The ex-pilot and instructor Pascal Weil, mandated by the airline, engaged in a balancingist number before the Paris Criminal Court, seeking to split the company, accused of having insufficiently formed his Pilots, while refusing to overwhelm these.
by Thomas Saintourens
For two days, in front of the Paris Criminal Court, Air France personified himself in a 63 -year -old man with a slender silhouette surmounted by a white hair cloud: Pascal Weil, former pilot and instructor, was the face and voice, willingly professor, of the company accused of manslaughter. He fulfills his mission to hammer, over a balancingist issue, that the company is “not guilty” in the crash of flight AF 447 which was abiled, the night of 1 Sup> June 2009, off Brazil, with 228 people on board.
After four weeks of expert debate, the performance of this “Mr. Air France” was eagerly awaited. Mr. Weil, retired for two years, has largely devoted the last ten years of his career to the accident. This drama tried until December 8, was established in less than five minutes, after the pilots, disturbed by the frost of the Pitot anemometric probes, lost control of their Airbus A330-200, which won before diving irreparably in the Atlantic Ocean. Without departing from his self -control, nor forbidding digressions, the representative chosen by Air France – legal person in this trial – detailed the security policy of his former employer, who pleads, by his mouth, ” “.
These are breaches in terms of pilot training, as well as in the information that they have been able to receive about breakdowns related to the frying of Pitot probes, which are accused of the company. In previous audiences, some experts had castigated the “late” broadcast of a note from the flight security officer on November 9, 2008, after nine similar incidents having affected the company’s planes, including a “Mayday” launched During the flight of Paris-Antananarivo of August 16, 2008.
“I would not have the overhang of saying that we did everything perfectly,” first demined the old pilot. But the one who repeats playing “in defense”, assures that “training is effective”, and that the reports of incidents studied “did not signify loss of control”. According to him, no less than six information channels were offered to the pilots (display in lockers, knowledge control sessions, internal review, etc.). He assures it: the three men in control of AF 447 “were perfectly trained and perfectly aware”.
The way to “doubt”
Faced with weather issues related to “still unknown” ice crystals, the representative of Air France stresses that “looking at the chronology of things (…), we did what we thought we had to do to the era “. But his lesson is disrupted by Alain Jakubowicz, lawyer for the AFFILE and Solidarity AF 447 association, who the sum of choosing between two versions: “Either the pilots were very bad”, or “there was a hole in the racket of their training “. An “impossible” dilemma for Mr. Weil, who prefers to choose the path of “doubt”.
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