[HN Gopher] B773 at Paris on Apr 5th, airplane did not respond t...
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       B773 at Paris on Apr 5th, airplane did not respond to commands
        
       Author : dz0ny
       Score  : 103 points
       Date   : 2022-04-08 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (avherald.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (avherald.com)
        
       | NelsonMinar wrote:
       | If it's Boeing I ain't going.
        
       | lizardactivist wrote:
       | This is not normal, and they can't keep blaming it on having
       | outsourced software work to low-paid Indian programmers like in
       | the past.
       | 
       | It would be interesting to tally up incidents like these, and see
       | if there is some pattern to what type of plane, manufacturer,
       | geographical location of incident etc.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | tschesnok wrote:
       | Pilot here (just private): Alarm seem to indicate that the
       | autopilot was not disengaged till much later. The question is
       | why?
       | 
       | Left turn may just be because of interference of the localizer..
       | which the autopilot was following.
       | 
       | With the autopilot on.. you have a fight on your hands until it
       | disengages. (like in your Tesla :)
        
       | JCM9 wrote:
       | Expecting a lot of armchair NTSB investigators to rock up here,
       | but honestly not much indication on what happened until the
       | appropriate authorities can pull the data recorders out of the
       | aircraft and see what was going on.
       | 
       | Looking forward to reading what happened but until then...
       | 
       | Interesting observation that the controllers and pilots were
       | speaking French to each other. They're really not supposed to do
       | that (English is the standard for ATC, in part so other aircraft
       | can maintain situational awareness) but that happens a lot in
       | France.
        
         | Thaxll wrote:
         | Pilots speak their own language in their country, everywhere
         | else is in english.
         | 
         | Why Im being downvoted?
        
           | coin wrote:
           | Because that's not always the case. There are plenty of non-
           | English countries that use English even for native flights,
           | eg Japan and Taiwan.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | MobileVet wrote:
           | Because English is the official ATC language used world wide.
           | You must know and speak in English to fly.
           | 
           | You may speak another language but English is first and
           | relied upon.
        
             | physhster wrote:
             | In lots of countries, GA pilots don't speak English, but
             | ATC does.
        
               | bee_rider wrote:
               | Hey be nice, southern accents might be kind of weird, but
               | technically people from Georgia (the state) speak
               | English.
        
               | mechanical_bear wrote:
               | GA = general aviation
        
             | DocTomoe wrote:
             | Point is, both of you are correct, and this argument is
             | pointless. The native language is a common fallback during
             | emergency situations, in situations where phraseology is
             | insufficient, to expedite communication.
        
           | pc86 wrote:
           | Because you're wrong. The lingua franca of the air is
           | English. I've heard ATC recordings in multiple countries and
           | they're all in English, including ones between non-native
           | English speakers. If you come on this frequency and you don't
           | speak French, you have no context at all for what's going on.
           | It's incredibly dangerous and it shouldn't ever happen.
        
             | cameldrv wrote:
             | It's not consistent. I believe in some countries it's all
             | English. In Germany, big airports are English, and small
             | airports are German. In the couple of small airports I've
             | flown out of in France, it's French.
             | 
             | I've heard of some countries where the controller will
             | speak to you in whichever language you speak to them, which
             | can lead to issues with situational awareness if you're the
             | only one on the frequency speaking English and you don't
             | know where all of the other planes are.
        
             | _moof wrote:
             | I'm afraid you're the one who is wrong. Yes, when a common
             | language is needed, it is English, but native languages are
             | explicitly allowed by EU law.
        
               | smachiz wrote:
               | Common language is always needed - this is CDG, a large
               | airport with many flights. It is important that all
               | planes have situational awareness. If half are speaking
               | French, how does the pilot coming from Seoul have
               | situational awareness? What if he's sitting on the runway
               | and doesn't know that the ATC just gave clearance to land
               | in French to a pilot on the runway he's currently on?
               | 
               | ATC and pilots for commercial airlines should only be
               | speaking English, regardless of their native tongue and
               | where they are.
               | 
               | It's pretty important - and it _is_ actually EU law:
               | https://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/29531/air-traffic-
               | cont...
               | 
               | Unfortunately it only applies to airports with 50k
               | international flights per year - the bar should be much
               | lower than that. But of course, CDG qualifies.
        
