The Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for Civil Aviation Security is currently looking into the reasons for this incident, the conclusions of the investigation have not yet been made.
A Boeing 777 which linked New York to Paris came close to an accident when it landed at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport on Tuesday April 5. As passengers watched through the windows as the tarmac gradually approached, and the plane was about to land, the pilots had to make an emergency overshoot to regain altitude after several alarms sounded. triggered in the cockpit. An incident that caused no injuries, after this restart the plane was able to land normally.
For Xavier Tytelman, a former military aviator and air safety specialist, there is nothing “exceptional” about this. “Every day, around the world, hundreds of planes go around when landing for various reasons,” he says.
Read also :
A New York-Paris flight narrowly avoids the crash: what we know about the big scare at Roissy
The explanations for this incident are not yet known in the case of this Boeing 777. On Wednesday, the Civil Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA) announced that it was investigating to determine the causes. On its Twitter account, the BEA took stock of the situation: “flight control instability” during the approach phase, “hardness of the controls” and finally “trajectory oscillations”.
u26a0ufe0f (1/2) Serious incident of @BoeingFrance #777 @AirFranceFR registered F-GSQJ on 05/04/22 at @ParisAeroport #CDG / Instability of flight controls on final, go-around, harshness of controls and trajectory oscillations / @BEA_Aero initiates a security investigation.
— BEA u2708ufe0f u2699ufe0fud83dudd2cud83cuddebud83cuddf7 (@BEA_Aero) April 6, 2022
–
As Xavier Tytelman explains, “these are only observations for the time being: the BEA analyzed what happened in the moments before the aircraft did not land, the investigation carried out will now make it possible to know the precise causes of these findings”.
Two avenues under study
According to him, a first element is to be excluded: a manufacturing defect on the Boeing 777 model. Otherwise the BEA would have grounded the entire fleet of 777s.
Read also :
The Boeing 777 between New York and Paris “did almost anything”, the crash narrowly avoided at Roissy
Apart from this track, two other possibilities should be screened by the investigation office, believes the specialist. On the one hand, the question of a technical or mechanical problem: “maintenance that has not been done well, a one-time problem only on this aircraft such as seized controls, throttles that no longer respond, etc.”
Another track under study: a pilot error. “It may have to do with the speed of the aircraft at the time of the approach, if you approach too slowly, the aircraft is not stabilized and this may cause a stall, that is to say a sudden loss of altitude. As soon as we find ourselves in this potentially dangerous situation, the alarms go off in the cockpit to encourage the pilots to go around again”.
The expert considers that it is in any case too early to determine precisely the causes of the incident, as long as the conclusions of the investigation have not been made. “A lot of people are pointing the finger at the drivers, I wouldn’t risk it, we don’t know for the moment”. He recalls that restarts of this type take place every day, without “it creating such a buzz”: “If we had not had the recordings from the pilots’ radio, we probably wouldn’t have any not heard of…”
–
