An Absolutely CRAZY Reaction! Air France flight 7512

An Airbus A318 is in a 30 degree bank attitude just inches from a low altitude stall in landing configuration. What is broader is partly the actions and inactions of the crew, but also a little-known feature of the instrument landing system. Do you have an idea what? that feature might be on the lookout, big thanks to nordvpn for sponsoring this video. This serious incident that I am about to talk about in this video took place on December 20, 2019. It involved an Air France Airbus A318 with 114 passengers boarding three cabin crew members and two pilots and happened around 9:16 UTC in the morning.

Before I tell you what happened that day, I just want to give you some general information about the arrival airport in Toulon, which is in the south of France. Tillon Airport is a mixed civil-military airport that is a couple of kilometers east of the city of Tillon and about 40 kilometers east of Marseille. The area is beautiful, beautiful beaches, many mountains around it, it reaches the Mediterranean Sea, although it is beautiful, it is a very complicated airport to fly to. It has a cross runway, the main runway is 0523 and is about 2123 meters long, but if you land from the only instrument landing system they have with 05, it is only about 1904 meters due to a displaced threshold. so it's a little short if you need to land on runway 2 3 then you have to do a pretty complicated visual maneuver that takes quite a bit of time to do and if you want to land on the cross runway, the only runway that a civil aircraft can land on except when I was last there on runway 3-1 and you have to do an approach and schedule with 0-5 and then you have to break that approach and do a non-reciprocal circle approach on runway 3-1, so there's no real approach procedure to that runway, which is largely because there are a lot of mountains just north of the airport because it's in a very beautiful area, there's a lot of general aviation planes flying around, everyone's talking.

French so if you speak English it's hard to understand what they say and you also have a lot of helicopter and military traffic so when you fly onto the grass you have to be very careful as a lot of instructions are needed and you really have to be at your best level since you are flying there on the day of the incident, the crew received the weather before starting to descend and realized that the weather in Toulon was not very good, it had a broken cloud layer. From approximately 1700 feet there was visibility of 5000 meters with light rain and fog and the surface wind was 150 degrees at 12 knots gusting to 19 and gusts up to 40 knots had been recorded during that day, meaning that that wind is pretty much a crosswind, but it also has a little bit of a tailwind in front of a city five.

Now the crew started looking at this and realized that the weather was going to be marginal for the internal visual approach maneuver 2-3, so they would have to consider a tailwind landing at cyr5 instead, they did The action for that they realized that even with the worst wind they could still land their Airbus 318 in these conditions, so they opted for the strategy and approached runway 05 with a tailwind in At this point I also want to explain a little how the instrument landing system works because it will be very important for this story, so the ILS system is divided into two different parts.

You have the localizer which shows the crew how to fly horizontally as in left to right and you have the glide slope which shows how to fly vertically up and down. The way the glide slope does this is that it has a set of antennas that are located just a beam away from the poppies normally in the center of the landing zone. and those antennas are directional antennas and they send out one lobe, each lobe is 90 hertz which is the upper lobe and one lobe is 150 hertz which is the lower lobe, these lobes are centered so that when they cross and there is a perfect combination of 90 hertz, which is 150 hertz, you have the three degree slip on the plane, on the other hand, there is a receiver that receives these signals and interprets them and if this receiver senses that there is a little more than 90 hertz, it receive well then it knows that the plane is above the glide slope, if it feels that it is a little more than 150 hertz, it knows that it is below and if it is well it means that it is on the glide slope and it sends that signal to the pilots and we get an indication on our main

flight

display or on our ils instrument that shows a small glide slope point that is up or then traveling toward the middle, which is where it's supposed to be, or going down, which which indicates that we are above the glide slope.

This instrument is very precise but not very intelligent, it only interprets the signals it receives and sends them to the pilots, it does not give more information about whether it makes sense or not and that will be really important in this story. The pilots have received the weather and have realized that it is marginal and have chosen to go to runway 05 with a bit of a tailwind, but when they talk about the tailwind as a threat they only talk about it at the limits of the landing distance. necessary, they don't really discuss how the tailwind might affect them during the approach phase.

