Original subtitles

Narrator: Two and a half miles below the waves...

Man: The biggest challenge was the depth.

Narrator: ...at the bottom of the Atlantic,

investigators search for the wreckage

of Air France flight 447.

Man: This was a major commercial airline...

Man: What the hell are you doing?

Man: ...that had a plane suddenly drop out of the sky

in 4 1/2 minutes.

Narrator: 228 people are gone.

Man: It was a real shock.

Man: We need to contact

Brazil and Senegal air traffic control right away, please.

Narrator: Air crash investigators face a monumental task.

Man: We absolutely had to understand

why this accident happened.

Man: The easiest explanation

is that a bomb blew it out of the sky.

That would explain it.

Narrator: The answers may lie in the wreckage,

but finding that evidence...

Man: Stop. Stop there.

Narrator: ...will take years.

Man: They had to do whatever it took.

Flight Attendant: Ladies and gentlemen, we are starting our approach.

Pilot: We lost both engines!

Flight Attendant: Put the mask over your nose.

Emergency descent.

Pilot: Mayday, mayday.

Flight Attendant: Brace for impact!

Controller: I think I lost one.

Man: Investigation starting...

Man: He's gonna crash!

Narrator: May 31, 2009.

Air France flight 447 is crossing the Atlantic.

The Airbus A330 is flying overnight

from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

58-year-old Captain Marc Dubois is in command.

First Officer: Here's the new forecast.

Narrator: He's been a pilot for well over half his life

and is now one of the most senior captains at Air France.

Marc Dubois: It's hard to see anything in this plane

with this lighting.

Narrator: First Officer Pierre-Cedric Bonin

is 32 years old.

He's been flying the A330 for about a year.

Pierre-Cedric Bonin: We are arriving at Intol.

Narrator: 37-year-old relief Pilot David Robert

is on standby.

Narrator: The three pilots fly in shifts to stay alert.

There are 216 passengers on the 11-hour flight,

including Canadian business executive Brad Clemes.

John Clemes: I talked to my brother on the Sunday morning,

and we talked about our children,

and then I talked to him

right up to the time that he got onto the plane.

Like so many of these air warriors

or whatever they call them,

he flew all the time, he was quite used to it,

and I think he probably even enjoyed it.

Narrator: Autopilot holds the plane steady

at 35,000 feet.

Controller: Air France 447.

Dubois: Air France 447, go ahead.

Narrator: And the crew communicates with Brazilian air traffic control.

Controller: Air France 447, contact the Atlantic center.

Narrator: As they fly, an onboard computer

monitors the engines, hydraulics, and other systems.

It also sends progress reports to Air France headquarters.

Every 10 minutes,

the computer transmits the plane's position,

along with any maintenance data.

Man, translated: The goal of the maintenance messages

is simply to help the ground teams

prepare for any repairs to the plane

that are needed for the next departure.

Dubois: Atlantico, Atlantico.

Air France 447 calling Atlantico.

Controller: Air France 447, Atlantico.

Go ahead.

Narrator: Three hours into the flight,

the captain reports reaching a navigational waypoint

off the coast of .

Dubois: Air France 447, position Intol.

Controller: Maintain flight level 350.

Dubois: Ok. Will do.

Bonin: So we've... Got a thing up ahead.

Dubois: Yes, I saw that.

Narrator: At 1:49 a.m.,

the A330 leaves Brazilian radar surveillance

and enters a communications dead zone over the mid-Atlantic.

Two hours later,

an air traffic controller in Senegal

tries to contact the flight.

Controller: Air France 447, this is Dakar.

Do you copy?

Come in, Air France 447.

Narrator: He can't reach the crew,

so he alerts Air France.

Controller: Dakar for Air France.

Have you heard from AF447? Over.

Man: Negative.

Hold for Air France, please.

Narrator: No one has heard from the crew of flight 447.

The only communication:

24 maintenance messages transmitted by the plane

hours earlier.

An Air France maintenance worker

tries to make contact,

but his message bounces back.

Man: What the hell?

Narrator: Perhaps the communication system has failed.

David Learmount: HF Radio, especially at night,HF

is not terribly reliable.

So for some of the time that it was missing,

everybody was saying,

"well, I hope it's just a communication problem."

Narrator: By the time the plane

should have reached Frecnh airspace,

controllers still can't make contact.

At Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris,

the 11:10 a.m. Arrival time comes and goes

with no sign of flight 447.

The A330 would have run out of fuel by now.

The airline begins notifying families.

The plane has almost certainly crashed at sea.

John Clemes: I had an infinitesimally small hope

that he might have been on a different plane

because we weren't 100% sure

what other flights might be coming back

that he could possibly be on.

Narrator: By the afternoon of June 1st,

the world learns that flight 447 from Rio to Paris

has mysteriously vanished.

Learmount: It was a real shock, to me and the whole industry,

that...that a modern aircraft like an Airbus A330,

operated by a world-class airline like Air France,

could just go missing,

without a word.

Narrator: Searchers scramble to the mid-Atlantic

to search for the plane and survivors.

Clemes: The plane had been missing 11 or 12 hours at this stage,

without any communication whatsoever.

Narrator: It's one of the worst accidents

in the history of commercial aviation.

An advanced passenger jet is gone.

228 people are presumed dead.

Narrator: French President Nicolas Sarkozy announces

there's almost no chance anyone survived.

The job of solving this mystery

falls to the BEA,

France's air safety agency.

It's under enormous pressure to come up with answers.

Jean-Paul Troadec, translated: We absolutely had to understand

why this accident happened,

and with that plane and that airline.

Narrator: Alain Bouillard takes charge of the investigation.

He's a pilot and aeronautical engineer

with almost 20 years experience as an air crash investigator.

Alain Bouillard, translated: I had worked

on other important investigations,

like the Concorde,

so I was conscious of the fact

that the investigation would be difficult.

But I was calm,

and I surrounded myself with competent people.

Narrator: French systems Engineer Leopold Sartorius

also joins the team on day one.

Leopold Sartorius, translated: From the beginning,

we expected a long and complicated investigation.

Bouillard: Ok, we need to contact and Senegal

air traffic control right away, please.

Narrator: Their first goal:

Find what's left of flight 447.

Troadec: It disappeared from radar

without sending a distress signal,

and for many days,

there was no trace on the surface of the ocean.

Sartorius: This is the last time they sent their position.

Sartorius: Positional messages

sent by the plane every 10 minutes

allowed us to be sure enough of the zone--

a large zone where the plane might be found.

Narrator: Sartorius doesn't know what direction the plane flew

after its last maintenance report.

He only knows how fast it was flying.

There's a huge area to search.

Sartorius: I say we start here.

Narrator: Thousands of square miles of open water.

Air and naval forces scan the ocean,

looking for any sign of flight 447.

Finally, after five days of searching,

a Brazilian pilot

spots a few scattered pieces of floating debris--

wreckage from an A330.

But no survivors.

The find erases any lingering doubts about the crash.

Everyone on board has perished.

Clemes: Your world collapses.

It was absolutely horrible.

You know, he was a wonderful person,

I was very close to him,

and it's just, you know,

the most horrible thing that you could think of.

Narrator: The families of 227 others

are in the same position,

and they all want answers.

Bouillard: What brings an Airbus down

from 35,000 feet?

Sartorius: Nothing.

Narrator: French investigators face an extraordinary challenge.

Bouillard: We're more used to events taking place

during takeoff or landing,

so this event raised a lot of questions.

Narrator: The crash of Air France flight 447

is so bizarre,

they wonder if terrorism is to blame.

Learmount: I think a terrorism scenario

was thoroughly plausible,

you know, very simply because

this is a very modern airplane with a very good safety record.

The easiest explanation

is that something, that a bomb blew it out of the sky.

That would explain it.

Narrator: Atlantic currents have spread floating aircraft debris

over nearly 200 square miles of ocean.

Every piece recovered

is carefully catalogued, photographed,

and sent ashore for analysis.

But it's the lost wreckage that investigators need most.

It contains the two flight recorders,

or black boxes.

Bouillard: If we didn't find the flight recorders,

we would never understand what happened.

Narrator: The flight recorders capture important details.

Controller: Air France 447.

Dubois: Air France 447...

Narrator: ...of what the pilots say and do during the flight.

Controller: Air France 447, contact the Atlantic center.

Narrator: The black boxes are so vital,

they're equipped with a locator beacon

to help investigators find them,

even underwater.

