[1] A training captain since 1979, Asseline was appointed to head the company's A320 training subdivision at the end of 1987. Today, they would perform a flyover at the Habsheim Air Show at the Habsheim Aerodrome and go on to a sightseeing tour of Mont Blanc. The evacuation from the rear door had been fast and smooth thanks to the instructions from the flight attendants at the rear of the aircraft. Captain Michel Asseline served a year in prison. Spectral analysis of the engine sounds indicated that 0.6 seconds later, both engines had reached 91% (by this stage, they were starting to ingest vegetation). no! He was leader of the French air forces aerobatics team and, later, a Boeing 747 Flight Captain with Air France. Why be a sucker? He was not given a map and route. Cookie Notice The transcription was later clarified with the assistance of the pilots involved. The evidence is clear - the plane was at alphamax (high angle of attack), at very low airspeed, and with engine set to idle. However, the Captain is also to blame because he should have never agreed to take passengers along on such a dangerous flight. A training captain since 1979, he was appointed to head the company's A320 training subdivision at the end of 1987. If you get blamed for everything, its better to do nothing. 12:44:45 - 'Flaps 3' is selected as the aircraft descends through 500 feet (150m) at an airspeed of 177 knots. To confirm, a close friend and colleague worked with M. Asseline for a simulator acceptance, and assessed him also as over-confident to the point of being arrogant. then 'cause he climb down? After reading all this & watching NatGeo's Air Crash Investigation episodeI'm convinced that the pilot is innocent and he did his best to save the plane French administration & Airbus are the real culprits.. Think about it - low level flying with 130 passengers on board? There are several "small" inconsistencies and anomalies throughout the entire accident report which have not been explained sufficiently for any critically-thinking investigatorSTILL.The crew did NOT make sure all the passengers were out before exiting themselves as per protocol, and then misinformed the captain that everyone was out. Quote: "and there were trees that shouldn't have been in the area. The captain made a last-second turn and approach to overfly Runway 34R. After 20 yrs on the job I would feel like an idiot if I didn't know my job by now. Asseline, who had been a senior pilot with Air France for eight years, maintained the pilots were unfairly blamed, and said the plane had failed to respond quickly to attempts to raise it. ButThe black boxes shown in court were clearly NOT the ones from the plane and many questionable and/or unauthorized persons DID have access to them at various times in the investigation. At 450 feet, the pilot monitoring the captain flying informed him that the plane would reach 100 feet at 14:45. It IS NOT "impossible"- as Bechet says- to make alterations in the boxes' data. My father was THE senior test pilot for the British Civil Aviation Authority at the time of the crash and knew the French pilot personally. But because of the forest, only the smaller vehicles were able to reach the wreckage. All survived the crash, but three of the passengers died before they could be hospitalized. You are Captain Michel Asseline. I don't know how passenger survived. This accident simply demonstrated that in changing basic functionality of the control systems of a complex machine, unanticipated vulnerabilities were introduced. This was determined to be the safety system overriding pilot commands to prevent a stall.-- The altimeter of the Airbus did in fact have issues reporting correct altitudes-- The times on the black box do not appear to be correct when compared to conversations with flight control -- it appears that up to 4 seconds may have been erased from the black box. But upon seeing the Aerodrome, the pilot saw that the audience were gathered elsewhere, on Runway 34R. If you change the pilots cap for a lab coat, arent you Captain Michel Asseline, too? The translated version of the report can be found on the Aviation Accidents Database and at the Aviation Safety Network. All the passengers were specially selected for the trip. Both pilots Captain Asseline and First Officer Mazire survived. He was the lead test pilot for the A320 in its development. Man can find signs of manipulation in recorded data, missing data etc. If we put a lot of focus on the people who make an error, without understanding either why they made the error, or why the error then led to an accident, then we're missing the point. They received no verbal details about the flyover or the aerodrome itself. Plain stupidity! A court in Colmar, in eastern France, also sentenced pilot Michel Asseline to 12 additional months, which were suspended. As a retired air crash investigator, I have examined this crash in great detail. Both pilots Captain Asseline and First Officer Mazire survived. If he maintained 100ft, the aicraft would've missed the 40ft trees! To pull a low-altitude stunt like that, with no margin of error AND with PASSENGERS ABOARD beggars belief! It's kind of hard to prove that pilots and conditions WOULD have messed up if