Air France Flight 447

Air France Flight 447 was a scheduled passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, operated by an Airbus A330, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean during the night, killing everyone on board. The investigation found that ice crystals had blocked the airspeed sensors, causing the autopilot to disengage and the instruments to show unreliable speeds. The pilots then responded incorrectly, pulling the nose up and putting the aircraft into an aerodynamic stall from which they did not recover. The wreckage and flight recorders were located only after a long search, two years later, in deep water. The accident led to changes in pilot training in high-altitude stall recovery and in the design of airspeed sensors, and a French criminal trial of Air France and Airbus ended in acquittals.

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