French Pilot’s Union Reports Airbus at Fault.
The French aviation authority BEA says that the faulty Thales pitot tubes were a factor, but in the Journal du Dimanche, the French Pilot’s Union says the faulty tubes are THE reason behind the crash of Air France Flight 447. The pilot’s union’s opinion is not that other factors did not come into play, but that if the pitot tubes had not failed, the crash would not have occurred.
Airbus dropped the ball. The BEA dropped the ball. EASA dropped the ball.
If they had been doing their jobs, they’d have caught the pitot flaw before this tragedy ever happened.
This is irresponsible declaration at this time. The Flight Data Computers have not yet been recovered. I consider mere speculation and won’t help a bit to in the search of finding the reasons behind the tragedy.
An airplane accident happens when one incident triggers a chain of linked factors, not only an isolated fault. An isolated fault might or not lead to an accident. It will depend upon a series of events that can even break a link in that chain of events and the accident would be avoided.
The pitot tube might have triggered an unrecoverable flying attitude that lead to the destruction of AF 447, but it would be too naive to blame it as its sole responsible factor.
In this case the Pitot Tube might have been the trigger of an non recoverable flying condition but other considerations must be also taken into account. For instance, the fact that in the modern Airbuses the pilot can’t revert to manual flight in the event of a computer malfunction is also an important factor that must be taken into account.
But as I wrote before at this time speculation will not contribute to the search of the causes.