2009 Air France Crash Was Caused By A Woman In Capt. Marc Dubois’ Cockpit?

2009 Air France Crash Was Caused By A Woman In Capt. Marc Dubois' Cockpit?

In the final tragic moments before Air France Flight 447crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, it took the captain of the plane, who was on a scheduled break, more than a minute to return to the cockpit, despite his two co-pilots' frantic calls for help, black box recordings revealed.

Although it was never revealed what delayed Capt. Marc Dubois, two independent sources told ABC News that the 58-year-old veteran Air France pilot was traveling socially with an off-duty Air France flight attendant named Veronique Gaignard.

Air France 447 was on a night flight from Rio de Janiero to Paris on May 31, 2009 when it vanished. The aircraft crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of June 1, 2009.

Recovered black box tapes from the wreckage two years later, in April 2011, revealed that Capt. Dubois left the cockpit for a scheduled break, around the same time Flight 447 was about to enter a severe thunderstorm which other flights had avoided.

Once in the storm, the plane's pitot tube, a critical piece of equipment that tells the pilot the aircraft's air speed, failed, likely from ice crystals forming on it, according to BEA officials who inspected the wreckage.  When the pitot tube fails, the Airbus A330's automatic pilot system disengages, shifting control back to the pilot.

First Officer Cedric Bonin, a 32-year-old pilot, was at the controls but had never been in this situation before. Bonin made the fatal mistake of pulling the plane's nose up, which caused it to go into a deep stall.

Within seconds, the plane was plummeting about 120 miles an hour in the dark, belly first, with the nose slightly elevated.

The co-pilots asked where the captain was and called for help several times before Dubois returned to the cockpit, the black box tapes showed. When Dubois burst in, he found a scene of utter confusion.

"What's happening?" Dubois was heard saying on the black box recordings.

"I don't know what's happening," one of the co-pilots replied.

"I have a problem…I have no more displays," Dubois said.

They never regained control of the aircraft.  All 228 passengers and crew aboard Air France flight 447 were killed.   BEA will release its final report on the investigation into the crash on July 5.

Posted by James Fried on Friday June 08 2012, 3:03 AM EST. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0