Crash avoided at Paris CDG when pilots lost control of an Air France Boeing 777 and veered off course just before landing

A tragedy was narrowly avoided. Air France Boeing 777-300ER registered F-GSQJ, coming from New York JFK, came close to crashing when it was above Paris-Roissy airport. As flight AF011 was about to land, the aircraft failed to respond to controls and veered off course, just 370 metres above the ground.

The chilling exchange between the control tower and the pilot has been published. If everything seemed initially to go as planned, with the tower indicating the runway on which to land (26L), one can suddenly hear the panic in the cockpit, while the alarms are activated and the pilot fights to try to regain control of the aircraft.

Having finally managed to regain control of the aircraft after accelerating, the pilot told the control tower (in French) what had just happened: “We go around, 4,000 feet, we’re going to maintain them, we call you back (…) The aeroplane is pretty much going nuts.”

Eventually, after a go-around, the crew requested runway 27R and managed to land without any further incident.

The French BEA (Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la Sécurité de l’Aviation Civile, Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety) explains that it has opened “a security investigation” into what is described as a “serious incident“, with “instability of flight controls on final, go-around, hard controls and flight path oscillations“.