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Understanding Air France 447's Author Bill Palmer Talks to Jetwhine

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Regular Jetwhine readers might just remember a number of lively debates on this blog about what happened to Air France 447 over the South Atlantic in June 2009. A few of those conversations reached heated proportions too, with opinions … some from pilots, some not. One commentor here at Jetwhine always managed to sound informed yet cool through all the chatter. That man was Bill Palmer, an Airbus A330 captain and instructor pilot for one of the major airlines.

We spent some time recently talking to Palmer about his new book, “Understanding Air France 447,” a volume focused on helping readers better understand what really happened that night, as well as to help separate the facts from the rumors and innuendos. One rumor claimed the tail fell of the A330 — false. Another that the “Stall, Stall,” audio warning message played in the cockpit for nearly a solid minute without anyone in the cockpit even mentioning the word stall — true.

The book is chock full of detailed explanations about what happened on board the cockpit of this A330 that stormy June morning, as well as the inner workings of the BEA investigation of the crash. This book offers valuable lessons for any pilot, whether they’re airline or corporate pilots, or Piper and Cessna drivers. You’ll find Palmer’s book in paperback and e-book formats at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com, as well in eBook form at the iTunes store.

Grab a cup of coffee and for the next 10 minutes or so listen to Bill Palmer explain what happened aboard Air France 447 in June 2009 and exactly what this crash means for the rest of the aviation industry.

Every journalist who has writtten in the past few years about the 2009 Air France accident has eventually ended up asking the same question … why did an experienced crew react to the weather the way they did, as well as to the failure of some of the flight instruments aboard the A330 and why did none of them recognize that their airplane was falling from the sky.

Now we might have at least one of the answers; sleep deprivation. The National Sleep Foundation reports sleep deprivation can impair a person’s reaction times and performance even more than alcohol consumption. The more significant the deprivation, the greater the impairment.

The French news magazine Le Point broke a story on Saturday based on a transcript of the Air France 447’s cockpit voice recorder that until now was unknown. Le Point reports Captain Marc DuBois telling his two cockpit crewmembers less than two hours after departure from Rio, “I didn’t sleep enough last night. One hour — it’s not enough.” Another story in Saturday’s Mail Online said the two co-pilots also lacked adequate rest before the Rio to Paris flight began on the evening May 31, 2009. Flight crew rest, especially for pilots traveling across multiple times zones as was the Air France crew, has become the focus of major regulatory actions in both the U.S. and Europe over the past few years. The revelations about the fatigued states of these pilot before they began what would have been a 10-hour flight to Paris are certain to alter how the industry evaluates the amount of rest any flightcrew has had prior to takeoff. [Read more…] about Air France 447 and Sleep Deprivation: A Fatal Link