On Thursday, a French appeals court found Air France and Airbus guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2009 Rio-Paris flight catastrophe, which claimed 228 lives and was the deadliest aviation accident in French history.
The Paris Court of Appeal drastically overturned a lower court’s decision. The French flag airline and Europe’s top aerospace manufacturer were found “solely and entirely responsible for the crash of flight AF447” by the appellate court, which also ordered them to pay €225,000, the maximum penalties for corporate manslaughter.
Even though the fines are minimal, the decision is thought to have seriously harmed both businesses’ reputations. Due to pilot mistake, Air France and Airbus have always denied any criminal culpability.
They were found not guilty in 2023 by the lower court, which concluded that although the firms had committed mistakes, they could not be held accountable for the catastrophe.However, the presiding judge stated on Thursday that the lower court had failed to consider “the existence of the causal chain within which the pilots’ actions occurred, and which led to the deaths of all the passengers. According to Sylvie Madec, “the AF447 crash was a catastrophe waiting to happen and one that could have been avoided if each of the companies involved had fully grasped the seriousness of the failure.
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