French court clears Airbus, Air France of Rio-Paris flight crash

Divers recover part of the tail section of the Air France A330. Photo: Roberto Maltchik/ABr

A French court on Monday found Airbus and Air France not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the June 2009 crash of a Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight, ending a two-month trial 14 years after the incident that killed 228 people from 33 countries, including 58 Brazilians.

It was France’s first corporate manslaughter trial, and ended in disappointment for the victims’ families. The verdict said that while both companies made mistakes, “no certain causal link” could be established between those mistakes and the accident. “They told us the companies were ‘responsible but not guilty’ for the crash,” said Alain Jakubowicz, a lawyer for the families.

The plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, hours after taking off from Rio de Janeiro. With 228 dead (all 216 passengers and 12 crew members), the accident was the deadliest in the history of French commercial aviation. The wreckage of the plane was found two years after the crash, at a depth of 3,900 meters.

The black boxes confirmed that the pilots, disoriented by the technical malfunction that affected the measurements of the plane’s speed in the middle of the night, were unable to prevent the crash, which occurred in less than five minutes.

Air France was accused of failing to provide the pilots with the appropriate training and information to respond to such a technical malfunction. Airbus, for its part, was found to have underestimated the severity of the speed sensor failures and to have failed to take the necessary measures to inform the crews urgently or to train them effectively.

The official investigation found that several factors contributed to the crash, including pilot error and the icing of external sensors known as pitot tubes. Prosecutors placed most of the blame on the pilots. The crash had a lasting impact on the industry, leading to changes in airspeed sensor regulations and pilot training.

Airbus and Air France faced potential fines of up to EUR 225,000 (USD 245,600) each if convicted. While that is just a fraction of their annual revenues, a conviction for the aviation heavyweights could reverberate through the industry.