{"id":25132,"date":"2023-04-19T06:35:50","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T10:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=25132"},"modified":"2023-04-19T06:35:50","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T10:35:50","slug":"air-france-and-airbus-cleared-over-fatal-2009-rio-paris-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/04\/19\/air-france-and-airbus-cleared-over-fatal-2009-rio-paris-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Air France and Airbus cleared over fatal 2009 Rio-Paris crash"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A French court has cleared Air France and Airbus of charges of involuntary manslaughter over a deadly crash in June 2009 which killed all 228 people on board.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Airbus A330 operated by Air France stalled during a storm and plunged into the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The court said even if errors had been committed, a causal link between them and the crash could not be proved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Families of the victims reacted angrily to the acquittal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They appeared stunned when the verdict was read out at the end of the lengthy public trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dani\u00e8le Lamy, the president of the association which represents the victims, said the families were “disgusted” that their long fight for justice had come to nothing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“All that remains of these 14 years of waiting is despair, dismay and anger,” Ms Lamy said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Claire Durousseau, whose niece died in the crash, said the verdict was a severe blow to those left behind: “Our lost ones have died a second time. I feel sick.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was the first trial for corporate involuntary manslaughter to be held in France.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Air France and Airbus had always denied the charges, for which they were facing a maximum fine of \u20ac225,000 (\u00a3200,000; $247,000).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The companies said pilot error was to blame for the crash.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The investigation revealed that the plane had encountered a high-altitude thunderstorm hours after departing from Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When the air-speed sensors froze and gave false readings, the pilots failed to follow correct procedure and lost control of the plane, which plunged into the ocean.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The judge said there had been several acts of negligence by both companies, but that there was not enough certainty to hold Airbus and Air France liable for the crash.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“A probable causal link isn’t sufficient to characterise an offence,” the judge said in her statement before a packed court room.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Air France expressed “its deepest sympathy” to the relatives and Airbus reaffirmed its “total commitment (…) in terms of aviation safety”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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All 12 crew members and 216 passengers on board the flight were killed when the plane crashed into the sea from a height of 38,000ft (11,580m), making it the deadliest incident in French aviation history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The wreckage of the plane was discovered after a long search of 10,000 sq km (3,860 sq miles) of sea floor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The victims hailed from 33 different countries.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A French court has cleared Air France and Airbus of charges of involuntary manslaughter over a deadly crash in June 2009 which killed all 228 people on board. The Airbus A330 operated by Air France […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[7774,9363,9364,9366,9365,2913,1414],"class_list":{"0":"post-25132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world","9":"tag-air-france","10":"tag-airbus-a330","11":"tag-atlantic-ocean","12":"tag-aviation-accidents","13":"tag-corporate-involuntary-manslaughter","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-negligence","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25132"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25135,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25132\/revisions\/25135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}