Documentary recalls one of the worst plane crashes ever

It was in 2009 when an Air France plane crashed and took the lives of 228 people. Recently, the Brazilian streaming platform, Globoplay, released a documentary about the tragedy.

'Rio-Paris: The Tragedy of Flight 447' reconstructs one of the worst plane crashes in the history of aviation, with testimonies from the victims' families.

"It was very impactful to see how these families, fifteen years later, still live this, still try in some way, often even to give new meaning to all this and everything they went through", said Clarissa Cavalcanti, executive producer of the documentary, to UOL.

The film's director, Rafael Norton, told the newspaper O Globo: "We were concerned about paying tribute to the families and the dead".

Of the 228 people on board, there were 12 crew and 216 passengers, 59 of whom were Brazilian. The other passengers were from 32 different nationalities. Among them were a baby and seven children.

Flight AF447 took off on May 31, 2009, from Galeão International Airport, in Rio de Janeiro, at 7:29 pm (local time), bound for Charles de Gaulle Airport, in Paris, where it was scheduled to land just over 10 hours later.

However, a few hours after takeoff, the plane lost contact with flight controllers and the plane disappeared.

Moments later, the aircraft collided with the Atlantic Ocean at high speed, destroying the plane and killing everyone on board instantly.

The location of the wreckage was only accurately determined after several days of searching, as local conditions were challenging.

As the documentary makers told O'Globo, "We wanted to give this feeling as if there was a spy camera there in the cloud. And 3D arts managed to transport us to that moment" of the crash.

The documentary also talks about the complex operation to rescue the black boxes. They would reveal, years later, that the pilots sent out some harrowing messages in the minutes before crashing into the ocean: "We lost all control of the plane", "We are at 4 thousand feet," and "It can't be so", as O'Globo published.

Documentary maker Clarissa Cavalcanti explained to UOL: "We heard from leaders of the French air accident investigation center, from representatives of the company that located the black boxes in the United States, and from the pilot's brother and other people who still experience grief. It's the characters who drive the narrative."

During investigations into the accident, it was found that the speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, provided incoherent readings due to the formation of ice. This resulted in the autopilot disconnecting and manual flight mode being activated.

The final version of the investigation into the accident was released three years later, in 2012, by the French Air Accident Investigation Office. The report concluded that the tragedy was caused by a combination of mechanical failures, pilot errors, and a lack of adequate training of the entire crew for manual piloting, reported UOL.

After the accident, several measures were implemented to improve aviation safety, such as replacing Pitot sensors with models less susceptible to icing and training pilots in stall recognition and recovery (aircraft lift), especially at high altitudes.

Photo: Franz Harvin Aceituna  / Unsplash

In April 2023, Airbus and Air France were absolved of any blame for the accident. The French court stated that, although the companies had made some mistakes, it was not possible to establish a causal relationship with the accident. Despite being absolved from blame, Air France and Airbus did not want to comment on the documentary.

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