Air France and Airbus were on Monday cleared of all wrongdoing in a plane crash in which 228 people including British and Irish passengers died – meaning the aircraft’s “sleeping pilots” were fully to blame.
Judges sitting at the Paris Criminal Court ruled that the companies involved in the Flight AF447 disaster were not guilty of manslaughter.
The plane plunged into the Atlantic on June 1, 2009, on a flight from Rio to Paris after three Air France pilots panicked and failed to deal with malfunctioning equipment on an Airbus 330 during a storm.
Corporate guilt was “impossible to demonstrate”, the judgement reads, because investigators did not establish “a culpable breach by Airbus or Air France in connection with the piloting faults at the origin of the accident”.
The ruling effectively means that pilots Marc Dubois, 58, David Robert, 37, and Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32, were fully responsible.
During the investigation, it emerged that two of them fell asleep, one after the other, when they were supposed to be piloting the plane.
It was revealed that Dubois’ tiredness was likely related to him being up all night the night before with his lover - an off-duty hostess and opera singer, who died on the plane.
This “piloting culture within Air France” is now said to have been reformed, according to company sources.
Families and friends of those who died pursued a near 14-year fight for justice, and many of them were disgusted by the “not guilty” pleas by the two companies involved at the start of thecriminal trial.
“Shame on you!” and “Too Little, Too Late!” were yelled from the public gallery as Air France director general Anne Rigail, 54, and Guillaume Faury, 54-year-old Chief Executive Officer of Airbus expressed their condolences.
This followed the names of all 228 people who died on board appearing on a screen, while they were read out one by one.
Among those them was Graham Gardner, a 52-year-old oil worker from Gourock, in Renfrewshire, and Arthur Coakley, 61, an engineer from Whitby in North Yorkshire.
Alexander Bjoroy, an 11-year-old boarder at Clifton College in Bristol, died, as did PR executive Neil Warrior, 48.
Other victims included three young Irish doctors, returning from a two-week holiday in Brazil.
Eithne Walls, 29 had been working at the Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin and was on a trip with Aisling Butler, 26, and Jane Deasy, 27. All had been friends since they were students at Trinity College Dublin.
Families representing all of the 33 nationalities onboard crowded into the Paris court room.
Both companies faced trial for “involuntary manslaughter”, but there were no actual people in the dock – only the companies.
This had infuriated families, as had the maximum fine possible of just €225,000 – just under £200,000.
Prosecutors accused Air France of failing to provide sufficient training in how pilots should react in case of malfunction of the Pitot tubes, which monitor speed.
The pilots provably reacted incorrectly when the plane stalled after the speed sensors froze over.
France’s BEA crash investigation agency said in a detailed chronology of the crash that commands from the controls of Bonin, the 32-year-old junior pilot on board, had pulled the nose up as the aircraft became unstable and generated an audible stall warning.
This action went against the normal procedures which call for the nose to be lowered in response to an alert that the plane was about to lose lift or, in technical parlance, “stall”.
