On June 1, 2009, a flight connecting Brazil to France was damaged at sea. Air France and Airbus are returned to correctional for “manslaughter”.
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The drama was established in barely four minutes, in the camera of a cockpit in an overview of the intertropical convergence zone, also nicknamed “black pot”. Four minutes in the heart of the night of the 1 er June 2009, during which the Rio-Paris AF 447 flight wins, falls and is damaged in the waters of the Atlantic, off the Brazilian coast.
The 216 passengers and twelve crew members die instantly. Without even that the emergency instructions were triggered on board.
The Air France 447 flight accident did not lie down the list of mysterious disappearances in the history of aeronautics: the recordings of the black boxes, found two years after the accident, by 4,000 meters from the bottom , precisely inform the parameters of the device, as much as the conversations between the three pilots, in the moments preceding the impact. Thirteen years later, however, the Rio-Paris remains a tragedy without culpable.
The dazzling of the crash contrasts with the slowness of the judicial response. Since the initial indictment of Air France and Airbus – the company and the manufacturer of the aircraft -, ten years of meander investigation have passed. A dismissal will be pronounced in August 2019 by the Paris tribunal de grande instance, before being invalidated two years later by the investigation chamber, paving the way at the trial at the long-awaited by the families of the victims, among which appear 73 French nationals.
Expert parade
This Monday, October 10, it is in the main hall of the Paris tribunal de grande instance, with the protocol reserved for “major trials” (two video retransmission rooms, reinforced security, badges for the press, etc.), that ‘Air France and Airbus are returned to correctional for “manslaughter”.
The nine weeks of audience, scheduled until December 8, promise a generous parade of aeronautical experts, but also of legal practitioners, former pilots …
Especially, for the first time, the carrier and the aircraft manufacturer will face the questions of the court and the lawyers for the civil parties. The latter represent 411 natural persons, from twenty-one country, who recall the cosmopolitan population of the transatlantic flight, back from Brazil after a wedding trip, a business meeting, simple holidays …
They will have to project themselves on the night of the drama. Imagine, once again, the last hours of their loved ones. Return to this May 31, 2009, in Rio de Janeiro, Antonio-Carlos-Jobim International Airport. Flight AF 447 takes off at 10:29 p.m., runs along the coasts of Brazil, signals its position at the Recife control center, before heading to the east, towards this saturated turbulence area of cumulonimbus. A thunderstorm certainly powerful, but not exceptional, in this famous “black pot” so dreaded by navigators.
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