Which airline was this??
 

http://www.lookatentertainment.com/v/v-286.htm make sure you have sound on

DOes anyone know?

When i saw this I was like :eek:

I've seen that video before--it was from an air show near Paris (not sure of the year). But the Airbus that crashed I believe was being flown solely by a computer. There were several people aboard, and most survive. I could be wrong on some of this, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I am, or at least add more details.

Well not something I was wanting to see tonight. :(

I think this is the accident:

http://aviation-safety.net/database/...?id=19880626-0

Definitely Air France

Well, as the aviation safety database says, Air France operating for Air Charter.

This happened in Strasbourg a long time ago.. old news.. :td:

This is a video of one of the first autoland attempts by Airbus. It obviously failed at the time. This was a goodly number of years ago.

chimoe125 , you'll be happy to know you can upgrade to F on a Z fare with this airline (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=439841). @:-) Please do everyone on the UA board a favor and book the next available flight. ;)

No, they were not trying to land. This was at an airshow and the plane was doing a fly-by with spectators inside the plane. However, the pilots had not studied/were not informed properly about the the area before flying there. Hence they started to power up too late (if I remember correctly) to avoid crashing in to the trees. The crash and its' causes is explained in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...985906-9323047

Accident investigation
 

I have to say that the discussion is not very factual up to this point.

Firstly, it was an airshow and not a regular public transport flight. The aircraft was operated by Air France.

The flight had absolutely nothing to do with autoland and automatic approach functions so stop worrying about fog!

The crash had absolutely nothing to do with the pilots attempting to land there. They were flying past the runway as all the display aircraft were. There was no intention to land at that airport during that approach.

I think that the death toll was four but you can check that out.

I think that you will find that the reasons behind the accident were related to pilot training and understanding of the automatic flight protection systems in a corner of the flight envelope not used by normal flights. I don't have time to explain it today, but if you want me to explain, I will be able to at the start of July. I am away from base at the moment.

Please do not speculate about aircraft accidents, most posters here have been very wrong and caused unnecessary alarm. If you wish to speculate, please do so in terms that show that it is your opinion and not necessarily fact.

My occupation is "aviation safety investigator". Please make up your own mind what this means, but it has nothing to do with security and terrorism.

It's amazing how people who clearly know nothing about the accident can come and post such total rubbish, when reliable answers have already been linked to three posts earlier in the thread.

Total casualties 3
Plane flown by the chief pilot of AF
The final report blamed the pilot for the accident
The pilot blames the computer,and he is suing AF and airbus to clear his name
Old history

There certainy has been a lot of controversy about this incident with the various parties blaming each other. The story I heard was that the flight computers went into, or were set to, autoland mode do perform the fly-by. However, when the pilots wanted to go around, they either did not realise the a/c was in autoland mode, or could not get it back to flight mode, so the a/c just settled down into the forest as though it was landing.

The A320 family has suffered one other (fatal) landing malfunction due to the software early in its service history. A LH 320 family landing in WAW went off the runway because the plane was landed so gently that the (nosegear?) sensors didn't record a landing so brakes (engine thrust reverser, spoilers, wheel brakes, etc.) couldn't be applied by the flight crew. At least a flight crew member was killed.

Apologies. My information was based on a discussion a few months ago on airliners.net. According to that discussion, the pilot claimed that the plane forced autoland and didn't allow him to depart the program into normal flight.

This appears to be the canonical reference:
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/v...ine=Air+France

The crash was a charter at Habsheim in June of 1988.

There is a (conspiracy) theory that the black box was changed before being investigated:
http://www.airdisaster.com/investiga...96/af296.shtml

Even if you grant the pilots' argument, it still doesn't show them in a very good light. They deliberately pushed the jet into a corner of its flight envelope (minimum altitude, minimum speed, maximum angle of attack) to make a pass for the air show. To do this, they had to disable the "alpha floor" safety function, which prevents a high AoA/low speed situation. Even a minor mechanical problem in this situation could result in a crash. And they did this with a load of passengers.

As for the engines: The approach was disorganized. The captain wasn't familiar with the airport, and the airshow was along a different runway than he was expecting. He had to make a steep descent, for which he throttled back the engines to idle.

The problem is that jet engines are slow to spool up from idle to full power. The engines on the A320 take 5 seconds to go from 27% to 83%. This 5 seconds probably seemed like an eternity to the pilots as they watched the trees approach, but it's within the normal design parameters of the engines.

That's why in a normal descent, the engines will be left at mid-throttle, with spoilers and flaps slowing the jet. This leaves the engines spooled so power is available quickly if a go-around is required.