An ESL based lesson to help students discuss a different topic. Skills: making educated guesses, drawing conclusions and more.

2. For more than two years,
the disappearance of Air
France Flight 447 over
the mid-Atlantic in the
early hours of June 1,
2009, stayed one of
aviation's great
mysteries.
How could a
technologically state-of-
the art airliner simply
vanish?
Terrorists?
Bad weather?
Autopilot?
Equipment failure?
Human error?
Quick Facts:
- The plane started doing flights on the
25th
February 2005
- On 17 August 2006, the A330 was involved
in a ground collision with Airbus A321-211
F-GTAM, at Charles de Gaulle Airport,
Paris.
-Had just gotten serviced.
- 3 highly trained pilots, one having
more than 11,000 hours of flights.

4. What do the experts know?
 The plane flew to 2512 feet above
its original altitude, and it still
was ascending at a dangerously
high rate, it is flying within a safe
altitude.
 The stall alarm begins to sound.
 Still, the pilots continue to ignore
it, (maybe they believed it was
impossible for them to stall the
airplane).
 The computer lost its airspeed
data, it disconnected the autopilot
and switched from normal law to
"alternate law," a regime with far
fewer restrictions on what a pilot
can do.
 "Once you're in alternate law, you
can stall the airplane," said one
expert.
 Before this crash, not one of US
Airway's 17 Airbus 330s had ever
been in alternate law. Therefore,
one of the pilots may have
assumed that the stall warning was
false.
 How can experts learn what
happen to train their pilots better?

5. The engine at the bottom of the ocean.
By 17 June 2009, a total of 50 bodies had
been found in two distinct groups more
than 50 miles (80 km) apart, and more
than 400 pieces of debris from the plane
had been recovered.
But the most important thing to find
in a plane crash is the black box.
Do you know why?

6. On the 26th
of April 2011, after a 12-hour dive by the Remora 6000, the flight data
recorder had been found.On 1 May the memory unit was found and lifted on board
the Île de Sein by the ROV.
The flight data recorder was found!
What did the recordings teach experts?
What really caused the crash?

7. On the 26th
of April 2011, after a 12-hour dive by the Remora 6000, the flight data
recorder had been found.On 1 May the memory unit was found and lifted on board
the Île de Sein by the ROV.
The flight data recorder was found!
What did the recordings teach experts?
What really caused the crash?