Lessons for aviation industry in recent AirAsia flight crash, shares parallels with 2009 incident

It took nearly two years to find the black boxes from Air France Flight 447, but the Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight that fell into the Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of June 1, 2009, could offer insight into what may have gone wrong on AirAsia's Flight 8501. 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.

In the Air France flight, the three pilots of the Airbus A330 were confused by faulty air-speed data after key sensors iced over. Then, about 25 minutes into turbulence, the autopilot and autothrust cut out, and the pilot at the controls began a steep climb, despite requests from the co-pilot in the cockpit to descend. Four minutes and 23 seconds after the first alarms sowed panic and confusion over how to regain control of the aircraft, the plane slammed into the ocean, plummeting belly first at nearly 11,000 feet (3,350 meters) per minute. The wreckage was found 12,800 feet (3,900 meters) beneath the surface, its black boxes intact.

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. Search teams have not yet found the black boxes containing the same crucial information that pinpointed the causes of the Air France flight. The 2009 crash ended up being, at least in part, a lesson in the hazards of automation.