UPDATE 8 April- Pilot Error- TO/GA hit 4 times by the pilots! "Boeing reportedly told Air France that no technical issue was found on the 777 involved in a serious incident on April 5, 2022, according to La Tribune. The Boeing 777-300ER registered F-GSQJ was carrying out flight AF011 from New York-JFK to Paris-CDG. The flight had entered the final approach to runway 26L when the pilots reported to the air traffic controller that the aircraft was seemingly unresponsive to the crew’s input and was uncontrollably veering left. In ATC audio published online, one of the pilots explained that the aircraft “was out of control.” The French daily La Tribune claimed to have had access to preliminary information sent by the manufacturer to France’s flag carrier which indicates there was no technical problem with the aircraft. According to the content of the quick access recorder (QAR) which compiles flight data, the 777 did not encounter any flight control malfunction. Boeing stated that “the reference aircraft responded appropriately to the commands of the flight crew.” Additionally, the take-off/go-around (TO/GA) switch was reportedly activated four times. The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), which opened an investigation into what is being treated as a serious incident, responded that the flight data was still being analyzed. “A communication will be made when we have a global understanding of the event,” it said in a tweet. Aircraft accident and incident reports usually take months to compile while investigators examine the various sources available, such as the full flight data recorder parameters and the cockpit voice recorder. "

I was a 40 year airline pilot. Last 28 years on B767. Flew all over Europe, and a lot to CDG. Sounds like localizer signal interference (airplane or ground vehicle?), they noticed deviation a little late, botched the go around procedure, as you alluded. At the end of an all night 9 hour flight, all or some pilots on the flight deck (3) can be tired. If one doesn’t review the go around procedure prior to EVERY approach and landing, it’s a cluster F… remembering the steps, in order. I speak from experience 🤪. From then on, I always mentally reviewed and verbalized to my copilots, the steps in the event of a go around.

I cannot tell you how much I love this channel. Today's show 10 out of 10. Retired ATC I appreciated the explanation, step by step that you did, including paper layout. Just awesome. Keep up the great work!

As a former (now-retired) 777 Line Check Airman and Evaluator with 40 years as an airline pilot and 13 years as a 777 captain, I can't tell you how many times I saw pilots screw up go-arounds. It's generally not practiced enough in training, and it's a quite complex maneuver with numerous steps that have to be completed in exactly the right sequence in order not to trigger alarms and/or overspeed the flaps.

There’s no one better to analyze this than an accomplished triple 7 pilot and his French speaking wife. Kudos to both, as well as the crew who had payback for every minute spent in the simulator.

Juan, this channel is such a great resource. I can't recall ever having an experienced pilot giving out information to the public about an incident with a commercial airplane. You explain this in ways that other professional pilots can understand and the non-pilot public can easily understand also.

Heck I’m just glad they were able to pull things together ,recover and land the aircraft safely.

Enjoyed the 'guest appearance' at the end. Very cool.

Back in the 90s I was a jumpseat passenger on a MD-11 and on final they were practicing a cat III landing in clear weather. The plane veered suddenly right and the autopilot hesitated a couple of seconds before disconnecting. The pilot quickly corrected the yaw and we landed but he was very disturbed why the aircraft violently veered down and to the right and why the plane didn't disconnect the autopilot at command. I thought we were going to die. This sounds like a similar situation.

As a french, I'm glad you've treated ths incident, didn't thought I'd hear the CVR in my langage

Thanks Jenny for the translation that did help.

I'm bilingual in French and English at (9:10), the pilot says in french, loss of command or steering control, possibility that was the AP at that moment. Then at (9:16) he describes the issue as the plane doing whatever it wants to do. Which means they had a surprise reaction event. ( I have been very specific in this translation) Hope this helps.

I was going to mention that pilot when pilot said "l'avion a fait à peu près n'importe quoi" that the aircraft did not only NOT respond to the command. But rather was actively misbehaving. Your friend guest described it perfectly. Pilot sounded really surprised and kind of shocked

Your theme song started playing in my head as soon as I heard about this incident.