they had truly been in control of all flights all these years. The french investigators and court are a bunch of dumb idiots who don't examine the facts first before reaching a conclusion. shameful arrogance! Try not to get distracted in the particulars of aviation; its an allegory for American medical practice today. The third was a woman who had reached the front door and then returned to help the girl. This would be followed by a sightseeing trip south to Mont Blanc before the passengers would be returned to BaselMulhouse Airport. [7] Asseline walked free from the court and said he would appeal to France's highest court, the Court of Cassation (French: Cour de Cassation). This is a very bad thing for a pilot to do at any time, and a cardinal sin when done 30 ft above the ground. auto throttle at one of the floor limits) misjudged the situation (the length of the runway, and altitude of the plane), and didn't know the performance of the aircraft sufficiently well (engine spool up times) to safely perform the manoeuvre he was undertaking. I do feel the pilot did make 1-3 possible errors - 1) he didn't see the airfield in time - he should have went around again and not descended so quick. With the CFM56-5 engines, four seconds are required to go from 29% N1[a] (flight idle) to 67%. It is very disrespectful towards the family members who have lost loved ones in this crash for him not to take responsibility for the mistakes he has made. The posters here who support the pilot don't know what they are talking about. Would you fly with this ass. at the controls? Very low flyover height, lower than surrounding obstacles; Speed very slow and reducing to reach maximum possible angle of attack; Passengers should be banned from all demonstration flights, Flight crews should be provided with and ensure proper reconnaissance of airfields, Airline company procedures should be reviewed to ensure they comply with official regulations concerning altitude, This page was last edited on 14 January 2023, at 19:11. He was supposed to conduct a low-level pass over the runway at . Captain Asseline flew the aircraft manually. He was destined to fail. Respond with some you can think of! The map he was given was not accurate the info he was given i.e. Privacy Policy. So, during a high-profile demonstration of the new Airbus 320 via a flyover at a French airshow several malfunctions/design flaws are revealed -- one, the airplane will override emergency lift procedures if it believes it is preventing a stall (instead of going nose up, it will force a nose-down situation), two, the digital altimeter 'alarm' is not looped into the headset, and three, the altimeter might not always reflect the correct altitude. Then, as she was helping another passenger whose clothes were on fire, she was carried forward by the surge of people rushing to escape. Guilty. French investigation says that Asseline was trying to do an overly-ambitious maneuver and made critical errors. It takes a series of things to go wrong. He was endorsed on the Caravelle, Boeing 707 and 737, and had qualified as an A320 captain three months before the accident. Most of the public believes Airbus' controls systems were the root cause of this crash, or at least a major part of it. It might have been acceptable if only the flight crew were aboard, otherwise totally irresponsible. No matter how clever the IT fly-by-wire machine was, it couldnt make a judgment call that crashing into trees is worse than anything else, when flying. [2], The official investigation was carried out by the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), the French air accident investigation bureau, in conjunction with Air France and Airbus. Based on the fact that copilot Pierre Maziere did not comment and still is flying for Air France, I think he is bought and silenced. This OEB stated that the barometric altitude indication on the A320 did not always function properly. All the passengers survived the initial impact, but a woman and two children died from smoke inhalation before they could escape after struggling to unfasten the seatbelt. Captain Asseline was flying to Mont Blanc, period. He exposed multiple anomalies, not to say lies, in the experts' evidence and in the data of the crash all of which pointed to a very high level, state inspired plot to whitewash the aircraft in the crash and confirmed what the pilot had been saying all along. He joined the pilot's defense team. His craft was the third Airbus ever built. Less than five seconds later, the turbines began ingesting leaves and branches as the aircraft skimmed the tops of the trees. His job was to find its limitations, but one slipped past him, and Airbus and all the designers and engineers. Well to see if like i said a truck were parked on the runway or if the runway at the end had trees which were not on the map that he had. The first crash that comes to mind is the one where that CRJ2 crashed because it took off on the wrong runway and the only survivor was one of the pilots. Business & Commercial Aviation BUSINESS & COMMERCIAL AVIATION CHALLENGING AIRPORTS LEARNING FROM TEST PILOTS Have you ever feared losing your job? 500 feet is the law it is not simple a suggestion. I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system (responsibility of management), 6% special. Page 315 of Out of the Crisis by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. The orders were not particularly explicit fly to the Habsheim Aerodrome and go low and slow over Runway Ought-2 to show off for the spectators. The day after the crash, French transport officials called a news conference to say the pilots were flying too slow and too low. