Simulation shows shocking reality of Air France flight 447 crash that killed 228 people after plane 'had a stroke'

A chilling simulation has recreated the final moments of an Air France flight which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

On 1 June, 2009, aviation experts across the world were baffled when Air France Flight 447 vanished during a flight from Brazil's Rio de Janeiro to Paris during the early hours of the morning while flying through a 'communication dead zone'.

After numerous attempts to re-establish contact with the flight, a search commenced to work out what had happened to the aircraft, with wreckage being recovered days later. All 228 passengers and crew onboard the flight were killed in the accident.

It would be another two years before the flights black box flight recorder was recovered, allowing investigators to uncover what caused the deadly accident.

What happened to Air France Flight 447?

Three hours and 40 minutes after taking off from Rio, Flight 447 likely encountered a series of thunderclouds. As more and more ice was hurled at the aircraft, thick crystals began to form on the

Airbus A330's sensors, causing the pilots to receive inaccurate readings. The ice crystals also impacted the plane's pitot tubes - small, pen-shaped structures which are dotted around the front of the aircraft - causing them to malfunction, this was particularly critical as the tubes are responsible for providing the pilots with accurate speed measurements.

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Various alarms began to sound in the cockpit as the plane was knocked out of auto-pilot, the two First Officers present inside the cockpit (the captain had stepped out during this moment) struggled to recorrect the aircraft and caused Flight 447 to enter a stall.

The automatic engine control system and flight computers would also stop functioning. "It was like the plane was having a stroke," Gérard Arnoux, then head of the French Pilot's union, explained to German outlet Der Spiegel.

Just minutes after the sensors onboard the aircraft began to fail, Flight 447 would crash into the Atlantic Ocean at a speed of 152 knots (equal to 175 miles mph)

It's understood that all passengers and crew onboard would've died on impact from severe blunt force trauma.

Watch a chilling simulation of the flight's final moments, taken from National Geographic series Air Crash Investigation, below:

Why did Air France Flight 447 crash?

Following the recovery of Flight 447's black box data two years later investigators were able to establish that the aircraft had crashed due to a combination pilot error and temporary inconsistencies which led to the flight's autopilot disconnecting.