Translation of France24 report today:
Airbus and the Air France company were sent back on Wednesday for the crash of flight AF447 between Rio and Paris, which caused the death of 228 passengers and crew members on June 1, 2009, we learned from a judicial source.
Airbus and Air France have announced that they are going to appeal. Publicity The Paris Court of Appeal ordered, Wednesday, May 12, the referral to correctional for "manslaughter" of Air France and Airbus for their indirect responsibilities in the Rio-Paris crash which killed 228 people in 2009. This decision, requested by the general prosecutor's office and eagerly awaited by the families of the victims, invalidates the dismissal pronounced in 2019 in favor of the company and the builder at the end of the investigations.
Airbus lawyers also immediately announced an appeal in cassation, denouncing an "unjustified decision" according to them, "in contradiction with the investigating judges who knew the file well". Air France reacted by assuring that it had "not committed any criminal fault" at the origin of the crash of the Rio-Paris flight, and decided to appeal in cassation after the announcement of its dismissal in correctional. On June 1, 2009, flight AF447 connecting Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed in the middle of the Atlantic.
The pilots, disoriented by a technical failure while crossing the unstable meteorological zone of the Doldrums, were unable to catch up with the stall of the A330, resulting in the death of 216 passengers and 12 crew members. The wreckage and the black boxes were found two years later, at a depth of nearly 4,000 m. More than 10 years of legal battle In 2019, after ten years of expert battles and the indictment of the company and the manufacturer for "manslaughter", the Paris prosecutor's office had only requested a trial for Air France, retaining its indirect responsibility for "negligence and recklessness "in the training of its pilots.
The analysis had not convinced the examining magistrates who had pronounced a general dismissal on August 29, 2019: for them, this accident was explained "obviously by a conjunction of elements which had never occurred" , highlighting "dangers which could not have been perceived before". The investigations "did not lead to characterizing a culpable failure by Airbus or Air France in connection (...) with the piloting faults (...) at the origin of the accident", had- they estimated. Scandalized, the relatives of the disappeared and the pilots' unions had appealed, denouncing a decision which only overwhelmed the missing crew. The prosecution had also appealed. On March 4, the reopening of closed-door proceedings before the investigating chamber lasted more than five hours. "We are not asking for revenge but justice for the dignity of families and victims," Daničle Lamy, president of the Entraide et Solidarité AF447 association, told AFP, fearing that "a certain form of impunity would lead to that such a catastrophe is repeated ". "How is a national company appreciated, how an aircraft of the highest technology, reputed to be unbreakable, from a famous aircraft manufacturer, how these two entities could they have allowed such a catastrophe to occur?", Asked Ms. Lamy to the court.
The indirect causes of the crash In support of the civil parties, the general prosecutor went beyond the requisitions of the Paris prosecutor's office, of which he is the hierarchical superior, by requesting the referral to correctional not only of Air France but also of Airbus. Without diminishing the "direct cause attributable to the crew", the Advocate General considers that the indirect causes of the crash are to be found in the shortcomings of the two companies: the managers of Air France "refrained from implementing the training and the information of the crews "necessary, while Airbus" underestimated the seriousness of the failures of the Pitot speed probes and did not act sufficiently to correct this dangerous defect. These failures had multiplied in the months preceding the accident.
The icing of these probes was the trigger for the disaster. Caused by the formation of ice crystals during a passage at high altitude in a cluster of cumulonimbus, the incident had led to an inconsistency in the speed measurements and disoriented the pilots until the fatal stall in less than 4 minutes.
The disaster was the subject of a long debate by experts from the world of aeronautics, accused of corporatism by the civil parties. In a first report in 2012, experts attributed the accident to the accumulation of technical problems, crew failures and a lack of information from the pilots on the attitude to be taken in the event of an imbalance in speed measurements. A 2014 second opinion, requested by Airbus, had been more favorable to the cons
AF447 French with all credit to France24 and AFP