But the clock is ticking.

The beacon can only send a signal for 30 days.

What's worse--

parts of the mid-Atlantic ocean are nearly 3 miles deep.

That's deeper than the wreckage of the titanic.

Technicians listen for the signal.

Investigator: At this depth, we need to get right over them.

Narrator: But their search area spans 6,500 square miles.

Troadec: It was an immense area.

Bouillard: It was a real race against time.

We only had 30 days.

Narrator: While some investigators scour the ocean,

others scrutinize the only hard evidence they have:

The maintenance reports.

Man: I will pull up all of the messages they sent.

Narrator: Flight 447 sent 24 maintenance messages

through ACARS,

the aircraft communication addressing and reporting system.

Learmount: This is the first serious accident

to a modern airliner

where we'd had some ACARS data.

Narrator: ACARS messages are highly technical.

They're not designed to reveal

what the crew saw, said, or did during the flight.

Sartorius: To have only the maintenance messages

to work with is really unusual.

We had parcels of information

that gave us, in fact, very little information.

Narrator: But they do provide an intriguing lead.

Man: See, this is the problem with the pitot tubes.

Narrator: One of the maintenance messages

notes a failure in what's called a pitot tube--

a device that measures airspeed.

Sartorius: The ACARS messages

had given us the first piece of the puzzle.

We knew that there had been a clogging problem

in the pitot tubes.

Narrator: Pitot tubes are small cylindrical sensors

that sit outside the body of the plane.

As air rushes through the tubes, they calculate airspeed.

But sometimes pitot tubes temporarily fail.

Sartorius: In an environment with very dense ice crystals,

all the ice crystals clog the tube

and stop the air from entering.

Narrator: Air France and other airlines

were in the process of replacing pitot tubes

to prevent just this kind of problem.

Bouillard: The tubes were freezing all the time.

Sartorius: Annoying, but certainly not dangerous.

Narrator: A frozen pitot tube

is considered far from catastrophic.

Learmount: If you lose a pitot tube,

you don't fall out of the sky.

Narrator: Air France knew about the issue

and responded to it.

Bouillard: The company had notified its pilots

with an OSV, an information bulletin,

that described the phenomenon

and the appropriate measures to take.

Bouillard: Here, look at this.

Narrator: Bouillard concludes that frozen pitot tubes alone

cannot explain the crash.

There's more to this story.

Sartorius: These messages aren't much help.

Bouillard: We were certain of this right away.

We would have to look elsewhere.

Narrator: Bouillard wants to examine

another possible factor in the crash:

Extreme weather.

Bouillard: Strong turbulence can damage a plane

or even cause the loss of an aircraft

by rupturing a wing or damaging the onboard systems.

Narrator: Investigators consider the possibility

that flight 447 flew through weather

violent enough to bring down the plane.

Bouillard: Turbulence might explain

what caused the accident.

Bonin: Altitude, Sir, we're now at 33,000 feet.

Dubois: Maximum thrust.

Narrator: It may have been impossible

for the pilots to recover from a stall

brought on by a severe storm.

The forces could have torn the plane apart.

Sartorius: On a plane,

the main danger from turbulence is structural breakage,

like losing a piece of the tail

or losing a wing in an extreme case.

And that would lead to the loss of the aircraft.

Bouillard: I need more weather data--

pilot reports, satellite images, everything.

Narrator: Flight 447 disappeared in a volatile region

where trade winds from the two hemispheres converge,

creating violent storms.

Bouillard: They were in the inter-tropical convergence zone,

which often has very strong turbulence.

Narrator: Other planes changed their route that night

to avoid storms in the area.

Investigators aren't sure what kind of weather flight 447 hit.

Bouillard: What were the actual conditions?

What was the actual environment around this plane?

It was a real question.

Narrator: Thunderstorms can pose other threats as well,

including lightning.

Bonin: Sir, we're losing all our instruments.

Sartorius: If there had been some deficiency

in the insulation of the plane

and the systems were damaged,

we likely would have seen a lot of problems.

Narrator: Investigators pore over the existing data and debris,

trying to determine if the plane was damaged in the air.

They note some life jackets were never used.

Bouillard: Recovering the life jackets in their original packaging

told us that the event happened very quickly.

The passengers weren't ready for the impact

with the surface of the water.

