Court orders Air France, Airbus trial over over 2009 crash

Divers recovering a huge part of the rudder of the Air France A330 aircraft, flight number 0447 from Rio to Paris, that crashed on June 1, 2009 while in midflight over the Atlantic ocean File handout picture released by the Brazilian Navy on June 8, 2009

Air France and Airbus must stand trial on involuntary manslaughter charges over the 2009 crash of a Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight that killed all 228 people on board, a Paris court ruled on Wednesday. Flight AF447 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm on June 1, 2009, the deadliest crash in Air France's history. The court followed the general prosecutor's recommendation, overturning an earlier court decision to drop the case against both the French flagship carrier and Europe's top aircraft maker. It took two years to find the wreckage of the Airbus A330 jet, which was eventually located by remote-controlled submarines at a depth of 3,900 metres. Investigators determined the crash was caused by errors by pilots, who were disorientated by faulty speed monitoring equipment. The general prosecutor's office call for a manslaughter trial against both Air France and Airbus went beyond the Paris prosecutor's initial demand that only Air France should face manslaughter charges. Both prosecuting teams contested a 2019 decision to drop the charges by the two investigating magistrates assigned to the case, who said they could not ascribe fault to the companies in what appeared to be a case of pilot error. But prosecutors accused Air France of indirectly causing the tragedy by providing insufficient training on how to react in case of malfunction of the so-called Pitot tubes, which enable pilots to monitor their speed. The pilots reacted incorrectly when the plane stalled after the speed sensors froze over as it flew through a large cloud at high altitude. Lawyers for Airbus said they would lodge an appeal against the decision, saying it "in no way reflects the conclusions of the investigation which resulted in no charges against Airbus in this case". Air France told AFP that it had committed "no criminal act" and that it, too, reserved the right to lodge an appeal. The Paris appeals court decision had been much awaited by victims' families. "It's a huge satisfaction to feel that we have finally been heard by the courts," Daniele Lamy, president of an association of victims' families, said after Wednesday's ruling. "But we still deplore that it took 12 long years to get to this point. Twelve years of unwavering determination, full of uncertainty, of tricky and obscure procedures and of dejection, but never resignation," she said. The French pilots' association also welcomed the decision, with a spokesman saying that "accusations were aimed at the pilots, while the aircraft maker and airline were cleared of all wrongdoing". But the truth, he said, was that "the instruments didn't function the way they should have". Since the disaster, pilot training on dealing with unforeseen circumstances has been stepped up in France and several other countries. Air France and Airbus have stood trial in France once before, over a crash that killed 87 people onboard an A320 near the eastern city of Strasbourg in January 1992. They were both found not guilty.