The first officer is the pilot who flies for the

flight

. He has about 5,500 hours, about 400 hours on the Airbus 320 family. The captain, whose pilot he supervises, has more than 10,000. hours, but the vast majority of his time is spent in the Boeing triple seven on long-haul flights and he just returned to the Airbus 320 family in early 2019. Anyway, they start the descent and they do it on time, there is no delay. but as they descend to observe the loan, which by the way is the first time both the first officer and the captain have flown to Toulon, the first officer begins to realize that he is ending up with a bit of a high profile.

There are many reasons why that can happen, sometimes our traffic control keeps us high because of the traffic crossing below us and sometimes we take shortcuts that give us less months of tracking to get down, the first officer recognizes this and uses the speed brake to try to return. profile but still staying a bit above the normal profile as they get closer to Toulon, they don't have five available at this point. The crew can also descend to 1900 feet and remember that altitude will become important as the crew turns toward Palmer. The plane is very high and, furthermore, when they turn they begin to encounter a very strong tailwind of around 50 knots directly behind them.

The 50 knot sail wind is a very strong tailwind and can cause a lot of problems for commercial aircraft because as we descend and approach our ils approach, we need to descend to our glideslope, which means reducing our potential energy. , but we also need to slow down to reduce our kinetic energy and the problem is that there is only so much deceleration that you can do it right and the tailwind will actually increase our kinetic energy and this is what is happening to this plane right now as you turn toward Palmer Point, you are about 16 miles from the runway.

Their altitude is 6,500 feet at this point and they have an indicated airspeed of 250 knots, but their ground speed, which is the speed at which they are actually moving over the ground, is over 300 knots and that is due to that really strong tailwind, so to speak. For perspective, when I fly the 737 800 we use a simple type of calculation to see if we have a high profile or not and the way we do it is by taking the altitude we have above the runway elevation and multiplying it. times three and then we add one nautical mile for every ten knots that we need to slow down to 200 knots where we can start to take the flaps, so in this case this crew is at 6500 feet, take that time to three, which is about 19 and a half to the right and then you go down 300 knots to 200, which is another 10 miles, which gives you approximately 29 miles, but it is 16 miles, which would show you that they are very high, now there may be some variations because the Airbus 318 is not.

The same as the Boeing 77800, but they are in the same ballpark that Talon Tower was previously when they first came into contact with the pilot, he asked them what approach they wanted and told them that the weather is a bit marginal with 2-3, so that. The crew has already told them that they want to try Ils Runway 05 and air traffic control has agreed to this, but now something really interesting happened as the crew passes Palmer Point. Air traffic control comes back and asks them if they would like it. make a holding pattern to lose some altitude every time you hear air traffic control ask you something like that, unless there are traffic reasons for you to wait, you should really take a step back and look at what your situation is like because The only reason traffic control will suggest something like that is because they're looking at their radar screen and they're noticing that you're too high or too fast, but in this case the captain looks up at the first officer, who is the pilot who flies.

The first officer gives him a nod that it's okay and the crew chooses to continue heading straight for the tab instead of taking control. In later interviews, the crew was asked why they chose to do it this way and the captain who was monitoring the pilot basically said that. Well, he looked at the first officer, the first officer was happy with the situation and did not recalculate the power status of his plane. The first officer, on the other hand, thought yeah, I'm a little high here, but I can continue this approach to about 1500 feet or a minimum of 1000 feet if I'm not stabilized then I'm just going to turn around and come back for a second approach.

A reasonable way to think about what happens next is that the crew captures the localizer, which is the horizontal part of the eyeless approach, the one that shows you how to turn left or right. and when they capture the localizer they select the flaps and select the gear down. They also select the approach mode and this is very important now with the flaps down and the speed brakes still extended they started to descend quite quickly and are starting to approach the glide slope at this point they also activate the second autopilot, Other Airbus crews have told me that it is very common for Airbus crews to do this to maintain common ground between Category 3 outside ground approaches and normal Category 1 approaches on Boeing.

We don't do that, we only do it when the airplane is about to To make an outside landing, the airplane is now descending toward the glide slope, but is still well above it. The instrument inside the cabin shows full deflection. Fly down and remember they had 1900 feet set as their authorized altitude. This is important because as you descend and get the glideslope right, the autopilot will ignore any altitude you set in the altitude window, it will just follow the glideslope and the only time you will use that altitude window is for its own purposes. missed approach altitude, but if you never capture the glide slope well, then the autopilot will assume that whatever you have set in your altitude window is where you want to level off and this is exactly what is about to happen to this airplane, so that at time 09 1507 at 2200 feet, the fma changes to altitude star and the airplane banks and prepares to level off at 1900 feet.