Narrator: The discovery supports an unexpected event,

like massive turbulence.

But the debris doesn't.

Bouillard: The recovery of the tail

was a very important element.

Narrator: The pattern of fragmentation might reveal important clues

about when the tail broke off.

Bouillard: All the ruptures were static in nature.

There was no trace of fatigue damage.

Bouillard: This had to happen when it hit the water.

Bouillard: The tail was connected to the fuselage

at the moment of impact.

It didn't come apart in flight.

Narrator: Investigators conclude

the plane hit the water in one piece,

ruling out a bomb, turbulence, or lightning

as the main cause.

They will have to keep searching.

It's been three weeks

since Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic ocean.

Soon, the black box locator beacons will go dead.

Specialists focus on what they do have,

including part of the plane's galley.

Bouillard: It looks like the pressure was vertical,

like this.

Narrator: They make a key discovery.

The plane landed flat and at high speed.

Bouillard: Examining the galley confirmed

that there was an enormous vertical acceleration

the instant the plane hit the surface of the water.

Narrator: Everything inside the plane was flattened,

like a car in a metal crusher.

Learmount: They realized

that the airplane had not nose-dived into the sea.

It was almost certain that it had belly-flopped into the sea.

And how that could have happened to a modern airliner

nobody could think of.

Bouillard: Under these circumstances,

it was essential to find the recorders

to understand the accident and explain why it happened.

Narrator: The search at sea hits day 30

with no trace of the black boxes.

The locator beacon is presumed dead.

Bouillard turns to high-tech sonar.

Bouillard: From that moment on,

sonar was the only way we could detect metal on the ocean floor

and have some chance of finding the wreckage.

Narrator: But steep underwater mountains and valleys

make the ocean floor difficult to scan.

Paul Nelson: The search area really hadn't been seen before.

It was the size of Switzerland,

and you were running up through the alps,

trying to find this thing,

so that's what the terrain looked like basically,

in a general sense.

Man: Out to here.

Narrator: After months of searching,

they've scanned 8,500 square miles of ocean bed

and found absolutely nothing.

Bouillard: The absence of the flight recorders and wreckage

felt very frustrating,

and like a failure.

Clemes: To us it was inconceivable

that in 2009, 2010,

that we could lose a major airliner

and not be able to find it,

not be able to understand even remotely what had happened

and why 228 people had lost their lives.

Narrator: Investigators remain determined.

They start using autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVS,

used to locate the Titanic.

Nelson: It's probably the first time

AUVS have been run on that terrain that steep

to look for something this small.

It's a big plane when you stand next to it,

but when you're searching the ocean,

it's a very small target.

Narrator: Still, no sign of any wreckage

at the bottom of the sea.

Bouillard and his team

have been searching over a period of 18 months.

And the chances of success are growing increasingly slim.

Troadec: At the end of 2010,

we'd already spent 22 million euros.

Narrator: Continuing the search will cost millions more,

with no guarantee of success.

Troadec: We weren't sure we could find the wreckage.

And if we did find the recorders,

we weren't sure we'd be able to read them.

The black box is not designed

to stay in such deep water for two years

and still function afterwards.

Narrator: The boxes may have already been crushed

by the tremendous underwater pressure.

Two and a half miles below the surface,

they're up against a punishing force

of over 5,800 pounds per square inch.

Despite the odds, Bouillard doesn't give up.

He knows victims' families and many in the aviation community

are desperate for answers.

Bouillard: We can't stop.

We can find the boxes. I know we can.

Learmount: For the BEA,

it was their job to find out what happened,

so obviously they wanted to find the black boxes.

But can you imagine what it would be like for Airbus

not to know for sure what caused this accident?

Only ever to be able to theorize about it?

Narrator: Families continue to apply pressure, as well.

Clemes: It was extremely important for us

that they find the black boxes and find out what happened.

And we were determined

to put as much pressure as we could on the authorities

to ensure that the search continue.

Narrator: On March 25, 2011,

the BEA begins one final search.

Again, they launch AUVS to scour the ocean floor.

They focus on a 23-mile-wide circle

around the plane's last-known position.

Nelson: The AUV is separate from the vessel.

So once you launch it,

it runs its 20- or 24-hour mission

independent of the vessel.

If the weather gets rough,

the AUV is still tracking back and forth,

and it doesn't care.

