A Paris appeals court has found Airbus and Air France guilty of corporate manslaughter over the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, overturning a lower court decision that had cleared both companies of criminal responsibility.
The ruling, issued on May 21, ordered Airbus and Air France to each pay the maximum fine allowed under French law, €225,000 (US$261,000).
The case concerns the crash of an Airbus A330 operating between Rio de Janeiro and Paris on June 1, 2009. The aircraft disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean during a nighttime storm, killing all 228 passengers and crew members on board.
The accident became France’s deadliest aviation disaster and triggered one of the country’s longest and most closely watched legal battles involving the aerospace industry.
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Flight AF447 vanished from radar while crossing the Atlantic with passengers and crew from 33 countries. Although debris and bodies were recovered shortly after the crash, the aircraft’s flight recorders were located only in 2011 following a deep-sea search.
French investigators later concluded that ice crystals had obstructed the aircraft’s pitot tubes, leading to unreliable airspeed indications and the disconnection of the autopilot.
According to the final accident report issued by France’s BEA investigation agency, the flight crew failed to recognize that the aircraft had entered an aerodynamic stall and continued control inputs that prevented recovery.
Prosecutors argued that Airbus and Air France shared responsibility for the accident due to inadequate pilot training and insufficient action following previous incidents involving pitot tube malfunctions on A330 aircraft.
Both companies had been acquitted in 2023 by a lower criminal court, which ruled that a direct causal link between the alleged failures and the crash had not been sufficiently established.
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Under French law, however, the appeal process involved a full retrial of the case and a new review of evidence presented by prosecutors and civil parties representing victims’ families.
Relatives of the victims attended the hearing in Paris after nearly two decades of legal proceedings. Family associations had argued that a guilty verdict was important symbolically, even though the financial penalties were relatively limited for companies of the size of Airbus and Air France.
Further appeals to France’s highest court are expected.
