A good description (I've seen many bad ones) of the last few minutes of Air France 447.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8541703/3.5-minutes-of-terror-Air-France-crash-dropped-at-10000-feet-a-minute.html

This one is open and shut imo. Combination of aircraft failure (due to bad maintenance) and pilot error. From what I've read, the pitot went haywire and they had to disengage the autothrottle as the plane went into a stall. The captain is nowhere to be found and Co-pilot PF thottles full BUT pulls up!!! (wtf?) During the plunge, there was input from BOTH sticks by Co-pilot PF and co-pilot PNF and the telemetry ends with the nose +12 deg. They basically flat-spinned it 38,000ft into the drink.

My thoughts:
- Air France for failing to upgrade the pitot
- Captain for being absent from the cockpit
- Co-pilots for doing bizarre things and at one point, both attempting to fly the plane at the same time
- Air France for insufficient cockpit procedure (absent captain, co-pilots without a clue)
- Air France for insufficient training
- Mother nature for not helping.

How are you Devon we have seen you for some time. I hope all is well. I fixed your registration but I do not have the data to plug in your hours. I think chuck has this and will be able to fix you up.
Again nice to see you back.

Cheers Frank - how the heck are ya?

I am great! Busy as heck and also getting old in the process. I don't get as much sim time as in the past, but still managed to squeeze some in every week

Same here, Frank. I'm a family man now. (are you on Facebook?) I've been seeing some of the trailers for Microsoft 'Flight' and have started saving for a new rig.

Also - I miss you guys. Time to come back to CVA

press coming in: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... 330706.xml