Court orders Air France, Airbus trial over Rio-Paris crash
PARIS: Air France and Airbus must stand trial on involuntary manslaughter charges over the 2009 crash of a Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight that killed all 228 people on board, a Paris court ruled yesterday. Flight AF447 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm on June 1, 2009, the deadliest crash in Air France’s history. The court followed the general prosecutor’s recommendation, overturning an earlier court decision to drop the case against both the French flagship carrier and Europe’s top aircraft maker. It took two years to find the wreckage of the Airbus A330 jet, which was eventually located by remote-controlled submarines at a depth of 3,900 m.
Investigators determined the crash was caused by errors by pilots, who were disorientated by faulty speed monitoring equipment. The general prosecutor’s office call for a manslaughter trial against both Air France and Airbus went beyond the Paris prosecutor’s initial demand that only Air France should face manslaughter charges.
Both prosecuting teams contested a 2019 decision to drop the charges by the two investigating magistrates assigned to the case, who said they could not ascribe fault to the companies in what appeared to be a case of pilot error. But prosecutors accused Air France of indirectly causing the tragedy by providing insufficient training on how to react in case of malfunction of the so-called Pitot tubes, which enable pilots to monitor their speed. The pilots reacted incorrectly when the plane stalled after the speed sensors froze over as it flew through a large cloud at high altitude. Lawyers for Airbus said they would lodge an appeal against the decision, saying it “in no way reflects the conclusions of the investigation which resulted in no charges against Airbus in this case”. Air France told AFP that it had committed “no criminal act” and that it, too, reserved the right to lodge an appeal. The Paris appeals court decision had been much awaited by victims’ families.