Highlights: The Paris Criminal Court acquitted Air France and Airbus of charges of manslaughter in the June 2009 crash of an Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. In its decision, the court considered that no definite causal link between the anemometric probes complained of or the lack of information complained of on the one hand and the accident on the other had been demonstrated. The prosecutor's office had requested the acquittal of the two groups, considering their responsibility impossible to prove. The French justice had initially dismissed the case in 2019, but this decision was invalidated on appeal.

The Criminal Court of Paris on Monday acquitted Air France and Airbus of charges of manslaughter in the crash in June 2009 of an Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, which...

Crash of the Rio-Paris flight: Airbus and Air France acquitted by French justice

The remains of the Air France A330 plane that crashed during a Rio-Paris flight in June 2009. Reuters

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The Paris Criminal Court on Monday acquitted Air France and Airbus of charges of manslaughter in the June 2009 crash of an Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, which killed 228 people.

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In its decision, the court considered that no definite causal link between the anemometric probes complained of or the lack of information complained of on the one hand and the accident on the other had been demonstrated. He also considered that the pilots had the necessary knowledge to deal with the freezing of the probes. "A probable causal link is not sufficient to characterize a crime," the court stressed.

After two months of trial in 2022, the prosecutor's office had requested the acquittal of the two groups, considering their responsibility impossible to prove. The lawyers of the two companies had also pleaded for acquittal.

On June 1, 2009, the Airbus A330 of flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed in the middle of the night in the middle of the Atlantic, killing all 216 passengers and 12 crew members. Thirty-three nationalities, in total, were represented on board AF447, mainly French, Brazilian and German.

The French justice had initially dismissed the case in 2019, but this decision was invalidated two years later on appeal, paving the way for the holding of a criminal trial for "involuntary homicide", despite appeals in cassation of Air France and Airbus, deemed inadmissible in August 2022.

Battles of expertise

Investigators who examined the black boxes, found after two years of searching at a depth of 4,000 meters, concluded that the pilots had not responded adequately to a loss of flight data caused by icing of the A330's anemometric probes, in the middle of an equatorial storm over the Pot-au-Noir, located near the equator.

Disoriented, they could not prevent an aerodynamic stall or free fall of the 205-ton aircraft, precipitating it towards Atlantic waters despite warning signals, 4 minutes and 23 seconds later.

The expert battles focused on the responsibility of Air France and Airbus in this tragedy, initially dismissed by the courts. The Court of Appeal then found that the airline and the aircraft manufacturer had not taken the necessary measures to inform and train pilots to prepare them to react to this known problem.

Investigations showed that similar probe incidents had multiplied in the months leading up to the accident. For the court, Airbus committed "four recklessness or negligence", including not having replaced the model of the so-called "AA" pitot probes, which seemed to freeze more often, on the A330-A340 fleet, and the fact of having shown "withholding of information" in relation to the companies. Air France committed two "culpable recklessness", related to the modalities of broadcasting an information note addressed to its pilots on the failure of the probes.

► Read also: News witnesses - Crash of the Rio-Paris flight: a trial for what?

Crash of the Rio-Paris flight: Airbus and Air France acquitted by French justice

Crash of the Rio-Paris flight: Airbus and Air France acquitted by French justice

Battles of expertise

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