Air France and manufacturer Airbus have been found guilty of negligent homicide in the appeal case regarding the 2009 crash of a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in which all 228 people on board died.
The Paris Court of Appeal on Thursday imposed a fine of €225,000 ($260,000) on each company, overturning an acquittal in the initial trial of the two firms.
The court ruled that the French airline and the European aerospace giant were solely responsible for the crash and liable for damages.
The Air France aircraft on flight AF447 flew into a storm front on June 1, 2009 while en route from Brazil to the French capital. The Airbus A330 disappeared from radar screens as it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean. It is the deadliest accident in the airline's history.
It was not until May 2011 that the last bodies and the flight data recorder were recovered from a depth of around 4,000 metres.
Airbus was accused of underestimating the consequences of failures involving the aircraft’s speed sensors, known as pitot tubes, which iced over during the flight. Air France, meanwhile, was accused of failing to adequately train its pilots for such an extreme situation.
An expert report published in 2012 concluded that the crew became overwhelmed by a situation that should in principle have been manageable.
In the initial trial two years ago, both Air France and Airbus were acquitted of negligent homicide. The court at the time ruled that, although the companies may have acted negligently or imprudently in some respects, a direct causal link to the disaster could not be conclusively established.
The ruling nevertheless criticized Airbus for failing to adequately follow up on previous incidents involving the sensors and for withholding information. Air France was also faulted for not sufficiently alerting pilots to potential problems with the probes.
The legal battle over the disaster has stretched on for years. Relatives of the victims had viewed the very decision to hold a trial in 2022 as a victory after investigating judges initially dismissed the case in 2019.
