Airbus A320 crash at Habsheim airshow, France 1988

This was an Airbus A320 that crashed at Habsheim, Alsace, France on June 26th 1988. Despite what many people belive the aircraft was NOT being flown by a computer at the time. In fact it was being piloted by captain Michael Asseline, the aircraft was supposed to fly by at 100 feet but clearly it was lower. The captain stated in a post crash interview that his altimeter read 100 feet, despite this he felt the altitude was lower and he commanded the engines to full thrust. The engines did not respond in a timley fashion, an issue that had been encountered before on the Airbus A320 in fact this was only not proven because an AIRBUS official at the scene switched the flight data recorder for a blank one of the same type this was only found out several years after the captains imprisoment. Email me if you'd like to know more.

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[Nik Hughes]

Am currently watching this on National Geographic, there were over 100 people onboard, pilot was flying low and misjudged, 3 people died...

[Gary C]

Thats correct, however it was more than merely the pilot misjudging, it is known that his instruments were not giving him an accurate picture added to the fact his engines were abnormally slow to respond.

[benrosemberg]

he also happened to disengage one of the protocols of the fly-by-wire system which moves the throttle to max to force the plane out of the stall attitude. I suggest everyone interested in this incident read up on "Fly By Wire" by William Langewische...Great read, covers this accident, and it lets you in on what really happened here...It is disputed, yes, but truthfully Asseline was playing around with a system he wasn't familiar with, and pushed its envelope further than he should

[Gary C]

"throttle to max to force the plane out of the stall attitude" any pilot will tell you that to VERy first phase of stall recovery is to bring engine power to flight idle, then lower the nose THEN and only then apply full power. The application of full power will only force the nose attitude to increase thus worsening the stall, the nose must first be lowered. And when your at only 50ft lowering the nose isn't really an option, thus stalls at low altitudes very hard to recover from.

[cheesemaster1000]

Anyone that says this flight was unmanned clearly know NOTHING about commercial aviation or for that matter aviation, period. You CANNOT fly a jetliner without a pilot! If you could airlines would have got rid of them years ago, why waste money on pilots? For God sake stop saying this was unmanned and start using some common sense!

[mathfreak123]

Glad to read the video description, but can you add some periods in there? It was difficult to follow along with what you were trying to say.

[killmuster]

you'r exactly right , I know a lot about aviation , I went to a full motion flight simulator and flew an A340 .... and I did an exelent landing , and I say .. until now .. NO jetliner can fly all by it self , who's gonna taxi ? take off ? set the route ? caculate fuel preformance ? communicate with the tower ? talk to the passenger's ? and so on ... humen is a lot better that any very automated aircraft if that humen was a pilot

[DeathSoljah4Life]

Are you for real?

[SayaAensland]

I can't believe there are French people who actually say "ooh la la". I thought that was just something made up by foreigners.

[Zapster48]

Clearly the Illuminati were in control of this flight to discredit computers and pilots so that they could step in with the new creation Windows 3.0 to dominate the world! I read it on the internet so it must be true! ;p

[blackycheckit]

Pilot error. Navigation maps didn't show the correct landscape i.e the forest. Equipment error. Known Airbus error in engine 'lag' below 100ft.. Pilots saw the runway too late so glide slope was all wrong and they were slowing down as they did the flyover. Air France mucked up the altitude. they specified 100ft. which was below the legal height for airshows, it should have been around 500ft.

[FoxAirfieldMaverick]

many would still say the plane was unmanned

[Gary C]

This aircarft was flown by Captain Micheal Asseline google his name.