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Was pilot on doomed Air France jet with female off-duty flight attendant when disaster struck which left 228 dead?
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Was pilot on doomed Air France jet with female off-duty flight attendant when disaster struck? | Mail Online
Captain Marc Dubois was 'travelling socially with off-duty Air France employee Veronique Gaignard'
Dubois took more than a minute to return to cockpit after co-pilots lost control in thunderstorm.
By DAMIEN GAYLE
PUBLISHED: 17:06, 7 June 2012 | UPDATED: 07:48, 8 June 2012
The captain in charge of the Air France jet which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 - killing 228 passengers, including five Britons - may have been with a woman when the plane ran into trouble, it has emerged.
Captain Marc Dubois took more than a minute to return to the cockpit of Air France flight 447 after his co-pilots lost control of the plane during a severe thunderstorm.
What delayed the captain has never been revealed, but two sources say that the 58-year-old veteran pilot was travelling socially with an off-duty Air France flight attendant, Veronique Gaignard.
Marc Dubois, captain of the Air France jet which crashed in the Atlantic in 2009, may have been with a woman when the plane ran into trouble. Two sources say he was travelling socially with off-duty Air France flight attendant Veronique Gaignard (right)
Jean-Paul Troadec, director of the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses, France's air accident investigation unit, told ABC News that Ms Gaignard was not part of the investigation.
The agency was 'not interested' in the 'private life of the pilot', Mr Troadec told the news network, which revealed Ms Gaignard's presence on the flight.
Air France 447 had been travelling overnight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on May 31, 2009, when it ran into trouble, crashing into the Atlantic in the early hours of June 1.
Wreckage: Brazil Navy sailors recover debris from Air France flight 447
Disaster: The aircraft was in an aerodynamic stall, but the pilots failed to push the nose down to correct it
Black box recordings revealed that Dubois was on a routine break as the plane entered a tropical storm, leaving his two co-pilots - David Robert, 37, and Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32 - in charge.
As their Airbus A330 rolled from side to side in the storm's turbulence, Bonin and Robert - who respectively had 2,900 and 6,500 flying hours between them - were unable to bring it under control.
They desperately called on Dubois for help, but for reasons that have never been completely explained, it took him more than a minute to return to the plane's cockpitBonin was in control for most of the descent, while Robert took over one minute from impact.
The emergency began with a stall warning two-and-a-half hours into the flight, and nine minutes after Captain Dubois had left the cockpit for his regulation rest.
Although Bonin had told flight attendants to prepare for a 'little bit of turbulence', the report highlighted the fact that passengers were never warned about how serious the situation had become.
Instead the Airbus climbed to 38,000 feet and then began a dramatic rolling movement, with Bonin simply getting passengers to fasten their seat-belts.
Those on board included Bonin's 38-year-old wife, Isabelle, who was travelling without their two boys, aged 8 and 4.
A detailed analysis of two black box flight recorders from the plane has established that airspeed sensors had malfunctioned - probably because they had frozen up.
In itself, this was a problem which could have been dealt with, but the co-pilots had failed to deal with a high-altitude stall.
The terrifying end of Flight 447 involved a three-and-a-half minute plunge at 120mph, in the dark, belly first, with the nose slightly elevated.
'It seems that the pilots did not understand the situation and they were not aware that they had stalled,' Mr Troadec told ABC.
All those on board - who came from 32 nations, including five from Britain, three from Ireland, and two from America - died after the plane hit the sea at a speed of 180 feet a second.
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Was pilot on doomed Air France jet with female off-duty flight attendant when disaster struck? | Mail Online