Just WOW, Juan. Thank you for this. So nice to have a 777 pilot to show us this! I LOVE YOUR CHANNEL. From the big plane stuff, to the small plane stuff, it's all so fascinating!

Five stars Capt Blanco! Loved having a 777 expert explain this. Great job.

Nice visual aid at about 11:40 for us non pilot types. Mike

Jenny’s translation is spot on. Génial… parfois les traducteurs disent n’importe quoi 😁 !

Regarding home language the only European airline pilots who regularly receive and issue clearances in their own language are the French and occasionally the Spanish. Everyone else speaks English.

Please, Follow up on this as soon as info becomes available. Love the work you do. Information saves lives. And so do you !

I learned something new today about the Localizer antenna! I didn't realize it could be blocked intermittently. I know in Houston, if you live on the north side of town, the tall downtown buildings can block TV signals from the antenna farms on the south side. I guess it's a similar thing.

Glad you left Jennie at the end. I liked hearing the real time translation with the explanation.

Thanks Jenny!

Thanks Jenny.

"Darn it Bob was sitting on the lawmower in front of the antena watching YT over 5G again ..." On a more serious note, i am happy this isnt a crash analyse vid for once.

Fascinating explanation, especially after 13:34. Thank goodness there was still just enough time to get the situation under control.

Sounds to me like the pilot in command was court off guard. I used to do a 777 Auto Pilot lesson in the sims with engineers, to demonstrate the difference between a cruse engage and land engagement. 1500ft RA big clunk all 6 BDA’s engaged, now try and break the controls outs! With a land engagement as you know you need to put a far amount of muscle in to break the controls out / disconnect A/P. It sounds to me like the crew weren’t expecting that.

The language thing. For the record, I spoke French before learning English. After I moved to Western Canada, where most people speak English from Quebec where most speak French, I had a discussion with an airline pilot about the fact that speaking French on the radio is acceptable in parts of Canada (mostly Quebec). He believed that it is unsafe to not speak English on the aircraft radio. His reasoning was that it is important for every pilot to have traffic situation awareness. For completeness, he was also an aircraft mechanic teaching basic maintenance to g/a aircraft owners (or otherwise interested) at the community college (non credit night classes). I found it funny that he was so passionate about the topic as he assured us that he spoke French fluently. I do not remember testing him on that but I am quite certain that I would remember if I had any doubt about his level of fluency.

Thanks Juan!! I learned something about localizers I never knew as part of the “I’m not a pilot but I work in aviation” club, this was great info

Glad you decided to cover this. Been puzzled about it on Avherald early this morning Easter time.

Nowhere else on the Tube is 20 minutes of pure considered information so interesting!

Jenny is a great addition sir

Nice to see a contribution from Juan's better half in this vid. Thanks, you two. :)

Thanks for the translation, Jenny! And thank you for the update, Juan, really appreciate the Blancolirio channel.

Excellent explanation Localized antenna interference followed by late AP disconnect

Once the MSM jump on an incident like this Juan already has a video out. I really appreciate your work!

I've been a pilot since 1980. I owned a '68 Piper Cherokee 140 that I flew for years. I have about 1500-2000 hours. I wanted to be an airline captain with all my heart then life happened. Married, family, excellent career in automotive, 35 years with Mercedes Benz. Massive divorce. Recovered from love lost but never recovered from financial evisceration. Extremely unfair outcome but once again survived intact. I really enjoy your coverage of the incidence and accidents. I've never tried what you do, making videos. I see that you are human and make little mistakes that are edited on the fly with words and brief description to correct errors. Excellent handling of information. Huge respect. I very much enjoy watching and learning the new navigation systems. I've often thought that if I was given a chance to fly a simulator, full size, I might do very well landing an airliner without ever having flown one before. I know this sounds boastful but I don't scare easily and have handled many tricky situations in my life. 55 year of motorcycle experience including racing. Acrobat in highschool, trampoline and still rings. I excelled in trampoline. Situational awareness is key to survival. Surfing for over ten years that includes being held down for over two and a half minutes. Remaining calm in a serious situation is key to survival. When you have to hold your hand over your mouth and nose to keep from inhaling water, you're in a life or death situation. I wish I had money to share to help support your channel. I really appreciate the fact that you fly 777. I flew from San Francisco to Frankfort Germany and return on United 777. What a marvelous machine. I have very serious respect for anyone in command of a machine that complex. Thank you for all the effort and broad spectrum of topics from aviation to weather/drought and reservoir recovery. These are very much inline with my core interests. I very glad that you do this for all of us that appreciate your work so much. Please continue to do what do so well. Thanks again. Carl Gulbransen

