its own expert is joining the French team. An interim report released yesterday by the French civil aviation authority, the BEA, suggesting pilot error caused the crash, has upset Air New Zealand and the Air Line Pilots' Association (Alpa), which is sending its own pilot expert investigator to France.
"This gives us greater confidence in the accident investigation process under way," said Alpa executive director Rick Mirkin, who stressed the investigation had reached no conclusions.
Speculation on the cause of the accident would not only be improper but potentially misleading and damaging to the feelings and reputations of parties involved, he said.
The New Zealand Transport Accident Investigation Commission already has an investigator on the French team.
The crash on November 27 last year killed all seven people on board; two German pilots and five New Zealanders, four of them Air New Zealand staff and the other, a Civil Aviation Authority inspector.
Two of the Air NZ engineers on the flight were from Christchurch.
The pilots had taken the aircraft for a check flight as required by the lease under which XL had hired the aircraft from Air New Zealand.
The German XL Airways pilot and co-pilot were in charge of the aircraft although Air New Zealand pilot Brian Horrell, 52, was "in the middle seat" issuing instructions for the tests required, the report said.
The flight was shortened because some checks could not be performed in general air traffic and, on its approach to Perpignan aerodrome, it plunged into the sea.
The report, which is essentially a safety briefing, suggests the Airbus crew was flying too low and doing complicated checks while also preparing a landing approach to the aerodrome.
The crew did not want to land at Perpignan, but intended to "go around" and carry on to Frankfurt.
The German captain at one stage questioned doing the slow-speed tests but began them three minutes before the crash after descending from cloud.
An Air New Zealand spokesman last night denied its captain on the flight deck had asked the German pilots to carry out a slow airspeed test at a dangerously low altitude.
"The report gives some information about the German pilot asking the New Zealand pilot a question it does not outline specifically what was recorded on the flight-data recorder," he said.
The pilots needed to do a slow-speed test to check that an automatic thrust would activate when the slowest safe speed was reached.
Although Airbus's delivery manual specified the checks should be done at 10,000 feet to 14,000ft, the crew had the aircraft at about 3000ft.
The report says a lack of rules about such check flights have meant crew qualifications are not stipulated and test procedures can be improvised.
Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe has criticised the release of the report before the victims' families have seen it, and its findings. He would complain to the director of the investigation and to France's Ministry of Transport about the way the report was published.
The airline had not been allowed to give any insight into the actions of the crew and nor had its specialists been given access to the flight recorders' data.
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