Airbus appeals after court overturns AF447 manslaughter acquittal

Ruling comes 17 years after fatal crash of Air France A330 and legal arguments over aircraft systems and pilot training.

Airbus is appealing after a Paris court overturned an acquittal of the airframer and flag-carrier Air France in a corporate manslaughter case brought in the aftermath of a high-profile A330-200 accident.

The A330 had been operating flight AF447 between Rio de Janeiro and Paris when it disappeared over the Atlantic on 1 June 2009.

After an inquiry which involved a long and complex search for the aircraft’s flight recorders, investigators concluded that the pitot-static system had been affected by ice crystals and, in response to the unreliable airspeed indications, the crew made manual nose-up inputs which resulted in a high-altitude stall.

Investigators found the pilots had not received high-altitude training for unreliable airspeed procedures and manual handling.

Although a stall warning had sounded for a prolonged period, the crew appeared not to recognise the aircraft’s predicament and failed to recover from the stall. The A330 rapidly descended and crashed into the ocean.

There were no survivors from among the 228 occupants, and the accident divided opinions as to whether the crew or the aircraft design was primarily responsible.

Air France raised concerns that the stall-warning system had misled the pilots — by stopping and starting, in line with A330 design logic on airspeed reliability — while pilots’ union SNPL argued that the trigger for the accident was the pitot system.

Both Airbus and Air France were subsequently pursued in legal cases, but the case against the airframer was dropped in mid-2019, and that against Air France a few months later — only to be resurrected by prosecutors two years later, with an involuntary manslaughter trial following in 2022.

The two companies were acquitted in April 2023. An appeal, however, was lodged and a Paris appeals court ruled against them on 21 May this year.

Airbus says it “acknowledges” the judgement, but says the decision “contradicts” submissions of the public prosecutor’s office and the conclusions of the dismissal order issued by investigating judges in 2019, and the acquittal ruling in 2023.

The airframer says it will appeal to the Court of Cassation to “allow for a judicial review of the legal questions raised by this case”.

“From the outset, Airbus has pursued a constant objective: to understand the facts, to seek the truth, to draw all necessary lessons, and to act responsibly to continue improving aviation safety,” it states.

“Flight safety is the absolute priority for Airbus. It is at the heart of Airbus identity, its industrial operations, and the focus of all its employees, from aircraft design through to operation.”

French pilots’ union SNPL says it is satisfied with the ruling.

“The union has always maintained that it is unacceptable to place the sole responsibility for the outcome of this accident on the pilots, without taking into account all the systemic failures,” it states.

SNPL says the court acknowledged “shortcomings” of Airbus and Air France, particularly relating to the identification of risk linked to the pitot system, as well as the training of crews to handle high-altitude stall.

“With this decision, the court affirms that the AF447 accident cannot be reduced to an isolated human error, but resulted from multiple failures both in the consideration of known risks, in the dissemination of essential information and in the preparation of crews for critical situations,” it adds.