The Paris Appeals Court has found Air France and Airbus guilty of corporate manslaughter after flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009
Air France and Airbus have been found guilty of manslaughter after the death of 228 people in a 2009 plane crash.
The Paris Appeals Court found the airline and aircraft manufacturer guilty of corporate manslaughter after flight AF447 between Rio de Janeiro and Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.
The passenger jet stalled during a storm and plunged into the water, killing all 228 people on board in France’s worst air disaster.
A court had previously cleared the companies in April 2023 but they were found guilty after this appeal and both have been ordered to pay the maximum fine of €225,000 each.
The verdict is the latest milestone in a 17-year legal marathon involving two of France’s most emblematic companies and relatives of the mainly French, Brazilian and German victims, with French lawyers predicting further appeals to the country’s highest court.
The crash of storm-tossed Flight 447 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris has had lasting impact on the industry, leading to changes in regulations for airspeed sensors and in how pilots are trained.
An official investigation found that multiple factors contributed to the crash, and the companies deny criminal wrongdoing.
The A330-200 plane disappeared from radar over the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and Senegal with 216 passengers and 12 crew members aboard.
As a storm buffeted the plane, ice disabled the plane’s pitot tubes, blocking speed and altitude information. The autopilot disconnected and the crew resumed manual piloting, but with erroneous navigation data.
The plane went into an aerodynamic stall, its nose pitched upward and then it plunged into the sea on June 1, 2009. It took two years to find the plane and its black box recorders on the ocean floor, at depths of more than 13,000 feet (around 4,000 meters).
Air France was accused of not having implemented training in the event of icing of the pitot probes despite the risks. It has since changed its training manuals and simulations.
Airbus was accused of having known that the model of pitot tubes on Flight 447 was faulty, and not doing enough to urgently inform airlines and their crews about it and to ensure training to mitigate the risk. The model in question — a Thales AA pitot — was subsequently banned and replaced.
