The company "waited for the accident to happen": the prosecution demanded Thursday in Paris the maximum fine of 232,500 euros against Yemenia Airways, tried for homicide and involuntary injuries after the crash of a plane in 2009 off the coast of Comoros which had killed 152 people.
Following a series of pilot errors during the approach to Moroni airport, Yemenia flight 626, which was carrying 142 passengers, including 66 French, and 11 crew members, had struck the ocean. Indian on the night of June 29 to 30, 2009. Only a 12-year-old girl, Bahia Bakari, had survived.
The Yemeni national company "quite conveniently puts all the blame on the pilots" but it "participated in the errors" which led to the disaster, argued prosecutor Marie Jonca, on the last day of this trial which began May 9.
"You have in this cockpit two pilots who do not have an equivalent professional level", the co-pilot having "real operational shortcomings", estimated the representative of the public prosecutor's office.
A monopoly favoring rule violations
They "do not know how to work together" and "have never been trained specifically to approach this difficult and particular terrain of Moroni airport", the capital of the Comoros, she continued.
In addition, "you have two pilots who will continue an approach in delicate conditions, at night, in a way that is prohibited by law (and) in dangerous circumstances", because of the breakdown for several months of certain airport lights.
“Despite these circumstances of which it was aware”, the company did not decide, “as it was able to do immediately after the accident, to simply prohibit night flights during this period”, underlined Marie Jonca.
If she continued these night flights, it was "for commercial reasons", estimated the prosecutor, stressing that Yemenia had de facto become, from 1999, the national company of the Comoros, where it operates in a position of " monopoly”.
To travel at “affordable” prices, the Comorians had indeed “no other choice” than to board its planes, insisted the magistrate, speaking of a population “taken hostage”.
“I want people to really know what happened”
For the prosecution, Yemenia committed "omissions" and made "bad decisions".
She “waited for the accident to happen.
The company had a reactive management of the risk, one expected from it a proactive management”.
By condemning the company, it is a question of “remembering that respect for life, for the physical integrity of the human person, strictly does not allow any compromise”, noted Marie Jonca.
The maximum sentence provided for by French law "will never be equal to the pain and damage suffered by the victims", but "I do not see how I could not request (it)", she summarized.
The prosecutor also asked for the publication of the court's judgment on the company's website, which could resume commercial flights in favor of a truce in the war in Yemen.
“I want people, when they go to buy tickets from this company, to really know what happened,” she said.
In the large courtroom, a hundred relatives of the victims came to listen to the requisitions.
In the front row sat Bahia Bakari, 25 today, who survived by clinging to the wreckage of a plane for about ten hours, before being rescued by a boat.
No official of the company, which disputes any "failure", was present before the Paris Criminal Court because of the war ravaging Yemen, according to the company's lawyers who, as the law allows, represent it since the start of the trial.
They must plead for release in the afternoon.
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