Two Air France pilots have been suspended after a fight in the cockpit of a plane they were flying between Geneva (Switzerland) and Paris last June.
According to Air France, quoted by the Associated Press on Sunday, the flight was able to land safely but it was undermined by the behavior of the two employees.
According to the Swiss newspaper La Tribune, the pilot and his co-pilot argued shortly after takeoff and clashed after one allegedly hit the other.
The crew members intervened and one of them had to remain in the cockpit with the pilots for the rest of the flight.
Read also Loss of control on the New York-Paris flight: what happened on board the Air France Boeing 777?
This incident came as the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) published a report last week finding that Air France lacked rigor in the safety procedures on its flights.
A fire hazard
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 French airline to "put compliance with procedures back at the center of the company's safety culture".
The BEA relies on an incident that occurred on December 31, 2020 during a flight between Brazzaville (Congo) and Paris on board an Airbus A330.
A fuel leak detected at cruising altitude led the crew to divert to N'Djamena airport (Chad) but without observing the "FUEL LEAK" safety procedure which provides for the engine to be cut off on the side of the leak .
“The engine shutdown (…) was deliberately 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", continues the BEA.
"Put compliance with procedures back at the center of the company's safety culture"
While the organization underlines the “extremely limited” number of Air France flights giving rise to investigations, it says it has observed “through a certain number of recent investigations (…) that the crews concerned had been able (…) free to carry out certain procedures in a compliant manner”.
The BEA cites, for example, a double incident on March 28 and 30, 2017 during which the same crew climbed too quickly in flight.
On September 12, 2020, an Airbus A318 “exempted 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", insists the BEA.
The investigation office 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 'unpredictable to obtain the safest result'.
"The BEA considers that Air France should put respect for procedures back at the center of the company's safety culture", advises the investigation office.