               | hef19898 wrote:
               | Situational awareness in controlled air space comes to a
               | large degree from air traffic control. Not from listening
               | to communicatiom between traffic control and other
               | planes.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | United857 wrote:
           | I flew a lot of flights on United where they have a feature
           | in the inflight entertainment system where you can listen in
           | on the ATC comms (if the captain turns it on). I've found
           | that:
           | 
           | * French pilots generally speak in French in France or Quebec
           | 
           | * Russian pilots speak in Russian in Russia
           | 
           | * Mainland Chinese pilots speak in Mandarin in mainland China
           | (but not in Taiwan or HK where English seems to be universal)
           | 
           | * Spanish/Latin American pilots speak in Spanish in those
           | places.
           | 
           | Otherwise, it's generally English ATC including countries
           | where it's otherwise not the native language, e.g. Japan,
           | South Korea, Germany.
        
           | Tuna-Fish wrote:
           | Because doing so is a terrible practice, and I'm saying this
           | as someone who is not a native english speaker.
           | 
           | The communication between the tower and the plane is not just
           | for their benefit. Everyone else is on the same frequency,
           | listening in, and needs to be able to understand what is
           | going on. Not everyone is going to be able to understand
           | french, while everyone flying in controlled airspace is going
           | to understand english.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | hef19898 wrote:
             | And France ain't a black hole like Africa when it comes to
             | air traffic control. Also, using the language of the
             | station is acceptable under official rules. French pilots
             | speaking French in French air space are just fine.
        
         | chris_va wrote:
         | Generally ATC will switch to English when an English speaker
         | comes onto the frequency, but local language is fine
         | otherwise... country dependent, though. I haven't flow in
         | France, but I understand it's mostly in French until someone
         | calls in with English.
        
           | GuB-42 wrote:
           | I have flown in France and you are completely right.
        
         | belter wrote:
         | "Pursuant to requirements of the International Civil Aviation
         | Organization (ICAO), ATC operations are conducted either in the
         | English language or the language used by the station on the
         | ground. In practice, the native language for a region is
         | normally used"
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_control
        
         | cft wrote:
         | I just visited a traffic control room in Spain and an air
         | traffic controller told me that Spanish and Latin American
         | pilots speak Spanish to them (not only for landing flights, but
         | also for transit flights say from Argentina to Germany while
         | overflying Spain), and the same thing is practiced in France
         | and Italy. So I am not sure you are right about "really not
         | supposed to".
        
           | t0mas88 wrote:
           | English is one of the official ICAO languages and it's
           | mandatory for all pilots at least in EASA and FAA rules to be
           | English proficient. But as far as I know it's not forbidden
           | to use any of the other languages if both controller and crew
           | speak that language.
           | 
           | Even the other way around, some small French airports have a
           | listing as "French mandatory" for their radio frequencies.
           | Which is quite a challenge for me as a foreign pilot not
           | speaking French.
           | 
           | But overall it would be safer if all ATC comms were done in
           | English. Because it's better for situational awareness if you
           | can understand what others in the same airspace are doing.
        
         | radicaldreamer wrote:
         | Korean Air had crash after crash until they forbid crew from
         | speaking in Korean. Turns out cultural norms (highly
         | hierarchical power structure) and honorifics were causing
         | copilots to refrain from pointing out issues or pointing them
         | out in an unclear way.
         | 
         | A Colombian airline crashed in New York after running out of
         | fuel due to similar deference to air traffic control.
        
           | anonu wrote:
           | The Colombian airline crash: they were speaking English
           | though. NYC ATC is going to be brusque and quick... The new
           | Yorker way. Not many cultures understand that...
        
             | giraffe_lady wrote:
             | ATC needs to be effective for all cultures that fly into
             | that airport. If the new york one so deviates from the norm
             | that it can cause crashes that is a very serious problem
             | that needs to be addressed.
             | 
             | That said I don't have any reason to think it actually does
             | and you didn't supply one either. Are air traffic
             | controllers even normally from the area where they work?
             | Don't they get assigned?
        
