Last moments of doomed Air France Airbus revealed
The chilling last few minutes of confusion between the terrified pilots of an Air France jet before it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 have been revealed in a new book.
One pilot shouted, "Damn it! We're going to crash. It can't be true!"
His co-pilot replied: "But what's happening?" Moments later, the audio ended.
The exchange is from the Cockpit Voice Recorder of Flight 447, which went down in a tropical storm while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in June 2009.
All 228 passengers and crew on board the Airbus A330-200 died in the crash.
The book, Rio-Paris Crash: A Collection of Pilot Errors, written by French aviation author Jean-Pierre Otelli, described the scene in the Airbus cockpit.
The full transcript of the discussion between the pilots Marc Dubois, the 58-year-old captain of the plane, who had 11,000 flying hours, David Robert, 37 and Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32, was previously withheld by air accident investigators who said they did not want to upset their families, London's Daily Telegraph reported.
The reports previously released by France's accident investigators showed the crew pulled the jet into a steep climb until it slowed to an aerodynamic stall before slumping into the sea.
"This accident, and the mystery surrounding it, elicited huge emotion in France as well as in Brazil," Otelli wrote in the book.
"Beyond the questions raised about modern air safety and pilot training, the crash of the Rio-Paris flight will remain a case study in the annals of air transport."
Ian Jarrett
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