'Baby' pilot at controls of doomed Air France Airbus | The Australian
HE was one of Air France's "company babies": a dashing 32-year-old junior pilot - and a keen amateur yachtsman - who had been qualified to fly the airline's ultra-sophisticated Airbus A330 jet for barely a year.
Yet despite his inexperience, Pierre-Cedric Bonin found himself responsible for the lives of 228 passengers and crew members on June 1, 2009, when the cockpit of his $190 million aircraft lit up with terrifying and contradictory alarm signals en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Robert [sitting in the RH seat] shouted with increasing desperation for the captain...
Is this based on info officially provided by the BEA?
The question being asked in the industry is why, given that there was a 50,000ft thunderstorm near the plane's flight path, the youngest of the three pilots, with the least flying time, was at the controls.
“It seems as though they were just clueless,” says Mike Doerr, a former Airbus A320 captain who charters private jets in California. “The response to the invalid speed data doesn't make any sense unless they also had a Mach warning (that the plane was going faster than its mechanical limits).”
So far, there has been no such evidence. At night and in bad weather, however, there is also the possibility the pilots had become disoriented, or did not know which instruments to believe and therefore which warnings to prioritise.
“I don't have any more indications,”
“ Bonin is heard saying on the cockpit voice recorder, his voice still calm.
Doerr said he doubted that American pilots, who typically come from military backgrounds, would have been overwhelmed. “The European airlines select people with virtually no flight time at all and train them pretty much from the ground up,” he said.
“They are 'company babies' who rise up through the organisation. Whereas if you get your experience in the navy or air force, there's an emphasis on trial by fire.”
Thoughts?