MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Air France and Airbus found guilty of manslaughter over 2009 Rio-Paris crash

Flight AF447, an Airbus A330-200 carrying twelve crew members and 216 passengers, stalled during a storm in the middle of the ocean and plunged from an altitude of 11,580 meters

The Paris Court of Appeals on Thursday found Air France and Airbus guilty of manslaughter in connection with the crash of flight AF447, which plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009 on the Rio de Janeiro–Paris route with a death toll of 228 people. The ruling overturns the April 2023 decision in which both companies had been acquitted, and finds the airline and the manufacturer “solely and entirely responsible” for the disaster, according to the BBC news agency. Both Air France and Airbus rejected the charges and announced they would appeal.

The conviction came after an eight-week trial and represents one of the most significant judicial outcomes in the recent history of European aviation. The court imposed on each company the maximum fine provided for under French law, 225,000 euros (around USD 261,000), a sum that some families of the victims described as symbolic. Daniele Lamy, president of the AF447 victims' association and the mother of one of the deceased, said justice was “at last taking into account the pain of the families faced with a collective tragedy of unbearable brutality.”

Flight AF447, an Airbus A330-200 carrying twelve crew members and 216 passengers, stalled during a storm in the middle of the ocean and plunged from an altitude of 11,580 meters. It is the deadliest accident in the history of French civil aviation. The victims came from 33 countries: 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, five Britons, three Irish, and two US nationals, among other nationalities. Among the dead were the Brazilian prince Pedro Luiz de Orleans e Bragança, 26, a descendant of Brazil's imperial family; Brazilian engineer Nelson Marinho Filho; British boy Alexander Bjoroy, 11; and three Irish doctors returning from a holiday in Brazil.

The recovery operation was one of the most complex maritime searches ever undertaken, in waters located more than 1,100 kilometers from the South American coast. Brazilian forces led the recovery of the bodies: 51 corpses were retrieved in the first 26 days, many of them still fastened to their safety belts. The flight recorders were not located until 2011, after months of deep-sea dives. The official investigation completed in 2012 determined that the combination of a technical failure —the freezing of the airspeed probes— and the inability of the co-pilots to react properly to the stall triggered the disaster. The captain was on his rest break at the time. Following the accident, pilot training was reinforced and the airspeed sensors were replaced on similar fleets.