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Shortly after the plane took off, chaos broke out in the cockpit.
The Air France pilots shouted, pulled each other and fought.
The turmoil in the air is now revealed after a report that shakes the airline.
The smock hung, literally, in the air on the flight between Geneva and Paris in June this year.
The fight in the cockpit of the Air France plane is revealed in connection with a larger review of the French airline’s pilots.
It was shortly after the Airbus A320 plane took off from Geneva airport and was still climbing towards cruising altitude that the commotion occurred, writes La Tribune.
Thrown wooden objects
According to the information, the pilots must have held each other by the shirt collars and possibly hit each other before the noise from the cockpit caused the cabin crew to rush inside.
One pilot says in the following investigation that an “accidental blow” must have caused the quarrel to escalate. The other believes that it was a “deliberate ear file”.
One of the pilots states that the colleague threw “a wooden object” in his face.
In order to calm the situation and ensure the safety of the passengers, one of the cabin crew had to remain in the cockpit for the entire 75-minute flight.
The plane landed in Paris without any further drama on board.
Report criticizes security
An Air France spokesperson confirmed the information on Sunday.
– The incident ended quickly and did not affect the conduct or safety of the flight, which continued normally, says the airline and states that both pilots have been suspended pending a management decision on their future after the investigation.
It is not clear from the reporting in the French media what triggered the fight.
But the information about the commotion in the cockpit comes at the same time as a critical report from it the French aviation agency BEA published.
It states that some of Air France’s 4,000 pilots have “adopted a culture where the importance of strict safety regulations is not taken seriously”.
Do your own review
The focus of the report is on a flight between Brazzaville and Paris in December 2020 where a fuel leak was discovered in an engine.
The pilots changed the plane’s course, but did not shut down the relevant engine or land at the first best airport as required by the regulations.
The plane landed safely in Chad, but the engine could have caught fire due to the pilots’ actions, BEA says in the report.
The report also details three similar incidents in recent years, and the French Civil Aviation Authority believes that some pilots are acting on their own rather than what is found in the safety regulations.
Air France states that it will now carry out a major safety review and that it will follow the aviation authority’s recommendations regarding pilot training.