I recall having read somewhere that the maintenance crew had removed the pitot tubes while cleaning the exterior of the aircraft (can they be removed?) and that the sensors were duct taped. This tape is normally removed after the cleaning ops are over and before take off. However, in this case, they forgot and the flight took off with the sensors covered.

Could the pilots amongst us please clarify if this is possible?

Regards,

VC

If i remember correctly this incident happed before also in 1996 Aeroperu flight 603!
@VC sir no one can remove the pitot at Line Maintenance and one thing for sure prior to take off each time pilots will have a walk aound check with us  and if any problems persists they wont takeoff and masking tape will be used only in dusty areas (as per me its no where used in India).Secondly our altitude is determined by static pressure and speed both staic and pitot is required these both pressure will go to ADC(Air Data Computers from both sides) than induvidualy given to Captains and  first officers instrument if both side masked than both will get different reading if only one side is correct than again no room for calibration. >
If in this condition Autopilot is engaged situation becomes even worse!

shocking.water below freezing entering the sensors! imagine the state in the cocpit when every system sounds an alarm. scary!

Yes, this incident does remind me of the Aeroperu crash. I saw the reconstructions on nat geo (Air Crash Investigations).

Finally found.

Closure for the families.

http://www.businessinsider.com/air-france-flight-447-free-fall-bea-2011-5

Interesting that they could not recover from a stall with 35000 feet altitude and pretty much full control of the airplane (including all available thrust).

Sort of surprised that nobody commented on this !

Are we trusting machines too much, and losing basic skills ?  What I heard is that typically commercial pilots are actually flying only for less than 10 minutes even in flights that last many hours !

+1 Anwar saab
thing is many pilots nowadays (talking about) commercial are depending largely on Autopilots not on actual piloting ,so they are less prone to this kind of situation and conditions. and more over  they spend more times on simulators rather than actual piloting ,
crew went through this condition are very rare and for the first time! and they didn't knew end result
for example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martinair_Flight_495
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Eagle_Flight_4184

for any experienced pilot
"every flight is new and unknown"

The Popular Mechanics article is really spine-chilling. Hope Airlines wake up soon. Human lives are too valuable to be squandered this way 

i can talk from my personnel experience, Emergencies i have faced in life includes , Fire (My face and hand got burnt), Flame outs (Deadstick), Oil pressure failures , Control freeze, many bird hits, from all of it i came out alive , apart from Gods grace, i have expected the worst and forever rehearsed for it, which is part of the training, i had a chance of travelling in a cockpit of a commercial airlines couple of times, without generalising i can tell you this, casual attitude in the cockpit was non existent when an Ex Military was at controls. Hudson hero is a case in point. read http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35688025/ns/travel-news/t/miracle-hudson-hero-retires/#.TuVYGrK4q7s

PS
I know i have opened a can of worms

True Augustine. But how to replicate that attitude in civilian pilots? Keep reading about pilots who report drunk! And these are only the guys who get caught

Essential difference is SSB (Services Selection Board) you have to qualify to be a soldier, then there is (Pilot aptitude Battery Test) to be mil pilot (More than 90 % aspirants get wasted in these pre-selection tests alone) then the ground training starts, some get wasted there, then the flying trg starts, wastage rate is to the tune of 40-50 % there, trainees, who do not qualify take on other non flying jobs, out of the guys who make it, very few get a chance to be a fighter pilot. So from the start to finish,the percentage who make it runs into second decimals.

No such thing is there in becoming a civilian pilot, anyone with money can become a civil pilot, albeit there is a lot of professionalism coming into this field. then it cant match the dicipline levels of mil, IMHO all retirees from mil should be grabbed by these airlines, they can avoid a lot of embarrsmment apart from putting lives of their customers in very safe hands.

Take a case of this accident, similar case happened with me, at night, in a bad weather, alone in the inky night, ( >) due icing at high altitude, feel of the aircraft , co-relation with other instruments which are not affected by icing, seat of the pants flying all this comes to rescue. overly relying on instruments which you often see and know to seldom fail, tends to put a lot of faith on those instruments, when they do fail, they take you with them.

Meteorologist will tell you, higher than normal Outside  Air Temperature with vertically developed Cumulonimbus are bigtime killers. they have to be avoided like plague, even if one has to take a detour and get a wrap on the knuckle from the airlines company for burning more fuel of theirs.

Aeroplane flies due dynamic pressure not the speed that it is making good with respect to the ground, dynamic pressure reduces with altitude , so they go faster to catch same number of air molecules to keep them afloat (In a very laymans terms), the only way to measure dynamic pressure is to catch the total pressure (By shoving a pipe ahead of your aircraft called the Pitot tube ) and minusing with the static pressure captured by a sideways facing hole.

this was the hole that was duct taped, so the aeroplane thought it is flying at very high speed (Because static was never minused  from the total pressure), result ? pilot reduces speed in spite of stall warning coming on, stalls out of the sky. there were other instruments telling the tale , but , alas they were never relied upon , fixation, over-reliance etc etc.

Hello Everyone

This is my first time interacting with you all. I've regards for piloting be it mil or civilian. Any work including piloting depends on personal discipline and not where you fly or work. I do not agree with the fact that mil pilots are better then....xyz abc trained pilots.

Please know that the civilian pilots put their money at risk while getting trained and even while flying for airline. This is not the case with mil pilots. They are paid even while getting trained.

Piloting is all about discipline.

With all regards, many civilian pilots have saved 1000s of accidents.

point taken Doshi, totally in agreement with you. it is just that i am yet to come across gross indiscipline from any mil pilot, (Aberrations are always there), most, if not all who show up drunk, or taxy fast, or put newspaper on the wind shield because your flight plan is IFR, i can go on and on. of course disciplined guys are always that way ,pilots or otherwise.

I wish to share my experience.
An X Mil pilot after landing, commented on an airplane (C152) doing unusually wider and erratic circuits. And to my surprise, he said he landed before as that was indiscipline civil pilot. Matter of fact it was second solo flight of a pre pilot student and was just trying to get some experience of  rough weather (10-12 kts) cross wind landings.
Here comes the understanding point. I believe, Aviation safety is first then we might like to define it as mil or civil. This is also very common in our day to day life on Indian traffic. People have excuse of saying other one was wrong. We need to develop sense of correcting others mistake to increase safety margins for us and others.
There are and will always be many reasons of performing bad in air as long as human fly the airplanes.

++ This is why I`d like to fly a two seater Microlight glider, you really fly a plane ....

There are a few things that don't make sense.
In the report it mentions that due to freezing of pilot probes, the speed would have decreased causing the aircraft to stall. Now AFAIK, once install the aircraft will plunge towards the ground, but in doing so the speed increases and it will come out of the stall after some time (with proper piloting ofcourse). So if it was flying at 35,000 feet, could it not have recovered from the stall in time?

Second off course is the argument by Augustinev that military pilots have a greater degree of control in such situation due to their training. However, most of the training is in simulators these days (defense or otherwise). So simulators can be programmed to generate any form of emergency situation. But the point is that each simulator is for a specific aircraft. So a air force pilot with extensive fighter aircraft experience would not be any better unless he is extensively trained on the AB330 as well.
The problem, in this case, is the airline that is not giving its pilots enough training, or the pilot themselves?

Seems like you did not read the entire cockpit transcript... if you did, this question should not have risen.

Anwar I did read this.
"Tragically, from the way the airline hit the water - nose up, with wings level - it appears that the crew may have come close to saving their passengers' lives."

The question I was trying to ask was does it take more than 35,000 feet for an jetliner to recover from a stall?