The type 's second fatal and deadliest accident , and first while in commercial service , occurred on 1 June 2009 when Air France Flight 447 , an A330-200 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board , crashed in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of the islands of Fernando de Noronha , with no survivors . Malfunctioning pitot tubes provided an early focus for the investigation , as the aircraft involved had Thales-built " – AA " models known to record faulty airspeed data during icing conditions . In July 2009 , Airbus advised A330 and A340 operators to replace Thales pitots with equivalents manufactured by Goodrich . Investigators later determined that the inadequate response of the pilots to both a loss of airspeed data from malfunctioning pitot tubes and subsequent autopilot disengagement resulted in Flight 447 entering into an aerodynamic stall
Air France Flight 447
Air France Flight 447
Airbus A330