Thank goodness for redundancies and training. Even if a pilot gets complacent, disaster doesn't have to be inevitable.

your such a gift to humanity JUAN.Thank You SIR.

That sure looks like the result of a vehicle entering the ILS protection area. When my airline was going through CAT3 qualification, we did many simulated approaches to autoland. Many airports wouldn’t play nice and protect the localizer for us. I had that exact situation twice at LAX when they crossed traffic down near the the LOC antenna. Just a guess

As always, Juan, brilliant clarity.

As soon as I heard this on the news, I knew where I'd shortly go to get a professional explanation. Cuz for most folk, news of this sort is scary. 777 is a big bird with lots of people, I can imagine the horror going through the pilots minds as they're thinking the plane itself is gonna kill them. Thinking of the MAX debacle. Thanks Juan.

Good to see more of the home team.

Jenny has a really good french accent.

These sort of reports is why I subscribe to your channel Juan. Thank you very much.

Very good video. I’m always impressed with multilingual folks. Very cool, Jenny.

I subscribed for the Oroville Dam coverage. I stayed for the aircraft incident coverage. Well done, Juan!

I flew into Le Bourget Airport in a Kingair 200 about 40 years ago. The center set me up for the ILS and had me contact the tower. When I called the tower and reported I’m established and IFR tower says oh the ILS is out of service…what? I’m on the ILS and it appears to be working fine. Well you can either fly the missed approach, look for the runway visually, or go to minimums. Fortunately I caught a glimpse of the runway. The ILS was working. But thanks to all the people who tried to give me a heart attack at 29 or crash the Kingair in Paris that day…..sorry you lose.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, Sir! You're a fantastic investigative reporter! Thanks for sharing the lawnmower hypothesis!

I learn something every time I watch your channel, thank you Juan!

I knew you wouldn't let this go by without comment. Thanks again for your insights.

The plane starts to deviate while on autopilot, and the pilot flying struggles with the controls to get back on track, while the other pilot says “stop stop” (stop fighting the controls), almost like the pilot flying forgot the autopilot was engaged, and it wasn’t until they disconnected it did they regain control…so what caused the airplane to deviate, autopilot malfunction or something blocked the radar as you mentioned…

Great breakdown thanks Juan - scary to hear the wailing and crew distress on a 777

Juan, you are so darned thorough! Once you reach mandatory age, the NTSB should swoop you as an SME.

Thanks for the context Jenny! Knowledge of the language beats a translation any day of the week!

Very good explanation Juan as always, looking forward to the results from the data, and yes it looks at first glance that they were fighting the autopilot. I am sure you know but just to clarify for your viewers that English, Spanish, French, Russian and Chinesse are all ICAO lenguages and are spoken at those countries who speak any of those lenguages, and for any foreigner airline they would speak english. great job

There´s just a very surprising statement of the French BEA published, dealing with this incident. An update would be very nice! :-) Thank you very much for your work!!!

Jenny knows her stuff about French translation. Her accent is really good.

No real surprises here. Typical Air France crew, learned to fly in the computer lab and when their equipment goes south they panic. Nice job Juan analyzing the situation. Pas de vraies surprises ici. L'équipage typique d'Air France a appris à voler dans le laboratoire informatique et quand leur équipement va vers le sud, ils paniquent. Beau travail Juan analysant la situation.

A later comment on Simon's report, another AF 777 had the same thing happen earlier in the day. Search for passenger report: "Another AF 777 go-around on 5th April 2022 By Air France Traveler on Wednesday, Apr 6th 2022 15:20Z" "I was on another Air France 777 landing around 6am also on 5th April 2022 (DXB-CDG) (F-GSQK). I was watching the plane’s camera approach on the in-seat screen and it seemed to me that the plane was significantly to the left of the runway. At a very low altitude, in the last minute of flight, the pilot pulled up for a go-around. Could the two incidents be related? Both were 777s on the same day."

