Minute-by-minute: Battle for control of jet

Pilots wrestled with the controls of an Air France plane for more than four minutes before it plunged into the Atlantic with its nose up, killing all 228 people on board, French investigators said yesterday.

The 2009 emergency began with a stall warning two-and-a-half-hours into the Rio-Paris flight - nine minutes after the captain had left the cockpit for a rest period.

Shortly before, a junior pilot told flight attendants to prepare for a "little bit of turbulence".

The Airbus A330 jet climbed to 38,000 feet and then began a dramatic three-and-a-half-minute descent, rolling from left to right, with the youngest of three pilots handing control to the second most senior pilot one minute before the crash.

The timeline of flight AF447 was described in a note by France's BEA crash investigation authority. It said it was too early to give the causes of the crash, ahead of a more comprehensive report in the summer.

The captain, 58, returned after "several attempts" to call him back to the cockpit, but was not at the controls in the final moments, according to information gleaned from flight recorders.

By the time the captain returned, just over a minute into the emergency, the plane was plunging at 10,000ft a minute. Its nose was pointing up 15 degrees - too high an angle compared to the onrushing air to provide lift.

The BEA said data from the recorders suggested the crew were not able to determine how fast the plane was flying.

That echoes earlier findings which suggest the pitot tubes, or speed sensors, on the plane may have become iced up.

The airline said in a statement that the crew had demonstrated a "totally professional attitude".

France's pilots union declined to comment.

John Clemes, vice-president of the families' support group, said: "It's very emotional to see the unrolling, minute-by-minute, or second-by-second at some points, of what happened. You automatically think of your family member and how they were living through this."

The BEA said pilots pulled the nose up at crucial moments as the plane became unstable and it sounded a stall warning.

"The inputs made by the pilot flying were mainly nose-up," the BEA said.

A top aircraft industry safety consultant said the standard guidance in the Airbus pilot manual called for the pilot to push the control stick forward to force the plane's nose down in the event of a stall, which can lead to a loss of control.

"The BEA is now going to have to analyse and get to bottom of how crew handled this event," said Paul Hayes, safety director at Ascend Aviation, a UK-based aviation consultancy.

"The big question in my mind is why did the pilot flying (the aircraft] appear to continue to pull the nose up."