Narrator: One week into the search,

an AUV captures a sonar image

of something huge on the ocean floor.

Nelson: It sure looks like a plane.

Narrator: The crew immediately sends down another AUV--

this time to take high-resolution digital images.

Nelson: I never thought I'd see the day!

Narrator: The crew sends the images

straight to Bouillard's office in Paris.

Bouillard: I don't believe it.

Thank god.

Bouillard: Receiving the photographs

was a moment we had waited for for two years.

It conjured up indescribable emotions--

very strong.

Narrator: On April 3, 2011,

the wreckage of Air France flight 447

has finally been found.

It lies 7.5 miles northeast

of the plane's last reported position,

at a depth of more than 13,000 feet.

Bouillard: Locating the wreckage

was already something exceptional

and very significant for the life of an investigator.

Investigator: We are at 4,000 meters.

Narrator: With the crash site pinpointed,

a second hunt begins.

An operator guides a robotic AUV through the darkness

in search of the two black boxes.

Nelson: It's just like a junkyard.

It's just nothing but aircraft debris everywhere.

Things are on top of each other,

there's fuselage skin,

there's engines...

There's all sorts of things all over the place.

Narrator: Days pass with no sign of the recorders.

Investigators know

that even if they find what they're looking for,

two years underwater may have rendered the devices useless.

Learmount: We had no idea

whether the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder

would be in a working order.

Narrator: Then, a breakthrough.

Bouillard: Stop. Stop there.

Zoom in on that.

Incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

Bouillard: Those are moments that are difficult to describe,

moments in your career that you can't forget.

Narrator: An unmanned sub

recovers the flight data recorder

and the cockpit voice recorder.

Nelson: Once it's on deck, the gendarmerie take it,

and they put it in the box and secure it,

then everybody's like holding their breath.

And at that point, you know you have it.

So it's really a tremendous feeling.

Narrator: In Paris,

Frecnh Police escort the flight data recorder

and the cockpit voice recorder to Leo Sartorius' lab.

After nearly two years of searching and theorizing,

the world may finally understand

what happened onboard flight 447.

The answer to what went wrong

may be locked in these watertight containers.

Bouillard: There was a lot of concern that we might take a false step

that would lead to the loss of the information.

Narrator: They must be handled with great care.

One wrong move,

and a two-year search costing over $42 million

will have been for nothing.

Starting with the cockpit voice recorder,

they carefully open the protective casing,

looking for the memory card inside.

Sartorius: The worst thing would have been

for the actual memory cards to be broken,

physically broken.

This isn't good.

See the damage?

Bouillard: The transmitters look broken.

Sartorius: We quickly noticed

that there were small parts that were broken,

so we weren't sure

that everything was in working order.

Narrator: If technicians can't fix the cockpit voice recorder,

or CVR,

they may never know what happened in the cockpit,

or even who was flying the plane.

Sartorius: Look at the FDR card.

Narrator: A close examination of the second box,

the flight data recorder, or FDR,

brings better news.

Sartorius: It's fine.

No problems.

Sartorius: I think we all looked at each other and said,

"it's incredible that they're in this state.

It's incredible."

The memory card was in excellent condition.

We were able to read the data very quickly.

Narrator: While technicians try to repair

the cockpit voice recorder,

Sartorius carefully plots the data from the FDR.

Sartorius: They were cruising safely at 35,000 feet.

Narrator: The FDR data reveals

that the pitot tubes did in fact freeze.

Sartorius: The pitot tubes freeze here.

Narrator: The frozen tubes

produce erratic air speed readings,

causing the autopilot to shut off automatically.

Sartorius: Autopilot shuts off,

and the pilot takes control of the plane.

Learmount: It warns the pilots very loudly.

That can be a bit of a surprise, a bit of a shock,

and it definitely was a shock to these pilots.

And it was their reaction to this warning

which was the key to everything else that followed.

Narrator: All crews are taught

that a frozen pitot tube should clear itself

in less than a minute.

Learmount: The pitots on the aircraft,

they were only subject to the clogging

for about 56 seconds.

And after that,

the airspeed readings were back to normal again.

Narrator: The pilot only needs to hold the plane steady,

and the problem will disappear.

Learmount: The airplane doesn't know

that you don't know the airspeed.

