A Parisian court acquitted European manufacturer Airbus and airline Air France on Monday of manslaughter following the 2009 crash of a connecting flight between Rio de Janeiro and Paris that killed 228 people.
Nearly 14 years after the disaster, the Paris criminal court acquitted the two companies, ruling that while there were “faults”, this “did not make it possible to demonstrate any causal relationship” with the crash of flight AF447, an Airbus A330-200.
The accident led to lasting changes in aircraft safety measures, as the official investigation found that multiple factors contributed to the crash, including pilot error and icing on external sensors.
The reading of the sentence was witnessed by the relatives of the victims, with some tears, while they awaited a sentence from both companies, leaving them speechless, according to the French news agency France-Presse (AFP).
The trial, which lasted about two months (October 10 to December 8, 2022), left the bereaved families with anger and disappointment.
Unusually, even the Public Ministry defended the acquittal, admitting that the process did not produce sufficient evidence of criminal irregularities on the part of the two companies.
The prosecution mainly attributed responsibility to the pilots, who also died in the accident. Airbus lawyers also blamed pilot error and Air France lawyers argued that the true causes of the crash will never be known.
No one is in danger of arrest as only companies are on trial in what was the deadliest accident in French airline history.
Air France has already compensated the families of the deceased, who come from 33 countries, most of them French (72) and Brazilian (58).
The A330-200 aircraft disappeared from radar in a storm over the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, with 216 passengers and 12 crew on board.
It took two years to find the plane, which made it possible to recover the recordings contained in the black boxes, which were found at the bottom of the ocean, more than four thousand meters deep.
The first remains were found in the days after the accident, but the bulk of the aircraft was not located until two years later, after a long search.
The black boxes confirmed the starting point of the crash: ice on the “pitot” speed sensors while the plane was flying at high altitude in a difficult “turbulence” zone near the equator.
One of the co-pilots, disturbed by the consequences of this failure, took an upward trajectory and, in a state of incomprehension, the three pilots were unable to regain control of the plane, which stalled and crashed into the ocean 4.23 minutes after.
Investigations revealed that similar sensor incidents had occurred repeatedly in the months leading up to the accident.
For the court, Airbus committed “four imprudence or negligence”, in particular, not replacing the model of ‘pitot’ sensors, known as “AA”, which seemed to freeze more frequently in the A330-A340 fleet, and the fact that will show “information retention” of the companies.
Air France committed two “imprudences”, linked to the way in which it distributed an informative note to its pilots about the failure of the sensors.
However, according to the court, from a criminal point of view, “a probable causal link is not enough to characterize an offence.”
In this case, regarding the failures, a causal link with the accident could not be demonstrated.
During the trial, which took place from October 10 to December 8, 2022, the Public Ministry requested an acquittal, considering that the guilt of the companies was “impossible to prove.”
Source: TSF