Been patiently waiting to hear your input about this Juan! Could here you're intro in my head as soon as I knew about this incident! haha

In addition to the differences Juan already mentioned, European aviation also “enjoys” a larger guard band between their 5G frequencies and the radio altimeter frequency.

Only ever been on one Air France flight in my life, it was back in the late 70s, and that included a real roller coaster go-around situation. Thankfully we all survived it, but only after the hardest slammed-down landing I have ever experienced. As we disembarked the plane the two pilots were having one highly charged and very emotional argument in the cockpit, in french of course. I had no idea what was being said, but the very unprofessional manner in which they were behaving made me make my mind up to switch out my flights to a diffrent airline for the return journey home, and never ever use that airline again. Thanks for all you great work Juan, it gives us all a unique insight into your world behind that cockpit door. David in the U.K.

Great video, as always, Juan. I was so engrossed that I could not believe 20 minutes went by that fast!!!

This is terrifying, nice job to these pilots.

altough the detailed information on the incident was super interesting i really liked the final part with jenny describing the french conversation the most :)

Hi Juan. I'm not sure if you read all this, I only read down a bit myself. As a 14 year 777 Captain, I can clear one thing up which I think adds to understanding what happened. That first aural sound was indeed a master warning, but it was the AP disconnect sound. The second is mostly associated with GPWS and possibly windshear warnings, but not the AP. It could also possibly be a speed warning, but it doesn't sound like that doing stall work in the sim, so I'm not exactly sure. My thoughts? They had a localizer deviation as your described, but they didn't disconnect the AP. Instead they manually overrode the AP and it disconnected, hence the constant warning sound. They were obviously temporarily overloaded and never thought to hit the AP disconnect switch to cancel the sound. The second warning, I'm not sure. One thing to note, at the lowest energy point the groundspeed was 113kts. A -300ER upon landing would generally be about a Vref+5 of 145-150kts (155 at max landing weight). Even with stronger winds aloft, that puts them 15-25kts below approach speed and well into the amber band and close to stick shaker or stall speed. This is all just my speculation from my experience and knowledge. We'll know the truth soon enough. Thanks and keep up the good work.

ILS Critical Areas. Doesn't look like the conditions were sufficient to warrant LVP's so radar would have been packing the aircraft in at standard spacing. ILS often interfered with by either an aircraft rotating ahead of a lander or by the tail of the one ahead turning off the runway. In this case a THY A330 was on the runway and vacating and possibly bending the LOC. During LVP's we'd ensure that spacing was such that the previous lander was clear of the ILS critical area before the inbound was at 2nm to avoid this type of event.

Canada here...thanks for the report

"EICAS" engine indicating and crew alerting system. For those not familiar, this is a glass panel display in the center of the instrument panel which gives information as to engine operation (engine gauges), system operation/status. This works in conjunction with various warning lights, and aural sounds. I believe the aircraft should have had triple redundant autopilots, so a deviation of this sort would be highly unusual, especially since they had been tracking the localizer prior to the deviation. In total, the crew did as they were trained, they were the ultimate redundant factor, and the flight landed normally.

Great report, Juan! If nothing else, they drew a perfect paperclip with this incident.

Excellent Juan. I had heard the recording and the warning horns were as you said. The autopilot disconnect is a distinctive whoop whoop tone. Curiously as you said, you could really hear the crew struggling, groaning and heavy breathing, as you said, possibly trying to fly the A/C with the autopilot on. As soon as you hear the autopilot disconnect horn, their laboring sounds retreat. The FDR data will hopefully give leads to the left excision. I had thought about wake turbulence, but that seems unlikely, but I have zero 777 seat time. I guess the FDR will shed more light. Great work Juan. See Ya

Another great video. I'm watching this one on my phone after the enjoying STOL demo down here in hot and humid Lakeland, FL.

