Air France Flight AF447 crash: European Aviation Safety Agency warns over airspeed sensor in Airbus A330, A340

The European aviation safety regulator has issued a safety warning for an airspeed sensor supplied by the United States-based Goodrich Corporation for the long-haul Airbus A330 and Airbus A340 jet aircraft and asked airlines to test the gadget.

The airspeed sensor in question, called the Pitot, is made by the French firm Thales SA.

Goodrich Corporation, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, the United States, is the standard supplier of airspeed sensors for the Airbus A330 and Airbus A340 models.

In a statement, the Germany-based European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) – the European Union’s agency that regulates safety in civilian aviation – said the Pitot tubes made by the Thales SA might have contributed to the June 2009 crash of an Air France plane.

In the accident, all the 228 people on board Air France Flight AF447, from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Paris in France, had perished.

Investigators of the crash of Air France Flight AF447 suspect the possibility of the Pitot tubes of the Airbus A330 having got iced over and hence fed false readings of airspeed to the aircraft’s computers as the plane flew into a sever thunderstorm.

The Pitot takes pressure readings, from which the aircraft’s onboard computers calculate the plane’s speed. However, the device is susceptible to blockage from water and icing, or anything else which may disrupt the flow of air.

In the absence of exact date on speed, the pilots might accidentally fly the aircraft faster than permitted (thereby putting pressure on the plane’s structure), or fly it too slowly, resulting in the plane stalling.

In August 2009, the European Aviation Safety Agency had banned the particular model of the Pitot airspeed sensors made by Thales SA that had been installed on the ill-fated Air France Flight AF447. In addition, the safety regulator also had limited the use of another new Pitot model of Thales SA to just one device per plane – which means that Goodrich Corporation should provide at least 2 airspeed sensors to one aircraft in future.

Present-day jet airliners have at least 3 Pitot tubes installed on them.

Thales SA, based in Cologne, Germany, said in a press release that the European Aviation Safety Agency’s directive “addresses a potential in-flight air leak which could lead to incorrect readings of pressure and airspeed.”

Even while asserting that the design of its Pitot sensors was “sound,” Thales SA asked airlines to test the gadget, which, the company said, is a rather easy task that does not involve disruption of flight schedules.