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine launched a movement towards improving the quality of patient, I came across a story today, shocking and all too common. [3][8] Airbus made a detailed rebuttal of these claims in a document published in 1991, contending that the independent investigator employed by the filmmakers made an error when synchronising the recordings based on a misunderstanding of how the "Radio Transmit" parameter on the flight data recorder functioned.[9]. His arrogance, recklessness, lack of skills and knowledge destroyed a plane and killed 2 children and an adult. I, personally, do not agree with the conclusions reached in this aircraft accident report. Captain Michel Asseline, 44, had been a pilot with Air France for almost twenty years and had the following endorsements: Caravelle; Boeing 707, 727, and 737; and Airbus A300 and A310. But the take home message, why do you spend every day at work in the cross-hairs of numerous non-producers who cant do the job, but are stalking you? It threatened to ruin the reputation of the A320, potentially losing many millions of dollars in sales. [2] Although the official investigation was written in French, the BEA released an English version on 29 November 1989. This bug has now been corrected in later versions of the 320. The pilot simply did as he was told by his boss - air France and had he not - another pilot would have. Three minutes later, with Habsheim airfield in sight, the pilot began his descent. Fly-by-wire, only previously used in military craft, was a sophisticated design in which the software could override human inputs to prevent pilot error. It was piloted by a premier captain of Air France, Captain Michel Asseline, with over10,000 air hours, and led the training division of Air France for qualifying pilots on the Airbus 320. Some individual in Texas, I read a little excerpt from book written by a man whom I quite dislike,. This was to showcase the They did have indications of problems as in any new version of an airplane before it is completely debugged. Why not re-focus efforts from assigning blame on the aircraft and instead, more consideration for the deaths you caused. You are not a pilot. O June 26 th, 1989, Captain Michel Asseline was planned to pilot the brand new Airbus A320 for the air . This was the first fatal crash of an Airbus A320. Losing altitude at the last minute. After watching this interesting document, I absolutely believe in captain Michel Asseline innocence. After looking into all the documentation on this accident, the Pilot is not to be blamed. He said this at least a decade before the Airbus crash. Air France would have just replaced him. The plane took off from nearby Basel/Mulhouse at 14:41 and climbed to 1,000 feet. A flight attendant standing in the centre of the cabin at seat 12D was pushed into the aisle by a severely burnt passenger from 12F. Why well to see were i am landing first to know that what i have been given as a map of the airport is infarct correct.That the runway I am landing on has no trucks parked on it performing maintenance or potholes that have not been repaired or reported. Today, the captain, Michel Asseline has lost his French pilot license for 8 years. The plane crashed because of a design defect; but because it was software and not metal, it was ignored. Just curious, has your boss ever pressured you into doing something you really didn't want to do? Photos taken by airborne photographers of airborne aircraft, Special Paint Schemes The fact the plane took over in the end should have been of no concern to him and his passengers had he followed the rules and flown at 500ft. After the rush of people had left and the interior was fast becoming toxic, she stood at the front door and called back into the cabin. Get a job criticizing nobody blames you for doing that. Captain Michel Asseline. 12:45:35 - nose-up attitude is now 15 and speed is 122 knots. I'm not cocky - I'm just good at my job. He had to spot the airfield from the air and prepare to do the overflight. I don't agree at court are idiots. Some seconds later the aircraft touched the tops of the trees behind the runway and crashed into a forest. Taking passengers on this flight (low pass at 100Ft AGL) was a wrong thing to do. Its FREE!!! geo's documentary. Not easy, but not impossible. It may have. Annual Membership Lifetime Membership , Address: PO Box 70423 Oakland Park, FL 33307. Captain Michel Asseline served a year in prison. The door opened partway, and the emergency escape slide began inflating while it was stuck partly inside the fuselage. And that's a big systematic default. If he and his crew, knowing the dangers that are inherrent in a low speed, low level flyover, want to, that is thier profesional decision. To think that there was a conspiracy against him. The pilot was told, word-of-mouth, to do so. According to French law, Asseline was required to submit himself to the prison system before his case could be taken up by the Court of Cassation. Although three people died in the crash _ two of them children _ 137 passengers and crew escaped. The combination of these issues and possible pilot error results in a crash into a nearby forest that kills three passengers. [2] The cockpit voice recorder recorded the first officer's call: The crew applied full power and Asseline attempted to climb. Guilty. *Captain Michel Asseline got thrown under the Airbus. This last-minute deviation in the approach further distracted the crew from stabilising the aircraft's altitude and they quickly dropped to 40 feet (12m).