All the airplane wants is power to keep it going forward

and the same attitude to keep it in level flight.

Sartorius: But he does not hold steady.

Narrator: Whoever was flying the plane

pulled back and pitched the nose up instead.

Bouillard: When the autopilot disconnected,

the pilot in command changed the pitch of the plane.

Sartorius: He climbs more than 2,500 feet.

Learmount: If you pull the nose of an airplane up,

if it's going uphill, it's gonna slow down.

Sartorius: Here their speed dropped

more than 90 knots in less than a minute.

This triggered a stall warning here.

Bouillard: Raising the nose of the plane at high altitude

put the plane into a stall very quickly.

Narrator: In an aerodynamic stall,

the wings lose lift and the plane drops from the sky.

Bouillard: It was the pilot's actions that led to the stall.

Sartorius: They fell at more than 12,000 feet per minute.

Narrator: Inexplicably,

the pilot continued to pull back

when he should have been pitching the plane's nose down

to gain speed and lift.

Learmount: The more you raise the nose,

the more the lift will be destroyed.

And that's what was happening to Air France 447.

Sartorius: We had a plane

that was practically falling like a rock.

Narrator: Only the cockpit voice recorder

can reveal why the pilots acted as they did.

Troadec: In our laboratory, there were a few hours of agony

because we weren't sure we could read the data

after all this effort, all this money spent.

Bouillard: Will it play?

Sartorius: I don't know.

Narrator: Investigators are up against the wall.

They have just one hope remaining

in their long quest to know

what caused the worst disaster in Air France's history.

Everything they've worked for

now depends on repairs made to one small electronic device.

Bouillard: The moment of truth.

Controller: Air France 447.

Dubois: Air France 447. Go ahead.

Controller: Air France 447, contact the Atlantic Center.

Dubois: Atlantico. Atlantico.

Narrator: The recording reveals

that 40 minutes before the accident,

Captain Dubois is in the pilot seat.

Controller: Atlantico, go ahead.

Dubois: Air France 447, position Intol.

Sartorius: The CVR allowed us to understand

who was piloting the plane,

who was monitoring the parameters.

Controller: Maintain flight level 350.

Dubois: Ok. Will do.

Narrator: First Officer Pierre-Cedric Bonin

is in the right-hand seat.

Bonin: So, we've got a thing up ahead.

Dubois: Yes, I saw that.

Narrator: And the two men are heading towards a storm.

Bonin: Looks like we're entering the cloud.

Narrator: Normally the crew would try to fly above a storm,

but at this stage in the Trans-Atlantic flight,

it's not safe to do that.

Bonin: It would be good if we can climb now, eh?

Dubois: Yeah.

Narrator: At 35,000 feet,

the air outside is too thin

for the fuel-heavy plane to climb any higher.

The pilots have only two choices:

Fly straight through the storm,

or try to navigate around it.

Bonin: You get some sleep?

David Robert: So-so.

Dubois: Well, then, I am out of here.

Bouillard: Captain Dubois takes his scheduled rest.

Narrator: First Officer David Robert

relieves the more experienced captain.

Robert has almost 4,000 more hours flying the A330

than the other first officer on the flight deck.

Bouillard: First Officer Robert is in the left-hand seat.

First Officer Bonin is the pilot flying in the right-hand seat.

Narrator: Investigators now know that minutes before the crash,

the captain left the cockpit for his break.

Robert: Maybe don't you want to go to the left a bit?

Narrator: But it's unclear

which of the two remaining pilots is in command.

Bonin: Excuse me.

Robert: You can possibly go a bit to the left.

Learmount: The way they acted

when the captain had left the flight deck

was not as if one of them was definitely in charge

and the other one was definitely the supporting pilot.

Narrator: The confusion over their roles becomes critical

when the plane hits a column of ice crystals in the cloud.

The ice crystals pound the plane.

Ice envelops the pitot tubes.

Bouillard: The ice crystals are filling the pitot tubes.

Airspeed readings are no longer valid.

Narrator: The pilots don't know their airspeed--

a scenario they had not been trained for.

Bouillard: That is the autopilot disconnecting.

Bonin: I have the controls.

Robert: What's that?

Narrator: Stall warnings begin to blare in the cockpit

as Bonin lifts the nose.