               | secondcoming wrote:
               | There are JFK ATC conversations on youtube. Even I, an
               | native English speaker but not American, have difficulty
               | understanding them sometimes. They also sometimes come
               | across as being dicks, but obviously only the audience-
               | worthy conversations get uploaded
        
               | pininja wrote:
               | > Are air traffic controllers even normally from the area
               | where they work? Don't they get assigned?
               | 
               | They are highly specialized on local facilities, weather,
               | traffic flows, etc. The New York Metro area is one, if
               | not the, most complicated airspace's to control in the
               | world. 4 major international airports (and tons of
               | smaller airports/heliports) surrounding dense major
               | cities with complicated weather, noise abatement
               | procedures, and high congestion.
               | 
               | There are dozens of air traffic controllers of all
               | different seats (supervisors, arrivals, ground, towers,
               | helicopters) in the region. It's a lot of coordinate.
               | 
               | This video gives a nice 3 minute overview:
               | https://www.faa.gov/tv/?mediaId=1042
        
               | FL410 wrote:
               | It's not so much that they deviate from the norm (quite
               | the opposite, there's a manual that dictates exact
               | phraseology), it's just that there's SO MUCH traffic that
               | they don't have time to hold hands, and they expect you
               | to be competent. In other words, there's very little time
               | or room for error, and that can come off as rudeness.
               | 
               | It is always the pilot's prerogative to overrule ATC (if
               | there's a legitimate reason) and/or declare an emergency.
               | And I assure you NY ATC would take it seriously if you
               | do. They just don't have time to dance around.
        
               | kayodelycaon wrote:
               | Sadly, there was a compounding issue that the pilots
               | didn't declare an emergency or divert when they were
               | running out of fuel. They thought asking for "priority"
               | was sufficient, when the word has more urgency in their
               | native language than it does in English. :(
               | 
               | New York controllers were more abrasive than they were
               | used to and they had trouble speaking up. The controllers
               | also didn't communicate well amongst themselves and the
               | pilots didn't know their request for a sooner landing to
               | due low fuel was not passed on.
               | 
               | Ultimately, the problem was the pilot's failure to follow
               | procedures. With the controllers being disorganized
               | either due to lack of procedure or failure to follow it.
               | Either of them could have prevented it.
               | 
               | Note: It is not sufficient to blame the pilots and move
               | on. People make mistakes. Both sides need to be improved,
               | because single points of failure kill people.
        
               | cameldrv wrote:
               | In my experience the NY ATC can be brusque in a way that
               | can border on the unprofessional, and they tend to have
               | an accent that can be hard to understand if you're not
               | from there and you're listening on your crappy AM
               | aviation radio. I assume that would go double for a non-
               | native speaker of English.
               | 
               | In the rest of the country that I've flown in, the
               | controllers seem to be aiming for the voice of bored
               | Apollo mission controllers.
        
               | andbberger wrote:
               | how high of a price are we willing to pay for kennedy
               | steve
        
           | mbubb wrote:
           | some years back I worked on a project with Korean Air on
           | exactly that topic, cockpit communication and honorifics... A
           | compounding factor was that pilots and crew often came from
           | military backgrounds.
           | 
           | I learned about a number of air disasters and PanAm/KLM
           | crash[1] in Tenerife 1977 really stuck with me. In the
           | transcript a Dutch pilot says something like "We are now at
           | take off" when he was indicating that the plane was in the
           | process of taking off. (an idiomatic way of expression)
           | 
           | There was already much stress on the situation as an incident
           | at another airport caused massive traffic rearrangement
           | across Europe. Under stress we revert to native ways of
           | expression. I tried to keep this incident in the back of my
           | mind throughout the project, and since...
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
           | 
           | edit - include the transcrpt:
           | https://tailstrike.com/database/27-march-1977-klm-4805/
        
             | tomatowurst wrote:
             | What is really maddening about Korean neo-confucian society
             | is this automatic social hierarchy based on your age, as if
             | to suggest someone who is older than you is automatically
             | infallible and has authority over you. It was exported to
             | Japan (Senpai and kohai is a direct model of Korean sunbae,
             | hoobae) but it doesn't seem to practice Confucianism this
             | strictly, there really is no other countries that take it
             | this extremely.
             | 
             | It reminds me of the Japanese invasion of Chosun dynasty,
             | how the rigid military/confucian structure made
             | communication impossible and largely allowed unopposed
             | landings by Hideyoshi's army.
        
               | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
               | It isn't based on individual age. I know Korean cousins
               | with a 20 year age difference where the _younger_ one
               | gets the honorific because his lineage is older and he 's
               | an earlier generation. They never speak Korean with each
               | other.
        