None of the pilots notice this change in fma or the fact that the plane is pitching up, they are probably too focused on configuring the plane and reading the landing checklist at this point, but I find it very, very strange because If you are the pilot flying and you know you are above the glide slope, you will focus entirely on trying to increase your drag. and get that slight slope catch because you know there is a chance of this happening; in fact, there is even a standard operating procedure at Air France at the time of this incident that if you are capturing a glide slope from above, you should set the altitude to an altitude above aircraft level, that way you can use vertical speed to descend and capture the glide slope without the airplane leveling off, but in this case the airplane is now in level flight at 1900 feet for every second that As time goes by, they become higher and higher and This is also where we have to start discussing another feature of the instrument landing system.

Remember I told you that the glide slope works by sending two lobes to radio signals with different frequencies, one at 150 hertz and one at 150 hertz. below and then 90 hertz above. Well, the problem with any steered antenna is that no matter how well built they are, they will always also transmit something called secondary lobes. These are weaker radio signals with the same frequencythat occur at set intervals in the case of the glideslope we have the primary lobe located at about three degrees of glideslope, but then you will have a secondary glideslope that occurs at nine degrees and another at 12 degrees.

Now the problem with these false glide slopes is that not only are they much steeper than the 3 degree glide, but also in the case of the 9 degree false glide, they are inverted, meaning that you will hit the 90 hertz lobe first. and then the low 150, and remember how I told you that the instrumentation is on board the plane. It's not very smart, it just interprets the signals it receives and sends them to the pilots and also the autopilot, which will be really important at this point because the plane is now stationary for about 20 seconds in level flight and goes further.further. of the three-degree glide slope, it is also getting closer and closer to this false glide slope.

The way the pilots might have noticed this if they had looked at their instruments would have been that even though they were in level flight at 1900 feet, they are now moving forward. further and further away from its proper glideslope, suddenly the glideslope indicator came to life and began to rise towards the center when it reached the center, then since the approach mode was armed, the glideslope now was captured, but when the airplane flew through the center of these signals it now passed over this secondary glide slope, but remember that the signals are inverted, so instead of indicating a flight down signal, the instrument ils now showed a violent pitch upwards, instead in the next 10 seconds the plane pitches up to 30 degrees up and remember this is in landing configuration which means the landing gear is dangling and Also the landing flaps, that's a huge amount of drag, the external throttle tries to add thrust but it's impossible, the speed starts to drop and with the combination of the speed decreasing and the pitch being so high, the angle of attack also increases, this is followed by a speed warning as the aircraft goes into alpha protection mode and then into alpha floor mode.

These are two protection modes that the Airbus had to make sure that the aircraft is not going to stop at the same time, air traffic control calls the pilots and tells them to turn around, but they get no response. The first officer looks at his fma and notices that it says toga lock, now token lock is a Headset alpha floor protection feature is when the Airbus senses that the angle of attack is approaching stall, it takes the external thrust to the toga and locks it to ensure that maximum confidence is now being given to the pilots. the only way to disengage the stick lock is to put the thrust back to idle which disengages the outboard throttle and then reengage it and this is what the first officer does when he does it so he doesn't tell the captain that.

He is circling and also realizes that the plane's pitch is too high and begins to pitch forward as part of the plane's rollover procedure. Now a rollover can be defined as when the nose of the plane exceeds 25 degrees of pitch, which happens. In this case, what you need to do is lower the nose and regain speed under control. The plane reaches a speed of 96 knots, which is 20 knots below the vls. The speed decreases. Selectable speed, which is the minimum. The speed at which it is supposed to fly is also only two knots above the 1g stall speed.

That's how close this plane came to stopping at 1900 feet. The plane now begins to climb at about a thousand feet per minute and the first officer who initiated the recovery procedure Descent now stops its descent at about 15 degrees nose up, this is what the flight directors tell him to do. , which are now in something called srs mode. The problem with that is that 15 degrees nose up is still too high. pitch and the airplane still maintains slow speed the airplane is below its selectable lower speed for a full 46 seconds before beginning to regain speed continue to climb to 4000 feet, which is the missed approach altitude, begin to retract the flaps that they take They prepare and once they're done with that, they put vectors for another wrong approach with 05.

