French Prosecutors Seek Air France, Airbus Trial Over 2009 Crash

Paris, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Jan, 2021 ) :France's general prosecutor's office will seek a manslaughter trial against Air France and planemaker Airbus over the 2009 crash of a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris that killed all 228 people on board, a legal source said Wednesday.

A Paris appeals court is set to rule on March 4 whether the two companies should face trial over the disaster, which investigators determined was caused in part by faulty speed monitoring equipment.

Flight AF447 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm on June 1, 2009, the deadliest crash in Air France's history.

It took two years to find the wreckage of the Airbus A330 jet, which was eventually located by remote-controlled submarines at a depth of 3,900 metres (13,000 feet).

The request by the general prosecutor's office, which answers to the Justice Ministry, goes beyond the initial demand by the Paris prosecutor that only Air France face manslaughter charges.

Both contest a 2019 decision to drop the charges by the two investigating magistrates assigned to the case, who said the pilots were confronted with a situation they could not have anticipated.

But prosecutors have accused Air France of negligence for insufficent training on how to react in case of malfunction of the Pitot tubes, which enable pilots to monitor their speed.

Relatives of the victims, representing 34 nationalities, also claim to have evidence that the Pitot tubes frosted over on the flight, a potential problem that Airbus knew about.