Enlarge image
Air France plane: relaxed handling of checklists
Photo: Joel Saget/AFP
The report published last Wednesday by the French aviation safety authority BEA has led to the suspension of two Air France pilots.
The two got into an argument shortly after take-off during a flight from Geneva to Paris, which apparently even led to fisticuffs.
A member of the cabin crew had to spend the rest of the way in the cockpit to prevent the argument from flaring up again, reports the Swiss newspaper La Tribune.
The BEA report also lists other incidents that show deficiencies in the airline's security management.
In any case, individual pilots do not seem to take the regulations in critical situations so seriously.
One of the cases listed describes a flight from Brazzaville in the Congo to Paris.
Despite a leak in a fuel line, the crew neither headed for the nearest suitable airport nor switched off the engine - a clear violation of safety regulations, which provide precise instructions on what to do in such cases.
In the opinion of the BEA examiners, an engine fire could easily have occurred in this situation.
The report lists three other similar dangerous situations between 2017 and 2022 in which pilots preferred to follow their own intuition rather than the courses of action specified in the checklists.
Air France denies the allegations.
The safety guidelines are continuously being developed.
The recommendations of the supervisory authority are also followed, which stipulate that pilots analyze critical situations during previous flights and check the checklists for such cases for their plausibility.
In addition, Air France operates thousands of flights every day.
In view of this, the four incidents listed are a very small number.
mike
