The report says pre-flight planning was carried out by the first officer alone because the captain was late. The pre-flight checklist was also curtailed following an interruption to cockpit procedure by the cabin crew chief. The report comments: "This lack of rigour in the preparation for the flight was also noted during taxiing, with non-observation of the 'sterile cockpit' regime." The cockpit voice recorder [CVR] shows there was no pre-take-off emergency briefing, although this is Air Algerie standard operating procedure.

About 8s after the engine failure, the captain took control for reasons that the investigators say are not clear. The first officer (who had more than 5,000h flying) had already called for the gear to be raised, and again called for clearance to retract it once the captain had taken control, but got no response. She then reported the emergency by radio, but after that point played no clear role. The investigators say Air Algerie has a poor system for providing feedback from other incidents - although the airline published safety bulletins, all the case studies were from other airlines and "no event reported by a crew of Air Algerie was analysed in writing".

Source: Flight International