More than thirteen years after the Rio-Paris crash which killed 228, Airbus and Air France will be tried in Paris from October 10 to December 8 for “manslaughter“, we learned Thursday, February 10 from a judicial source, confirming information from Var-Matin.
Read alsoCrash of Mont Sainte-Odile: “I heard a loud noise, then it was complete darkness”
Flight AF447 connecting Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed in the middle of the Atlantic on June 1, 2009. The pilots, disoriented by a technical failure in the middle of the unstable meteorological zone of the “doldrums“, had not been able to catch up with the stall of the A330, resulting in the death of the 216 passengers and 12 crew members. The wreckage and the black boxes were found two years later, nearly 4000 m deep. After ten years of proceedings, the investigating judges dismissed the case in 2019, arguing that the investigations had not made it possible to establish “a culpable breach by Airbus or Air France in connection (…) with pilot faults (…) at the origin of the accident“. This initial decision, which had scandalized families and pilot unions, was finally overturned on appeal in May 2021, paving the way for this trial.
The Paris Court of Appeal considered that the airline “refrained from implementing suitable training (…) and the information of the crews which was necessary“Faced with the technical failure encountered, “which prevented the pilots from reacting as they should“, according to a source familiar with the matter. The court also held that Airbus “underestimated the seriousness of the failures of the anemometric probes (…) by not taking all the necessary measures to inform the crews urgently (…) and to contribute to training them effectively“, according to this source. The icing of these probes, considered to be the trigger for the disaster, was at the heart of the expertise battles. Considering not to have committed any “criminal misconduct“, the airline and the manufacturer had appealed against their referral to correctional, but the Court of Cassation ruled these appeals inadmissible last August.
SEE ALSO – In conflict with Airbus, Qatar Airways signs a major contract of more than 20 billion dollars with Boeing