So this was clearly a very serious incident and it raises some really important questions like, for example, was it a serious incident, but no. one was injured, the plane was not damaged, so how do we possibly know this? How come there is a final report that I can base this video on and also why isn't there a system built into the plane to stop it? capturing a false glide slope and pitching up to 30 degrees this and also what we can learn from this incident I will cover in just a few seconds after this short message from my sponsor this video is brought to you together with nordvpn now you know Well, also how important it is to protect yourself and your data today.

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This incident and other similar incidents really worked as a very good learning experience for the industry there. There has been a bit of misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about this false secondary glide slope and this really highlighted how important it is to monitor your flight path, especially if you are coming in a bit hot and high and are a little short on time. miles of tracking, it was considered that the causes of the incident were the crew's underestimation, the threat posed by the significant tailwind during the approach that led them to intercept the glide slope from above, and also poor tracking by both the captain and the pilot. co-pilot of the energy status of the aircraft but also of the fma, if they had checked their fma and monitored what the aircraft was doing while setting up and reading the checklist well, then they would have noticed that it had leveled off at 1900 feet and that they were going directly towards that secondary glide slope, they also failed to take into consideration or properly use the air traffic control suggestion to do a turn in the hold and this serves as a very good reminder to any pilot that if you get into a situation where you feel that you don't have enough follow-up mods.

You feel a little hot and high. You're not really comfortable with what's happening to your plane. Just ask for a few extra tracking miles. Tell air traffic control to get some additional radar vectors. If you are on radar or request a turn in the hold, your flight time may be extended by a few minutes, but most of the time it is much better than ending up in a situation like this or simply having to turn around and then Addressing a second approach, the fund report also mentioned that it would have been useful to have more defined gates at different distances and, as a consequence of this and other similar incidents, we now do much more training in the simulator on how to capture the slope of light from above. and avoid these high energy approaches as a result of this research.

Efron also updated guidance for his crews on how to handle high-energy approaches and how to capture glideslopes from above, but that doesn't answer the question of why we know about this incident in the first place, since there was no damage and no one he was hurt. The answer is simple. This was reported by the airline or crew and this brings me to perhaps the most important point I have with this video. There have been so many comments. Previous videos I made about serious incidents where people in the public think these pilots shouldn't fly, they should be fired, they should be punished.

I hope to never fly with one of these pilots again and that. completely misses the point with these types of videos, the only reason we can make videos like this where you understand what is happening and where the pilots learn about it is simply the culture at the airline, it means that the pilots don't They feel like they have run. the risk of being fired if they report something that happened to them, even if it was their own fault, I cannot emphasize this right enough, this is a fundamental principle that explains why the airline industry is so safe, we report everything we believe it has some type of safety so that the airline can consider changing procedures so that we can change our training so that we can confirm better and safer every day without having to learn from a serious accident, the only thing that would lead a pilot to face disciplinary procedures.

Serious misconduct is when they voluntarily and knowingly go against the rules, regulations and standard operating procedures and that causes the aircraft to enter an unsafe state or trying to hide something they have done can have serious consequences, but as long as you are honest and you made a mistake and it's an honest mistake, then what's going to happen is there will be an investigation if it's serious enough to lead to a report like this that could lead to changes to standard operating procedures or some training for the crew involved so make sure they have the knowledge and the skill to prevent that from happening again and that's how our safety management system and our fair culture works and that's really important but what about the aircraft ?

How come there isn't a system in the airbus to prevent it from capturing a false glide runway and doing these

crazy

pit maneuvers, but it turns out that airbus actually has a system like that, only at the time of this incident it still had not been implemented in the older Airbus types, from the Airbus 320 neo to the Airbus 350, etc., they were implemented and are in the process of being implemented in all Airbus types. In this video, I have talked about Alpha Protection and Alpha Floor Systems and If you want to see a video where a misunderstanding of these systems caused an accident during an air show, watch the video here if you want to support the channel, please consider Be part of my patreon team or buy a t-shirt.

Have an

absolutely

fantastic day and see you next time, bye.