Air France is currently going through an area of turbulence. The French authority responsible for investigating plane accidents published a harsh report on Tuesday in which it underlined the recurrence of incidents in which safety rules were ignored by airline crews.
This report from the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) is concerned about “a certain culture established among certain Air France crews which favors a tendency to underestimate the contribution of a strict application of procedures for safety” and calls on the company to “put compliance with procedures back at the center of the company’s safety culture”.
The example of an incident during a Brazzaville-Paris flight
The BEA relies in particular on an incident that occurred on December 31, 2020 during a flight between Brazzaville, in the Republic of Congo, and Paris on board an Airbus A330. A fuel leak detected at cruising altitude led the crew to divert to N’Djamena airport, in Chad, but without observing the “FUEL LEAK” safety procedure which provides for the engine to be cut off on the side of the leak. This cut has also “voluntarily been omitted by the crew”, observes the report. “This decision thus created a significant risk of fire and led to a significant reduction in the safety margin of the flight, the fire having been avoided by chance”.
While the report highlights the “extremely limited” number of Air France flights giving rise to investigations, the BEA says it has observed “through a number of recent investigations (…) that the crews concerned had been able (…) free to carry out certain procedures in a compliant manner”. The organization cites, for example, a double incident on March 28 and 30, 2017 during which the same crew climbed too quickly in flight. Another fact: on September 12, 2020, an Airbus A318 “was freed from operational procedures in order to achieve a rapid arrival on the runway at Paris-Orly”. “During the final approach, the crew had very few resources to deal with a possible unforeseen event”.
Air France will initiate an audit
The investigation office also wonders about certain sentences appearing in the Air France pilots’ operations manual such as: “knows how to deviate from the procedures in consultation with the crew when safety requires it” or “improvises in the face of to the unpredictable to obtain the surest result”. The BEA considers that Air France should rather “put compliance with procedures back at the center of the company’s safety culture”.
Air France, for its part, ensures that it takes into account all the recommendations of the report, specifying that some have already been implemented. The company undertakes, for example, to “provide pilots with tools allowing them to replay and analyze their flights”, as recommended by the BEA. Air France also states that an audit will be initiated within a few months “within the whole of the company” in order to “complete, if necessary, certain analyzes of this report”.