"Air France Flight 296 was a chartered flight of a new Airbus A320-111 operated by Air France. On June 26, 1988, it crashed while making a low pass over Mulhouse–Habsheim Airport (ICAO airport code LFGB) as part of the Habsheim Air Show. Most of the crash sequence, which occurred in front of several thousand spectators, was caught on video. The cause of the crash has been the source of major controversy. This particular flight was not only the A320's first passenger flight (most of those on-board were journalists and raffle winners), but it was also the first public demonstration of any civilian fly-by-wire aircraft.
Official reports concluded that the pilots flew too low, too slow, failed to see the forest and accidentally flew into it. The captain, Michel Asseline, disputed the report and claimed an error in the fly-by-wire computer prevented him from applying thrust and pulling up. In the aftermath of the crash, there were allegations that investigators had tampered with evidence, specifically the aircraft's flight recorders ("black boxes"). This was the first crash of an A320 aircraft.
The TV documentary series Mayday also reports claims in Season 9 Episode 3 that the flight recorder might have been tampered with and indicated that four seconds had been cut from the tape; this was shown by playing back a control tower tape and comparing it to the remaining tape. The pilot argues that he attempted to apply thrust earlier than indicated in the flight recorder data. When he increased throttle to level off at 100 ft, the engines did not respond. The pilot claims that this indicated a problem with the aeroplane's fly-by-wire system rather than pilot error. After a few seconds he got worried and thought there may have been something like a short circuit in the completely computerised throttle control, and responded by pulling the throttle all the way back then forward again. By that time the aircraft had touched the trees. The show also looks at the theory that it was the computer at fault, not the pilots- because the flight's altitude had fallen below 100 ft, the plane's computers automatically believed the flight was landing and therefore it would not allow any drastic manoeuvres from either pilots. When they suddenly asked it for more power and lift, it simply ignored them."