The Yémenite company was sentenced on Wednesday in Paris to a fine of 225,000 euros. It will also have to pay two associations more than 1 million euros into lawyers and damages.
The company Yemenia Airways was sentenced on Wednesday September 14, in Paris to the maximum fine of 225,000 euros after the crash, in 2009, of an A310, in which had perished 152 people.
The criminal court judged the Yemenite company guilty of “homicides and involuntary injuries”, also requiring it to pay two associations more than 1 million euros in lawyers and damages.
The company’s lawyer immediately announced that she would appeal.
The plane was damaged in the Indian Ocean on June 30, 2009 off Moroni, the capital of the Comoros, with 141 passengers, including 65 French, and 11 crew members. Of the 152 occupants, only a teenager, then aged 12, had survived. She had stayed for ten hours in the waves, grabbed a plane debris before being rescued.
Investigations, carried out in particular on the black boxes of the device found at the bottom of the ocean at the end of August 2009, concluded that the accident was due to a series of piloting errors.
At the end of a long instruction, the company was referred to justice. The trial took place from May 9 to June 2, 2022 and the decision was deliberated.
“Failive responsibility”
“The court noted that the Yemenia Airways had respected the regulations. On the other hand, it retained two imprudence in direct connection with the accident,” said the president, pronouncing the decision. “On the one hand, the maintenance of night flights” towards the Comoros during the summer period, despite the dysfunction of certain fires from Moroni airport, and, “on the other hand, the assignment of the co -pilot of this flight “, Despite” weaknesses “in his formation, added the magistrate. “The imprudence committed demonstrate on the part of the company a culture of security and failing responsibility,” she said.
The jurisdiction has ordered the company to pay with provisional execution, that is to say without delay, 1 million euros for lawyers of lawyers and 50,000 euros for the support costs of relatives to the association of families of victims of the disaster.
The National Federation of Victims of Collective Associations and Accidents was granted 10,000 euros for moral damage and 20,000 euros in legal costs.