Hirst morning, a tragedy was avoided shortly before landing at Roissy-CDG of the New York-Paris AF011, one of Air France’s five daily flights. For some unknown reason, the Boeing 777 no longer reacted to controls on final approach. The crew was able to go around and return to report having a priori mastered the breakdown. Within a few tens of meters, it could have been the crash. A video includes the recording of the somewhat stressful dialogue of the crew with the CDG control tower, as well as some snippets of the exchanges between the two Boeing pilots when one of them leaves the finger pressed on the button of PTT which triggers the radio transmission to the outside.
This recording shows the control and composure of the crew and the air traffic controller in the face of a situation which, had it occurred a few meters below, would have ended in uncontrolled contact with the ground… favorable – 100 meters of ceiling and 3,000 meters of visibility with mist – imposed an instrument landing.
Path shows that the Boeing, arriving from New York after seven and a half hours of flight, arrived to land facing west on runway 26L (left). Its circuit goes through a road a little south of Beauvais and north of CDG. Then, after a 180-degree turn, it lines up with the ILS (Instrument Landing System) for runway 26L, the beacon system that provides the heading to follow and the descent plan to follow. This information is received by the autopilot, which manages the landing in bad weather. One pilot watches the instruments, the other looks out, ready to take the control as soon as the runway beacons emerge from the grime. Shortly after the dialogue with the Roissy tower controller authorizing flight AF011 to land on runway 26L, an alarm was heard and the exclamation “stop, stop”. The air traffic controller tries to reach the plane, which does not answer immediately, then quickly says “I’ll call you back. The controller deduced from this that there was a major problem on board. He gave the order to another AFHW aircraft on initial climb to stop it at 1,500 feet so as not to interfere with AF011, which indicated that it had overshot to redo a circuit at 4,000 feet. “A problem with the flight controls, the plane has done anything wrong”, reports the pilot, who requests “radar guidance with a very long tailwind, the time to manage the situation”. The air traffic controller said: “I saw on the radar that it was going left. The crew requested a change of runway for 27R (right) instead of 26L, still in the ILS instrument landing procedure.
Stressful go-around
The rest of the flight goes smoothly. Air France, in a press release, regrets the discomfort of this maneuver. The go-around, a procedure reviewed at least every six months by the pilots in the simulator, can be stressful for the passengers, already concerned about a blind landing in the mist. The engines suddenly go from idle on approach to full power. The device rears up. At the end of the flight, the plane is light, having consumed its fuel, and the rate of climb is then impressive.
Such an incident triggers debriefings, analyzes and investigations by the airline and civil aviation. In addition to the two flight recorders (CVR, voice, and DFDR, data), other black boxes on the plane, specific to Boeing and the engine manufacturer General Electric, will be read. On the ground, the operation of the ILS 26R will be scrutinized (breakdown, jamming?). When the data are available, a reconstruction will be carried out in a flight simulator. Until the light is clarified, the aircraft involved will remain on the ground. This is the Boeing B777-300ER registered F-GSQJ delivered to Air France in April 2005, 17 years ago. This 296-seat aircraft has 4 classes: first (four seats), business (58 seats), premium (28 seats) and economy (206 seats). It is one of the rare aircraft to be equipped with a first class and, as such, it flies to New York, Los Angeles, Washington, São Paulo, Hong Kong and Asia, when the pandemic wants it. The oldest B777s in the fleet are gradually being replaced by Airbus A350s.
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