AIR FRANCE FLIGHT 447: FAMOUS LAST WORDS FROM THE PILOTS

The voice recorder revealed that just before the Airbus 330 plunged into the Atlantic, one of the pilots shouted “Fuck, we’re dead!”

On May 31, 2009, Air France Flight 447 took off from Rio de Janeiro headed for Paris with 228 people onboard. The flight crew included Captain Marc Dubois, 58, and junior copilots David Robert, 37, and Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32. Prior to the flight, Capt. Dubois had spent the night on the town with his girlfriend, an off-duty flight attendant and opera singer, who accompanied him on the trip. 4 hours and 15 minutes after taking off from Rio, the Airbus 330 smacked onto the surface of the Atlantic, killing all 228 onboard. After a long search, a French submarine carrying special equipment, found the wreckage. Two years after the crash, the flight recorders and all bodies were finally recovered.

The October issue of Vanity Fair carries an account of the investigation. Sometime after takeoff, Robert retied to the plane’s rest compartment, a small cabin with two berths behind the cockpit, to take a nap. About 15 minutes before the crash, Dubois also retired to the rest compartment, leaving Bonin in control, even though he knew a storm was ahead. If he had delayed his nap for only 15 minutes, he would have been at the controls instead of the inexperienced Bolin.

When the plane hit the bad weather, its airspeed sensors malfunctioned and the Airbus 330 went into a stall. 1 minute 39 seconds later, Dubois and Robert reappeared in the cockpit. But by then Bonin had made a fatal mistake by raising the plane’s nose instead of lowering it as the procedure for coming out of a stall calls for. Raising the plane’s nose just increased the stall.

Here are a few pertinent excerpts from the flight recorder:

Dubois: “I didn’t sleep enough last night. One hour, it’s not enough.”

Robert: “Fuck, we’re going to crash. It’s not true. But what’s happening?”

Robert or Bonin shouted: “Fuck, we’re dead!”

And dead they were, along with all the flight attendants and passengers. Dubois and Robert did not break any rules by leaving the cockpit to take a nap. But Dubois is guilty of using bad judgment twice. First by staying out all night in Rio with his girlfriend and then when he left an inexperience pilot at the controls to take a nap, even though he knew bad weather was ahead.

So now we can add the phrase, “Fuck, we’re dead!” to famous last words.