For parallel to AirAsia crash, look at Air France, not Malaysia Airlines

Air France Flight 447, which crashed en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009, may offer the best insight on what happened to AirAsia Flight 8501, according to investigators in the early stages of the flight. Both flights killed everyone on board, both were flying into storms when they disappeared, and—in both cases—it seemed to the pilots of the Airbus that a climb was the way out of their predicament. The 2009 crash ended up being, at least in part, a lesson in the hazards of automation, as, deprived of autopilot, the panicked flight crew took actions that made matters worse, including trying to carry out different maneuvers simultaneously from both sets of controls.

There are times when that automation can become confusing, or there can be a disconnect between the pilots and the automation in the aircraft.

Deborah Hersman, former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board

Above the Java Sea, the pilot of the AirAsia Airbus A320 told air traffic control he was approaching threatening clouds, but he was denied permission to climb to a higher altitude. The plane lost contact minutes later. Should the black boxes be recovered—those of Air France 447 were discovered nearly two years after the crash—it would tell investigators whether too much automation was the problem.

In Asia, it’s very normal to rely, in my view, excessively on automation partly because the manufacturers stress that the airplanes are easy to learn…

David Greenberg, former Delta Air Lines executive and pilot trainer at Korean Air

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