Authority, Emotion, and Communication Breakdown - An Analysis of the Air France Flight 447 Accident

Le résumé fourni par la source

This paper examines the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcript from Air France Flight 447 to understand how communication, authority, and emotion regulation broke down during the fatal aviation crisis. Analyses often focus on technical factors or spoken interaction, missing the broader psychosocial dynamics that drive escalation. Using qualitative discourse analysis informed by Conversation Analysis (CA), Crew Resource Management (CRM) frameworks, and emotion regulation theory, this study traces how authority and emotional control were discursively constructed, challenged, and ultimately lost across three phases: Incident, Emergency, and Crisis. The analysis reveals that coordination did not fail linearly but deteriorated through uneven cycles where brief stabilisations gave way to new ruptures. Key findings show how mismatches between verbal agreement and control actions, ambiguous authority transfers, and emotional dysregulation com-pounded under stress, ultimately reaching a point of irreversibility in the last phase. These findings have implications for CRM training protocols, emphasising the need to prepare crews for ambiguity, emotional breakdowns, and implicit role confusion, not just procedural failures. The study demonstrates how discourse analysis can reconstruct disaster dynamics when CVR transcripts are the only available evidence, offering insights into how breakdown unfolds moment-by-moment in high-stakes environments.

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