Originally Posted by
JD-EE
slats11, I suspected that this problem was known and a suitable bludgeon was needed to get the airlines to switch rapidly. I noticed the pilots unions got on the BEA, AirBus, and the airlines pretty quickly, too. So they took advantage of a handy crisis to get the job done. (God that sounds slimy.) And, indeed, it probably did need doing.
The problem was
definitely known, what isn't known (yet) is whether it caused this crash - however with the known problem and the ACARS messages followed by the crash, no one wanted to take any (further) chances.
[From memory of what I've read] I believe:
AB knew of the problem some time before the crash
AB advised AF (and maybe others?) to fit new model probes.
AF refused to do that without additional tests (that decision may yet come back to haunt them).
By the time of the crash I think the regulators were also involved
By the time of the crash AB had provided test results to AF and AF had, I think, started a replacement program across the fleet
Perhaps more interesting is the ATSB report linked to a few posts back regarding an incident with Goodrich probes. That report seems (to me) to imply that aircraft are flying (possibly regularly) in environments well outside both the certification test region and the manufacturer test region for the pitots. So, that's a known problem too, and wider than the Thales probes ...