Air France Flight 296
| Accident summary | |
|---|---|
| Date | 26 June 1988 |
| Summary |
|
| Site |
Mulhouse–Habsheim Airport, Mulhouse, France 47°44′58″N 7°25′34″E / 47.74944°N 7.42611°ECoordinates: 47°44′58″N 7°25′34″E / 47.74944°N 7.42611°E |
| Passengers | 130 |
| Crew | 6 |
| Fatalities | 3 |
| Injuries (non-fatal) | 50 |
| Survivors | 133 (136 initially, 3 died trying to exit the aircraft) |
| Aircraft type | Airbus A320-111 |
| Operator | Air France |
| Registration | F-GFKC |
Air France Flight 296 was a chartered flight of a new fly-by-wire Airbus A320-111 operated by Air France. On 26 June 1988, it crashed in front of a crowd of several thousand while flying over Mulhouse–Habsheim Airport (ICAO code LFGB) as part of the Habsheim air show, which resulted in its being one of the very few crashes of a commercial airplane caught in its entirety on video. This particular flight was not only the A320's very first passenger flight (most of those on-board were journalists and raffle winners), but it was also the very first public demonstration of any civilian fly-by-wire aircraft. The cause of the crash has been the source of major controversy. The low-speed flyover, with landing gear down, was supposed to take place at an altitude of 100 feet (33 metres); instead, the plane performed the flyover at 30 feet, skimmed the treetops of the forest at the end of the runway (which had not been shown on the airport map given to the pilots), and crashed to the ground. All the passengers survived the initial impact, though a woman and two children died from smoke inhalation before they were able to escape.
Official reports concluded that the pilots flew too low, too slow, failed to see the forest and accidentally flew into it. The captain, Michel Asseline, disputed the report and claimed an error in the fly-by-wire computer prevented him from applying thrust and pulling up. In the aftermath of the crash, there were allegations that investigators had tampered with evidence, specifically the aircraft's black boxes. Due to these rumors of evidence tampering, investigators were denied access to the crash site of Air Inter Flight 148 in 1992 until judicial officials had secured it, causing a delay that probably led to the otherwise preventable destruction of one of the black boxes .
This was the first crash of an A320 aircraft.
Captain Michel Asseline, 44, had been an airline pilot with Air France for almost 20 years and had the following endorsements: Caravelle, Boeing 707, 727, and 737, and Airbus A300 and A310. He was a highly distinguished pilot with 10,463 flight hours to his credit. A training captain since 1979, he was appointed to head the company's A320 training subdivision at the end of 1987. As Air France's technical pilot, he had been heavily involved in test flying the A320 type and had carried out maneuvers beyond normal operational limitations. He had total confidence in the aircraft's computer systems.
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