Air France says Airbus ignored warnings in advance of crash

In a report to investigators Air France says Airbus failed to act on warnings about speed sensors.

Travel Insurance News - 29/11/2010

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In a report it submitted to French air crash investigators, Air France has said Airbus failed to act on warnings about the speed sensors on its aircrafts before the crash last year of a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. French newspaper Liberation has published the document.

Air France also accuses Thales, a supplier to Airbus, not taking sufficiently aggressive action following warnings from Air France that the speed sensors, known as Pitot tubes, occasionally became unreliable after icing up. All 228 people on the A330 airliner died when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Airbus would not respond in public to the specific allegations carried in the report.

Spokesperson Anne Galabert said Airbus had not been given a copy of the report. She added that it appeared to be the work of lawyers, rather than experts.

The airliner ran into difficulties during a thunderstorm on 1 June last year. Data messages sent automatically by computers aboard the aircraft revealed that the plane’s Pitot tubes were sending false air speed readings.

Investigators say the information so far indicates the Pitot tubes were not solely to blame for the accident. There was a series of failures on the jet but the cause of the accident remains unclear. A lawyer for Air France said the report was submitted to a judge investigating the crash.

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