During the requisitions, the two prosecutors estimated that none of the negligence and breaches lent to companies within the framework of the accident which left 228 deaths in 2009 was not “criminal fault”.
by Thomas Saintourens
The audience room is full and silent. As plunged into a cottony atmosphere, a mixture of apprehension and a certain weariness. The looks are turned towards the prosecutors who are preparing to tell, with two voices, the story of a drama which each here knows the outcome. It was the night of the 1 er June 2009, off the coast of Brazil. “Four minutes 23 seconds”, recalls the public prosecutor, during which the AF447 flight, left Rio a few hours earlier in the direction of Paris, wins and falls in the tumultuous waters of the Atlantic, with 228 people on board.
To the suddenness of the tragedy have been added thirteen years of chaotic legal proceedings. Then eight weeks of audience, in this same room of the Paris Criminal Court, where Airbus and Air France have been judged since 1 er October for “manslaughter”. Finally, these almost six hours of indictment, Wednesday December 7, where the tension will climb to the explosion of cries of distress, ironic applause and exasperation hoots with the last sentence pronounced by the prosecutor: “We do not are unable to require the conviction of Air France and Airbus. “
In the same monocorded tone, without plume or round effects, Marie Duffourc and Pierre Arnaudin began by evoking the Airbus A330-200, of which “no defect can be retained”. Very quickly, the same point punctuates each sub-part of their presentation: none of the negligence and breaches lent to the defendants by the judgment of referral of the Court of Appeal is constitutive, in their eyes, of a “criminal fault “. They oppose the observation of solid procedures, both Airbus and Air France, in terms of safety.
This is the case of Pitot probes, these anemometric measurement tubes whose breakdown, due to frying, led to the loss of control of the plane by the crew. “The non-replacement of the probes does not constitute a criminal fault,” asserts the prosecutor, recalling that the other models then available on the market would not have made it possible to better manage this problem, poorly known at the time.
No “faulty negligence” is retained
The prosecutor had conceded it in the preamble: “We are not experts.” The black dresses then draw in the arguments of the Grash uniforms – so many experts and witnesses who have paraded before the court for two months. At midday, before the interruption of hearing, no “faulty negligence” of the defendants is retained in terms of the consequences of the frying probes, the classification of the breakdown, or even procedures in the event of a dropout.
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