Air France and Airbus held guilty over deadly 2009 Atlantic flight disaster
Air France and Airbus were found guilty of manslaughter by a Paris appeals court on Thursday over the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, which killed all 228 people on board after the aircraft plunged into the Atlantic Ocean during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.The verdict came after an eight-week trial into one of France’s deadliest aviation disasters. The court ruled that the two companies bore responsibility for the crash, overturning an earlier 2023 decision that had cleared them of criminal liability.Both Air France and Airbus were fined €225,000 each, the maximum penalty allowed under French law for this type of offence. However, several relatives of the victims said the punishment was too lenient considering the scale of the tragedy.The companies denied wrongdoing and said they would challenge the ruling through legal means.Daniele Lamy, president of the AF447 victims’ association whose son died in the crash, described the verdict as an important step for grieving families seeking accountability. She said the ruling showed that authorities had begun to recognise “the pain of the families faced with a collective tragedy of unbearable brutality”.Flight AF447 was carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew members from 33 countries when it crashed on June 1, 2009. The victims included 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, five Britons, three Irish nationals and two Americans. Brazilian Prince Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca was also among those killed.The disaster remains one of the aviation industry’s most complex crash investigations and recovery operations. Search teams spent months combing nearly 10,000 square kilometres of the Atlantic Ocean before locating the wreckage. The flight recorders were eventually recovered in 2011 following deep-sea search operations.French investigators concluded in 2012 that faulty airspeed sensors and pilot error caused the crash. Ice crystals blocked the aircraft’s pitot tubes during severe weather, leading to inconsistent speed readings that confused the aircraft’s systems. Investigators found that the pilots reacted incorrectly after the plane entered an aerodynamic stall, causing it to lose altitude rapidly before crashing into the ocean.The crash prompted major changes in aviation safety procedures, including improved pilot training for high-altitude stalls and the replacement of airspeed sensors on Airbus aircraft.Among the victims was Nelson Marinho Filho, who boarded the flight moments before departure after nearly missing it. His family waited more than two years before his remains could be buried. Eleven-year-old Alexander Bjoroy from Bristol was returning home to England after a holiday in Brazil, while Irish doctors Eithne Walls, Jane Deasy and Aisling Butler also died in the crash while travelling back from vacation.According to Air France, the captain had logged more than 11,000 flight hours, including 1,700 hours on the Airbus aircraft involved in the accident. The plane had undergone its last inspection in April 2009, weeks before the crash.