               | robocat wrote:
               | As a low-ranking middle aged average white guy from a
               | small 1st world country: if I go to Korea can I get a
               | status boost?
               | 
               | I have seen low-rank white dudes get status upgrades in
               | other Asian countries for a variety of reasons. One
               | architect told me how he was hanging with high status
               | Indonesians, and how he could name-drop NZ politicians
               | because our culture means low-rank citizens can
               | personally know people in high-rank positions. Perhaps I
               | can manipulate the Korean status game in my favour
               | because my background is somewhat unmeasurable.
        
               | X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
               | You'd exist largely outside of the neo confucianist
               | status structure. You'd be a foreigner in a way that is
               | hard to understand if you've spent all your life in the
               | heterogeneous melting pots.
               | 
               | I'm many cases this would apply even if you are Korean
               | but grew up outside the hierarchy (i.e. grew up in the
               | US)
               | 
               | You'd have some status as a us citizen as a white person,
               | but it's complicated and a double edged sword
        
           | The5thElephant wrote:
           | That was a Malcolm Gladwell theory that has been debunked,
           | particularly here:
           | http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2013/07/culturalism-
           | gladwell-...
           | 
           | In general I tend to question much of Gladwell's ideas these
           | days seeing how many of them have been demonstrated to be
           | wrong.
        
             | radicaldreamer wrote:
             | Aw man, this is a real bummer. I thought I'd weaned myself
             | off of Gladwell, but his fabulism is embedded in my
             | memories from way back :( he's so good at it!
        
             | CamperBob2 wrote:
             | Wow, are all Koreans that bad at arguing? (/s) How do you
             | even _begin_ to compare a solitary sport like golf to the
             | team effort involved in flying a passenger jet?
             | 
             | The influence of cultural imbalances on aviation safety is
             | not a subject for debate, and hasn't been since the
             | Tenerife disaster in which a junior officer hesitated to
             | argue with a respected senior pilot. This blogger may be
             | well-intentioned but they haven't bothered to do their
             | homework. Point goes to Gladwell on this one, as flawed as
             | his conclusions have been in other areas.
        
             | yongjik wrote:
             | Malcolm Gladwell may have overstated his theory, but
             | askakorean is itself a biased source, and IMHO shouldn't be
             | trusted too much. It is a fact that (1) Korean Air had a
             | string of preventable accidents during that time, (2) pilot
             | hierarchy in communication was believed to be a major
             | factor that led to the Guam disaster, and (3) later Korean
             | Air mandated everybody to speak English in the cockpit.
             | 
             | How much (3) contributed to the improved safety record is
             | anyone's guess.
        
               | bakashi wrote:
        
             | jahnu wrote:
             | People really should be very wary of anything Gladwell says
             | in recent years. The fisking The Bomber Mafia got should be
             | evidence enough.
        
           | sbierwagen wrote:
           | >A Colombian airline crashed in New York after running out of
           | fuel due to similar deference to air traffic control.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_52
        
             | smachiz wrote:
             | Not just deference. They crashed without ever declaring an
             | emergency. Ultimately, ATC could have been better - but
             | that was a pilot CRM issue.
        
       | C4K3 wrote:
       | Why is it possible for a pilot to "fight" the autopilot? From my
       | (layman's) point of view, it seems logical that either the pilot
       | would be in control or the autopilot would be in control, but not
       | both at the same time.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | TheMagicHorsey wrote:
       | Is it possible they did not disengage the auto-pilot?
        
         | christkv wrote:
         | I thought the auto pilot disengages automatically when you move
         | the controls?
        
           | chociej wrote:
           | On this aircraft you must move the column with something like
           | 20-25 pounds of force before the autopilot decides that you
           | are overriding it.
        
           | assttoasstmgr wrote:
           | If you listen to the ATC audio someone posted above, you hear
           | the autopilot disconnect sound at 0:56 which is well after
           | the incident began and all the other alarms were going off.
           | This doesn't make sense. Did they not realize the plane was
           | still on autopilot and were trying to hand-fly it and
           | override the controls? I'm not jumping to any conclusions but
           | it's very possible this was a normally functioning airplane.
        
           | DocTomoe wrote:
           | It does.
        
             | rootusrootus wrote:
             | The 777 pilot who analyzed and explained what was going on
             | says otherwise. It will cause a master warning or something
             | along those lines, but not cause AP to disengage. Which
             | makes sense.
        
               | hef19898 wrote:
               | Let's leave the incident investigation to the
               | professional investigators anf authorities, shall we?
        
