After a decade of expertise battles, the investigating judges had ordered a non-place in 2019, finally invalidated on appeal in May 2021.
Le Monde with AFP
More than thirteen years after the Rio-Paris crash, who had made 228 dead, the time of the trial for Airbus and Air France soon sounded. The airline and the European manufacturer will be judged in autumn in Paris for involuntary homicides.
The trial will be held before the Criminal Court of Paris for nine weeks, from October 10 to December 8, learned Thursday, February 10, the Judicial Source Agency (AFP), confirming information from var-morning
After more than ten years of procedure and a turnaround of French justice, which initially pronounced a non-place, the company and the aircraft manufacturer had formed appeals in cassation against their return to correctional. But the Court of Cassation has ruled their remedies inadmissible last August, definitively confirming the holding of a trial.
“Thirteen years were needed to finally get a trial to be held. An anxiety course, hopes, disappointments that we, association, led without failing,” reacted the president of the association Mutual aid and solidarity AF447, Danièle Lamy. “Finally, we are entitled to hope that a fair and equitable trial against Airbus and Air France from October 2022 sanctions guilty negligence and the failures of aviation safety that led to this tragedy: 228 victims expect that Justice rendered them, “she added.
“The families of the victims impatiently wait for the opening of this trial in order to finally have the opportunity to question the experts and especially the Airbus company and the Air France company,” rejoiced with AFP A lawyer representing civil parties, Sébastien Busy.
“All the families of victims are always in search of truth and justice, it will be the subject of the trial,” Alain Jakubowicz, another lawyer of the Association mutual aid and solidarity af447.
A long battle of expertise
“The Air France company will continue to demonstrate, now before the Criminal Court, that [it] has not committed criminal fault at the origin of this accident,” reacted the company with AFP. “Air France renews his confidence in all of his pilots and his navigant staff and recalls that the safety of his clients and his staff is his absolute imperative. The company will remember the remembrance of the victims of this terrible accident”, she added.
The Airbus Council did not wish to comment.
The flight AF447 linking Rio de Janeiro to Paris had been damaged in the middle of the Atlantic the 1 June 2009. The pilots, disoriented by a technical failure in the middle of the unstable meteorological zone of the pot In the dark, could not catch the stall of the A330, resulting in the death of the 216 passengers and 12 crew members. The wreck and the black boxes had been found two years later, nearly 4,000 meters background.
After a decade of expertise battles, the investigating judges had ordered a non-place in 2019, advancing that the investigations had not allowed to establish “a breach of airbus or air France in connection (…) with the driving faults (…) at the origin of the accident “.
This decision, which had scandalized the families and the pilot unions, had finally been invalidated on appeal in May 2021.
The Paris Court of Appeal had considered that the Air France company had “abstained to implement a suitable training (…) and the information of the crews that was necessary” in the face of the technical failure encountered, “What prevented pilots from reacting as it was necessary,” according to a source close to the file. The court had also held that Airbus had “underestimated the severity of failures airspeed probes (…) by not taking all necessary steps to inform emergency crews (…) and help train them effectively” According to this source.
The icing of the probes, regarded as the trigger for the disaster, was at the heart of the battles of expertise.