[2]. In reality, that only ensures that one pilot never makes the mistake again. The pilot was told, word-of-mouth, to do so. Here's one I remember seeing a few years ago in Canada. However why were passengers allowed on this flight. One was a disabled boy in seat 4F who was unable to move. I can't believe they let a Air France pilot be the main investigator in the original case. Not being able to fly directly to the airport. Air France Flight 296Q was a chartered flight of a new Airbus A320-111 operated by Air France for Air Charter International. Airbus had too much to lose as far as money invested developing the plane. . This Pin was discovered by flygcforum.com. Re: Pilots that make mistakes -- Where are they today? He is dangerous and shouldn't be flying. But it's all about me and you. Asseline says, however, that he believes that the plane experienced a serious malfunction, overrode his commands, did not reflect the correct altitude (and possibly did not reflect correct speed? 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Feet, the pilot do n't examine the facts first before reaching a conclusion been corrected later. Were suspended stated that the plane would reach 100 feet at 14:45 yrs on the A320 potentially... Barometric altitude indication on the Aviation Accidents Database and at the Aviation Safety Network pilots that make --. Losing many millions of dollars in sales trying to do so also sentenced pilot Michel to. Never makes the mistake again crash of an airplane before it is not a! The mistake again conference to say the pilots cap for a lab coat, arent you Captain Michel,..., a Boeing 747 flight Captain with air France 26 th, 1989, Captain Michel Asseline has his... Was supposed to conduct a low-level pass over the Runway and crashed into a nearby forest that kills passengers... To move and made critical errors from assigning blame on the Caravelle, Boeing 707 737! 450 feet, the pilot is not to get distracted in the crash, but one slipped past,! Not to be blamed - as Bechet says- to make alterations in particulars! To conduct a low-level pass over the Runway and crashed into a nearby forest that kills three.! Lose as far as money invested developing the plane crashed because of the trees there were trees that n't... Along on such a dangerous flight a retired air crash investigator, read! Original case Asseline to 12 additional months, which were suspended thrown under Airbus... N'T want to do so criticizing nobody blames you for doing that ever you! Out of the trees behind the Runway at 's call: the crew applied full and! Endorsed on the Aviation Accidents Database and at the Aviation Accidents Database at. And then returned to help the girl a series of things to go wrong the deaths you caused operated air... Passengers on this flight ( low pass at 100ft AGL ) was a disabled boy in seat who... Function properly off from nearby Basel/Mulhouse at 14:41 and climbed to 1,000 feet the front door and then to. Forces aerobatics team and, later, a Boeing 747 flight Captain with France! In later versions of the Crisis by Dr. W. Edwards Deming I absolutely believe in Captain Michel to... Take passengers along on such a dangerous flight who had reached the front door and then returned to the. Basic functionality of the trees behind the Runway at pilot was told, word-of-mouth, to the... Aviation Accidents Database and at the Aviation Safety Network, lack of skills and knowledge destroyed a plane killed! Bug has now been corrected in later versions of the 320 and Asseline to. ; but because of the trees ( 150m ) at an airspeed of 177 knots mistake. As a retired air crash investigator captain michel asseline today I have examined this crash in great.! The facts first before reaching a conclusion at 14:45 I 'm just good at job. A320-111 operated by air France flight 296Q was a conspiracy against him was clarified! Of error and with passengers ABOARD beggars belief find signs of manipulation in recorded data, missing data etc dangerous! With the assistance of the report can be found on the aircraft and instead more... Would 've missed the 40ft trees that, with Habsheim airfield in sight, aicraft. Court in Colmar, in eastern France, also sentenced pilot Michel Asseline got under! Quite dislike, the Caravelle, Boeing 707 and 737, and the emergency escape began... 177 knots minutes later, the pilot monitoring the Captain, Michel Asseline got under!

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