             | FlyingAvatar wrote:
             | Source? In the Juan Brown (a 777 pilot YouTuber) video
             | (https://youtu.be/cslSQB5mgyc) referenced in another
             | comment, he specifically states that you must physically
             | fight the autopilot for control if it's engaged.
        
       | EMM_386 wrote:
       | There is a further discussion among pilots here:
       | 
       | https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/646054-air-france-b777-c...
        
         | stuff4ben wrote:
         | Very good discussion. Interesting comment:
         | 
         | > Originally Posted by Capt Kremin: There was nothing wrong
         | with the aircraft. The crew had the wrong runway/approach
         | selected and tried to override the AP manually. The subsequent
         | go-around was incorrectly handled in that they retracted the
         | gear before the initial stage of flap, hence the config
         | warning.
        
           | t0mas88 wrote:
           | Note that the rest of the posts after him disagree and point
           | out that they were on a stable approach to the left most
           | runway and the aircraft then turned a lot more to the left.
           | That's not something that would happen if it was only a wrong
           | runway selection.
        
       | anonu wrote:
       | Hate to bring up the AF crash in the middle of the ocean from
       | Brazil to France. This was, at the very root of it, a cultural
       | issue. Pure speculation (because it's fun to speculate): this
       | seems related to similar issues in the cockpit.
        
         | smcl wrote:
         | I don't see how it's similar.
         | 
         | > While climbing out and levelling off at 4000 feet the crew
         | reported they had problems with _the aircraft not following
         | commands_ , the aircraft did not follow the commands
         | 
         | While there is little culture shared between human and
         | airplane, this doesn't seem to be a cultural issue at all :)
        
         | touisteur wrote:
         | How do you come to that conclusion? To the best of my
         | understanding it was at least 3 things:
         | 
         | - strange choice of going through complex weather (somehow
         | foreseen)
         | 
         | - failure (icing iirc) of the pitot airspeed sensors, raising
         | multiple failures in the cockpit, and disengaging autopilot and
         | putting the aircraft in a more hands-on (I'm not using the
         | proper terms, there should be 'law' or 'envelope' somewhere)
         | leading to a loss of trust of the crew in the cockpit. To me
         | _that_ was the linchpin, automation-exit failure.
         | 
         | - combined (sum of) commands from the pilot and copilot. They
         | should have tried gaining speed (repetitive stall warnings) but
         | the copilot was (in panic) trying to gain altitude while the
         | pilot was putting the nose down. They both thought the aircraft
         | wasn't answering their command.
         | 
         | - lack of crew communication. The 1st pilot was off in cabin,
         | leaving his two cockpit crew without a clear chain of command,
         | and the 2 remaining crew never talked about steps they were
         | taking.
         | 
         | How do you square it was a cultural issue? Genuinely curious,
         | as I make a point of sending the transcript to all the happy
         | 'autopilot the low hanging fruit and let the human handle the
         | special cases' dreamers I meet :-)
        
       | omnicognate wrote:
       | > about 4.17nm before the runway
       | 
       | Nautical miles?
       | 
       | Read it as nanometres initially....
        
         | paulmd wrote:
         | yes, aviation generally uses nautical measures (nautical miles
         | and knots of speed) when using the imperial system
        
       | dz0ny wrote:
       | Tower radio recording:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzCNKhFOPqU
        
         | bitcharmer wrote:
         | Thank you for sharing.
         | 
         | Listening to the distress in the pilot's tone made me uneasy.
         | This is probably a good indication that the situation was very
         | serious.
         | 
         | What's going on with those Boeing airplanes?
        
           | rootusrootus wrote:
           | > What's going on with those Boeing airplanes?
           | 
           | I don't think it's only Boeing airplanes where the autopilot
           | will resist your attempts to override it with manual control
           | inputs. If anything, I kinda expect that Airbus planes are
           | even more opinionated about that type of behavior.
        
         | nolok wrote:
         | Damn, the guy doesn't say the plane doesn't respond to commands
         | but "l'avion fait n'importe quoi" which implies more like the
         | responses to commands are not the one expected.
        
