A NEW air safety crisis has been exposed after three British Airways flights were hit by the same glitch which led to a crash which claimed 228 lives.
Two of the aircraft made emergency landings last year after their systems went haywire in the same way as an Air France Airbus four years ago.
The 2009 flight went down in the Atlantic after suffering technical problems which still affect many types of Airbus aircraft.
They centre on the pitot tubes which feed vital air speed data to the pilots and plane's computers.
The probes are fitted with heaters to stop them icing up, but limited power means they can freeze and cause the computers to shut down the autopilot, forcing the crew to regain control of the aircraft, often in hazardous weather conditions.
After the crash, replacement of the French pitot tubes with newer American ones was speeded up in larger Airbuses. But a dossier obtained by the Sunday Express reveals the same tubes used in the doomed jet disrupted three British Airways flights last year.
In the first, on April 20, a BA Airbus 321 carrying 183 passengers from Stockholm to Heathrow flew into storm clouds as it approached London. Weather conditions sent the instruments haywire, forcing the pilot to divert to Stansted, where he touched down safely without the instruments telling him his air speed.
British Airways, safety, crisis, flights, crash, BABA Airbus was on its way to Heathrow when poor weather affected instruments [GETTY]
We train our pilots to the very highest standards
Spokesman for BA
The second incident happened on June 16, when the same aircraft, flying from Edinburgh to Heathrow with 183 passengers and crew, lost its autopilot while climbing through clouds.
The crew took manual control and again made an emergency landing at Stansted.
On August 20 a similar British Airways Airbus hit a -23C air pocket at 26,800ft, causing the instruments to malfunction. This time they were reset and the aircraft continued on its flight.
The Air France Rio to Paris flight crashed with no survivors, including six Britons, because the co-pilots were not trained to fly the jet manually at high altitude after the autopilot shut down.
Aviation expert Adrian Gjertsen said: "Ice and aeroplanes do not work very well. Aeroplanes are designed to pass through it but not remain in it."
A spokesman for BA said: "We train our pilots to the very highest standards including how to respond to these type of events."
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