Air France Plane Crash: Air France and Airbus have been found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in a criminal trial over the 2009 crash of a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris that killed 228 plane passengers and plane crew.
The national carrier and the aircraft manufacturing giant were charged over their alleged role in the disaster after a previous investigation was dropped in 2019.
“Given the science at the time, no criminal liability applies to me,” a magistrate said, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV.
The acquittal was confirmed in a summary of the court decision provided by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office.
State prosecutors took the unusual step of admitting in court that it was “impossible” to pin blame on any one company, BFMTV reported.
“This is the part of the decision that we cannot be satisfied with – we don’t know – know how to be satisfied with, because in our world, in our era, nothing can justify that 228 people left Rio. Flew to Paris and never landed,” David Cobby, a lawyer representing the families of some of the crash victims, told BFMTV.
However, the court found certain practices of Airbus or Air France to be reckless or negligent. One issue is that Airbus did not replace faulty devices called pitot tubes, which are critical sensors for determining the plane’s speed and altitude. Pitot tube problems had affected Airbus aircraft in the past.
According to the court, Air France, for its part, did not properly provide pilots with previous reports of incidents with these tubes.
As a result both companies are now liable for civil damages. The next hearing has been scheduled for 4 September.
Kubbi said these were not the claims for which his clients wanted compensation.
2009 accident
The crash of Air France Flight 447, an A330, was initially shrouded in mystery, as it occurred while the plane was flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Most fatal aircraft accidents occur near take-off or landing, not in mid-flight.
France’s Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA) concluded in 2012 that the problems were first caused by icing on the pitot tubes. Once these sensors failed, the autopilot shut down and the cockpit crew lost reliable readouts of flight data. After this the plane fell down.
Airbus retrofitted pitot tubes on the planes in 2019 following a directive from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.
If they had been convicted, each company would have had to pay a fine of €225,000 ($245,629).
In a statement, Airbus said it “reaffirms the full commitment of the company and all its employees to prioritizing a safety-first culture within the company and in the aviation sector.”
An Air France spokesperson said the company “wants to reaffirm its continued confidence in all its pilots and flight crew and reiterates that the safety of its customers and crew is its absolute priority.”