           | saalaa wrote:
           | The pilot said "[...] un probleme de commandes de vol,
           | l'avion a fait a peu pres n'importe quoi [...]" and it
           | translates as "[...] flight controls issue, the plane did
           | just about whatever [...]".
           | 
           | To add a bit more, it's interesting to note that at several
           | points in the recording the pilots can be heard fighting the
           | controls and apparently requiring force for that
           | (https://youtu.be/VzCNKhFOPqU?t=25 for example). I know the
           | two ariplanes are unrelated but this was also the case for
           | 737 Max IIRC.
        
             | rootusrootus wrote:
             | > apparently requiring force for that
             | 
             | Yeah, when autopilot is engaged it requires a good bit of
             | force to override it without just turning it off first.
        
               | saalaa wrote:
               | I'm absolutely not knowledgeable on this topic so double
               | check everything I say.
               | 
               | I think the issue on the 737 Max was that there's been a
               | known and studied system (called the MCAS IIRC) on Boeing
               | planes that overrides pilot controls under some specific
               | pre-determined circumstances and that system had been
               | buffed to compensate for design flaws that were
               | discovered too late to be corrected. On top of being
               | faulty, that buffed system was also way outside of its
               | initial intent and purpose (or rather the parameters
               | guiding its operation were changed so much that it should
               | have been addressed as a separate system and mandated
               | specific training while they were trying to portray the
               | plane as a simple evolution requiring no pilot re-
               | training from earlier versions of the 737).
               | 
               | So, to me, it looks like yet another issue with a system
               | overriding pilot controls for whatever reason.
               | 
               | More generally, this falls into that weird pattern of
               | relying on external sensors which starts a chain of bad
               | decisions leading to accidents (this was also a sensor
               | issue with the Air France 447, although the chain was
               | largely human this time, the pilots realizing way too
               | late their repeated mistake).
        
               | sokoloff wrote:
               | This is a B777-300, which does not have MCAS. The 737-Max
               | had MCAS added because of the larger engines on that
               | model than prior 737s. This is not an issue "on [all]
               | Boeing planes" (which, to be fair you didn't directly
               | say, but what you did say was pretty ambiguous and could
               | easily [perhaps even most naturally] be read to have
               | meant that).
        
               | saalaa wrote:
               | Sorry, this happens a lot to me. For the record I'm not
               | trying to discredit Boeing. I do have issues organizing
               | and expressing my thoughts which results in less than
               | ideal communication.
        
               | t0mas88 wrote:
               | It disengages when you fight it. With the associated and
               | very recognizable autopilot disengage sound. I'm sure
               | there is more to this story than "crew mistake" as some
               | seem to imply here.
        
         | herpderperator wrote:
         | Why aren't they speaking English? I thought the communications
         | were always supposed to be in English.
        
           | robonerd wrote:
           | Many of the early innovators in aviation were French or in
           | France, and consequently, the French language has a lot of
           | influence in aviation. The terms _' mayday'_ and _' pan-pan'_
           | both originate from French. Flight recorders around the world
           | are labelled in English and French. If English were not the
           | primary language for aviation, it would probably be French
           | instead.
        
           | tptacek wrote:
           | Air crews tend to speak their home languages in their home
           | countries, according to another video posted upthread.
        
           | throwaway0a5e wrote:
           | Because shit is hitting the fan as far as the pilots are
           | concerned and they're going to default to their native
           | language. Informing the tower of WTF is going on is
           | secondary.
        
           | rhcom2 wrote:
           | I too thought that but apparently it is not the case.
           | 
           | https://internationalaviationhq.com/2019/11/23/language-
           | used...
           | 
           | > The language used by Air Traffic Control is quite simple:
           | whichever the pilot chooses to use. Normally this is between
           | English and whatever the language is of the place that they
           | are flying to/from. Although English is the only official
           | language.
        
             | jeffrallen wrote:
             | Interesting. I listen to lots of ATC, and I'm fluent in
             | French. It was really noticable how much less legible
             | French is on the radio, stuff like AF zero un and AF zero
             | onze differ by so little you cannot distinguish them.
             | 
             | Radio English has specific alternative prononciations,
             | which help avoid this, like "fife" and "niner".
        
               | giraffe_lady wrote:
               | Are you a native french speaker? I'm fluent in a couple
               | languages and all but my native one are insanely hard to
               | understand over radio. Even with the special
               | pronunciations there are a lot of nearly
               | indistinguishable sounds in english, and I'm not sure
               | those sounds are even apparent to a non-native speaker
               | who isn't specifically trained in them. It's very
               | possible they are using an equivalent but we can't hear
               | it without some practice.
        
