A pilot aboard doomed Air France Flight 447 knew the terrifying end was near and, moments before crashing into the Atlantic in 2009, shouted: “F–k, we’re dead!”
Vanity Fair magazine — cobbling cockpit audio recordings, flight-data records and investigator interviews — painted the final, frantic moments of Flight 447, which took off from Rio de Janeiro on May 31, 2009, and nose-dived into the ocean long before reaching Paris.
All 228 on board were killed.
A combination of bad weather, pilot error and the captain’s extra-marital affair contributed to the deadliest crash in Air France history, according to VF.
Junior co-pilot Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32, was at the helm of the Airbus A330 as it hit a thunderstorm over the sea.
Bonin and fellow co-pilot David Robert, 37, pitched their craft sharply up instead of down, leading the plane to stall and come crashing down.
Marc Dubois, the 58-year-old captain, had left the cockpit to take a nap because he had been up all night with his mistress, and returned when it was too late to avoid catastrophe.
As the plane was falling fast at just 4,000 feet above the ocean, a panicked Robert couldn’t believe what was happening.
“F–k, we’re going to crash! It’s not true! But what’s happening?” the terrified co-pilot said.
A moment later, either Bonin or Robert knew his fate had been sealed and shouted, “F–k — we’re dead!”
The plane sank to the ocean floor and wasn’t found for nearly two years.
Dubois and the rest of his crew had arrived in Rio three days before Flight 447’s departure.
The married captain was accompanied by gal pal Veronique Gaignard, an off-duty flight attendant and budding opera singer.
Dubois’ extramarital love life was not part of the official report, but it’s not disputed that the captain got just one hour of sleep the night before getting into Flight 447’s cockpit.
Not long before 447 ran into the storm that spelled their doom, Dubois left the cockpit for a nap, leaving inexperienced Bonin in charge.
Dubois had more than 11,000 flight hours compared to Bonin, who had logged a little less than 3,000. Robert had double the hours of Bonin, according to VF.
The probe’s lead French investigator believes that Dubois would have properly navigated the storm, had he not been napping.
“If the captain had stayed in position . . . it would have delayed his sleep by no more than 15 minutes, and because of his experience, maybe the story would have ended differently,” chief French investigator Alain Bouillard told VF.