Finally, investigators know

which pilot put the plane into a stall.

Bouillard: First Officer Bonin is pulling back and stalling the plane.

Narrator: Unable to rely on computers, as modern pilots now do,

confusion ensues.

Bouillard: Officer Robert

doesn't understand what's happening.

Learmount: He sees the airplane going up

and he sees the airspeed dropping,

and he says, "hey, watch your airspeed."

Robert: We've lost the... The speed.

Narrator: The pilots need to push the plane's nose down

to gain speed.

But Bonin keeps pulling the nose up.

Bonin: Ok. Ok. Ok.

I'm going back down.

Robert: According to all three, you're going up.

So go back down.

Narrator: Under stress, Bonin acts on instinct.

He pulls up to go up-- the right move to lift off,

but the wrong move at cruising altitude.

Bouillard: They're doing everything wrong.

It should be obvious what to do.

Narrator: Desperate to save his 216 passengers,

First Officer David Robert summons the captain.

If Bonin simply let go of the controls,

the plane would gain speed.

Robert: Do you understand what's happening?

Bonin: I'm losing all control of the plane.

Sartorius: When they get here,

they are falling at more than 6,200 feet per minute.

Bouillard: So they still have about two minutes left

to figure out what's happening.

Narrator: First Officer Robert decides to take control.

Robert: Controls to the left.

Narrator: He tries to push the nose of the plane down--

a key step for recovering from a stall.

But still confused, Bonin continues to pull back.

Sartorius: They can use their side sticks at the same time.

If both go in different directions,

they have a tendency to cancel each other out.

Learmount: The fact that the two pilots

were making different and sometimes opposite inputs

to the side stick controls was pretty surprising.

The two pilots were not coordinating their thinking

or their actions.

Narrator: 90 seconds after the crisis began,

the captain returns.

Dubois: What the hell are you doing?

Robert: We've lost all control of the aircraft.

We don't understand anything, but we've tried everything.

Learmount: Because they weren't believing

the situation that they were now in,

they just went back to basic instinct,

which is, "I want to go up, I want to stop falling.

Let's pull the nose up."

Narrator: Dubois scans the instruments,

trying to see what's gone wrong.

Robert: What do you think? What do we need to do?

Dubois: I don't know. It's going down.

Bouillard: The captain doesn't have enough time

to assess the situation.

Bonin: We're at 9,000 feet.

Robert: Climb. Climb. Climb. Climb.

Bonin: But I've been at maximum nose up for a while.

Narrator: Finally Dubois understands.

First Officer Bonin is causing the stall

by pulling the nose up.

Dubois: No! No! No! Don't climb!

Bouillard: By the time they figure it out,

it's too late.

Narrator: Robert can't get enough lift

to recover from the stall.

At 2,000 feet,

sensors detect the ocean's surface

and trigger new alarms.

Bonin: We're going to crash.

This can't be true.

But what's happening?

Narrator: The aircraft hits the water

at almost 124 miles per hour.

Bouillard: Hearing the conversations

on the cockpit voice recorder for the first time

was a big moment.

It left us speechless.

Troadec: Alain Bouillard was all pale.

At that moment he understood the distress the crew was in

during the last moments of the flight.

Narrator: By the summer of 2011,

salvage crews recover 104 bodies

from the submerged wreckage of flight 447,

including that of Brad Clemes.

Clemes: My brother was amongst those that were raised,

so it enabled us to recover him,

to bring him home,

and to conduct a service properly

and to say our goodbyes properly,

so it helped.

Narrator: More than three years after the accident,

Alain Bouillard announces that the downing of flight 447

was not caused by the frozen pitot tubes,

but by the crew's failure

to understand and rectify the situation.

Bonin: This can't be true.

But what's happening?

Clemes: There was a feeling

that these planes were so sophisticated,

they could fly by themselves.

The pilots weren't even trained to fly this type of plane

on manual at high altitudes

because the thought was

that they would always be on autopilot

so there was no reason for the pilot to know how to fly it.

Narrator: New training is now in place

to teach crews how to deal with unreliable airspeed

and how to recover from a stall at high altitudes.

Learmount: The airlines have to be prepared

to spend more money

on fundamental manual flying training

and cognition training for their pilots.

Air France 447 is just the accident

where you can't ignore it any longer.

And changes have to come.