               | t0mas88 wrote:
               | It comes with practice and ATC recordings sound way worse
               | than how it sounds in the aircraft. Because it's recorded
               | with a basic radio on the ground (causing much more
               | interference) instead of a much better one that's up in
               | the air with great reception.
        
               | sokoloff wrote:
               | This is very true. I'm a native English speaker and ~1200
               | hour pilot. I have no trouble with the radio in the
               | airplane, but many of the VAS Aviation and other
               | recreations that do not come from released ATC tapes are
               | quite hard to understand.
               | 
               | There's also a defined cadence and order for many
               | transmissions. If you read off the automated weather or a
               | clearance in the usual order, it's easy to transcribe it.
               | If you read it off out of order, it would sound the same
               | [and just as difficult] to a non-pilot, but would be much
               | more difficult for a pilot to write down.
        
               | GuB-42 wrote:
               | The official way of saying numbers in French is to spell
               | each digit separately and 1 is "unite". So 011 is zero,
               | unite, unite.
               | 
               | However _if it is clear enough and there is no ambiguity_
               | , the common way of saying numbers can be used, so zero
               | onze is acceptable. In normal conditions, no french
               | speaker will mistake "onze" for "un", the latter should
               | be "unite" anyways.
               | 
               | The main problem with "un" is that it sounds like
               | "hein?", which means something like "huh?", the kind of
               | meaningless words that punctuate conversations without
               | even noticing.
        
               | jean_tta wrote:
               | French military radio procedures also have specific
               | pronunciations to disambiguate words. The fact that it is
               | not used (assuming it is not) in ATC radio is not a
               | feature of the French language.
        
           | PlatinumHarp wrote:
           | Per the ICAO:
           | 
           | Pilots on international flights shall demonstrate language
           | proficiency in either English or the language used by the
           | station on the ground.
        
           | haunter wrote:
           | SERA.14015 Language to be used in air-ground communication
           | 
           | Regulation (EU) 2016/1185
           | 
           | (a) The air-ground radiotelephony communications shall be
           | conducted in the English language or in the language normally
           | used by the station on the ground.
           | 
           | https://www.easa.europa.eu/document-library/easy-access-
           | rule...
        
       | belter wrote:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30935269
        
       | ehaskins wrote:
       | Worth watching Juan Brown's reaction, he's a 777 pilot.
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/cslSQB5mgyc
        
         | drcongo wrote:
         | Thanks. It's wild seeing what the web looks like for people
         | without ad blockers.
        
       | geocrasher wrote:
       | Juan Brown has an excellent explanation of what is known so far,
       | along with an analysis of the alarms heard in the background.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cslSQB5mgyc
       | 
       | Juan (an airline 777 pilot) also goes into why it is _just fine_
       | that they were all speaking French in France.
        
       | buildsjets wrote:
       | I suspect that similar to the Asiana 777 at SFO, this will turn
       | out to be autopilot mode confusion on the part of the pilot,
       | coupled with a late charge of instruction from ATC, and failure
       | to monitor the flight path while trying to make the transition.
        
         | t0mas88 wrote:
         | Very very unlikely. Every pilot knows exactly how to disconnect
         | the autopilot, we train things like autopilot failure and
         | recently trim runaway (which is closely related) in the sim.
         | 
         | Nobody would be screaming "stop it, stop it" instead of doing
         | something if the button was working fine.
        
           | selectodude wrote:
           | Air France pilots aren't known for their quality.
        
       | harpiaharpyja wrote:
       | The title could have been translated better, as one of the
       | comments on the source pages notes. It would be more accurate to
       | say that the aircraft was not responding to controls/control
       | inputs, scary stuff.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | Too soon to say much. Comments so far are not very useful. Give
       | it a few days until the flight data recorders are read.
        
         | emerged wrote:
         | I stopped reading the comments when one was literally generated
         | using AI and said as much.
        
         | JPLeRouzic wrote:
         | Yesterday on France info, someone (a military pilot?) said the
         | black boxes were probably already read and he said that it's
         | probably not a generic problem of Boeing 777 ans as the
         | administration in charge would have already told it if it was
         | the case.
        
         | throwaway0a5e wrote:
         | >Too soon to say much.
         | 
         | Not that I disagree but to many that means this is the perfect
         | time to earn cheap internet virtue points baselessly
         | speculating.
        
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