French court finds Airbus, Air France guilty of manslaughter in 2009 crash

A French appeals court has ruled that Airbus and Air France are guilty of manslaughter for the crash of flight AF447 in 2009, which claimed the lives of 228 people. This incident is considered the deadliest aviation disaster in France's history. The Paris Court of Appeal announced its decision on Thursday, stating that both companies were “solely and entirely responsible” for the accident and ordered them to pay 225,000 euros ($261,720) for each victim, the highest fine allowed for corporate manslaughter. While the penalties are mainly symbolic, they conclude an eight-week trial that the families of the victims viewed as their last opportunity for justice, following a lower court's decision that cleared Airbus and Air France of wrongdoing two years earlier. Both companies have consistently denied any responsibility. After the verdict, Airbus expressed its intention to appeal to France’s highest court, arguing that the ruling contradicted what prosecutors had submitted and the 2023 acquittal. Prosecutors had anticipated an appeal and criticized the companies’ conduct throughout the lengthy legal proceedings. "Nothing has come of it – not a single word of sincere comfort," remarked prosecutor Rodolphe Juy-Birmann during the trial last November. "One word sums up this whole circus: indecency." The crash occurred on June 1, 2009, when flight AF447 vanished from radar while traveling from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France, with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board. It took two years for a deep-sea search to locate the plane’s black boxes, which record flight data. Investigators discovered that the pilots had initiated a climb while the plane faced issues with ice-blocked sensors during a mid-Atlantic storm. This led to the aircraft stalling and crashing into the ocean. Although Airbus and Air France attributed the incident to pilot error, lawyers representing the victims’ families argued that both companies were aware of problems with the plane's pitot tubes, which measure airspeed. Prosecutors stated that the pilots had not received training to handle the emergency caused by the malfunctioning tubes, which triggered alarms in the cockpit and disabled the autopilot. Air France lawyer Pascal Weil stated in October that the airline “had the means to conduct high-altitude training, but we did not do so because we sincerely believed it was unnecessary.”