Thank you Jenny for the language help 🙏

You make everything so clear. Lots of information aimed just right for your audience (at least this bit of it 😊 ). Thanks.

Jenny's French is very good (assuming she has not many opportunities to practice frequently).

Thanks Juan, particularly that ILS technology is now the better part of eighty years old. Well overdue for MLS.

At around that time you can see a ground vehicle "FLYCO2" near the ILS antenna on fr24

At 8:36 he calls Air France HW to stop their climb at 1500ft, that's a departing airplane on its initial climb. At 8:43 you can hear their (HW) autopilot disconnect sound as they stop climbing at 1500ft. It was not a transmission from AF011 at this time.

As I was just saying, harmonics .... even things like magneto noise, spurious transmissions or unintended emminations that happen to have a frequency that is a perfect harmonic of the selected Nav Frequency (108.00 - 117.90 mhz) ("odd" kilo hz) ... ie. 108.10 mhz, 108.30, .50,...etc.) "ILS" tuning of the Nav receiver automatically tunes Nav receiver (VHF band) for VOR or ILS ops (Non-Precision Appr), and sends channeling info to the Glide Slope receiver (UHF band) for tuning to receive & display up/down info for (Precision Appr.). Been a while now, but like riding a bike, it comes back.! Amazing. Anywho...✌😎

Great Work Juan as always! I am not a pilot but learn a lot from your detailed explanation and technical expertise on all planes. Even ex-pilots have been amazed at your knowledge and experience . Keep on the good work on this channel.

I've not heard of any passenger on the plane complaining. I wonder if the shift left and the struggle with the plane just felt like a bumpy approach? Scary sounding recording!

Jenny only lived in France for 5 years? She sounds like she's been there for 20, speaks like a native. And I wouldn't have explained better what the pilot was saying. He did indeed say the aircraft started doing random things and not responding to inputs.

Thanks for covering this

Lost in translation: "L'avion fait un petit peu n'importe quoi" means "the plane does whatever it wants" or "The plane does a little bit of whatever" not "the plane doesn't respond"

I was wondering about the possibility of 5G being a factor. I’m glad you addressed that as well as we can with the information currently available.

Very interesting. Looking forward to a follow up. BTW we enjoyed our recent vacation flight from DTW to HON and back. Pilots did a great job!

They pulled it off😨 The fact interference can cause such problems is scary as heck.

FR24 is showing its lowest altitude on approach was 1,116ft ASL, which was a significant drop from G/S

The first warning heard is a Config (configuration) warning, and as you say the second is the autopilot disconnect warning.

I have no idea what Juan is talking about as I'm just a passenger, but I watch his videos anyway cause this guy is very interesting & entertaining.

According to the reports, they've analyzed the Quick Access Recorder and everything is fine with the aircraft, they're now looking more in depth with the crew's action, apparently the approach was unstable and they hit the TO/GA switches 4 times!

So Jenny can speak 3 languages! Cool!! I didn't know she knew French. Sounds like this wasn't a very pleasant experience for the pilots here. Glad it had a great ending. Will be interesting to learn the cause of all of this.

Just think if there had been no pilots in the cockpit. Technology is awesome in many ways but that shows right there why there is no replacing humans

This is such a great channel, Juan.

I knew you'd be all over this one. Great job!!!!

Another great video. Waiting for your video analysis of the DHL incident flight D07216. Scary mishaps lately.

Not a pilot, but love aviation. Seems with technology we are getting further and further away from pilots actually flying the aircraft. So when the computers we are relying on don’t work, some pilots panic and forget to just fly, then work issues out. I have wanted to get my private pilots license for years, but never had the money raising a family and life. But I want a basic plane. One that I could fly. That’s the joy I would think. If I want to be a computer operator I would do it on the ground.

Another good one! Side note- I was on an Air France B777-300 from CDG to BOS last week that turned around about 2.5 hours into the flight for "technical issues." Unfortunately I can't see the cancelled flight in my frequent flyer history, so unsure of the N#.

Agreeing with DM. Fatigue certainly to be considered. Thankful for a safe landing in the end. Thank You Juan, your hard work is much appreciated. Thank You Both. Gute fahrt. Buon voyage.