{"id":17421,"date":"2026-05-21T13:07:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/17421\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T13:07:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:07:06","slug":"air-france-and-airbus-found-guilty-of-corporate-manslaughter-over-rio-paris-plane-crash-that-killed-228","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/17421\/","title":{"rendered":"Air France and Airbus found guilty of corporate manslaughter over Rio-Paris plane crash that killed 228"},"content":{"rendered":"

Airbus and Air France<\/a> have been found guilty of corporate manslaughter in the 2009 \u2060Rio<\/a>–Paris<\/a> \u200bplane crash \u2060that killed 228 passengers and \u2060crew in France<\/a>‘s \u200bworst \u2060air disaster.<\/p>\n

A Paris<\/a> appeals court on Wednesday ordered both companies to pay a maximum fine of \u20ac225,000 each, marking a significant milestone in a 17-year legal battle.<\/p>\n

Relatives of the passengers and crew who died when the Airbus A330 vanished in darkness during \u200ban Atlantic storm gathered to hear the verdict, following the eight-week trial.<\/p>\n

In 2023, a lower court had cleared the two companies, both of which \u200bhave repeatedly denied the charges.<\/p>\n

\"(Getty\/iStock)\"<\/p>\n

(Getty\/iStock)<\/p>\n

The maximum fines, amounting to just a few minutes of either company’s \u200brevenue, have been widely dismissed as a token penalty. But family groups have said a conviction would represent \u200ca recognition \u2060of their plight.<\/p>\n

Flight AF447 vanished from radar screens on June 1, 2009, with people from 33 nationalities on board. The black boxes were recovered \u200btwo years later after a \u200bdeep-sea search.<\/p>\n

In 2012, crash \u2060investigators found the plane’s crew had pushed their jet into a stall, chopping lift from under the wings, after mishandling a problem to do \u200bwith iced-up sensors.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors, however, focused their attention on alleged failures inside \u200bboth the planemaker \u2060and airline. Those included poor training and failing to follow up on earlier incidents.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An investigator of the BEA (the French bureau leading the crash investigation) inspects debris from the mid-Atlantic crash of Air France flight 447 (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

To prove manslaughter, prosecutors needed not only to establish that the companies were guilty of negligence but pull the threads together to \u2060demonstrate \u200bhow this caused the crash.<\/p>\n

Under the French system, last year’s appeal \u200bproceedings involved a completely new trial with evidence reviewed from scratch. Any further appeals following Thursday’s verdict will shift the \u200bfocus from the AF447 cockpit to intricacies of law.<\/p>\n

Flight 447 vanished from radar over the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and Senegal with 216 passengers and 12 crew members aboard a few hours after taking off from Rio on 1 June 2009.<\/p>\n

A subsequent investigation found that the plane\u2019s nose pitched upward before its engine stalled at 38,000 feet, sending it into an uncontrollable, three-and-a-half-minute spiral into the ocean.<\/p>\n

A massive search and rescue was launched involving the Brazilian military and French nuclear submarines, and a week later the first bodies of passengers were recovered floating on the ocean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Airbus and Air France have been found guilty of corporate manslaughter in the 2009 \u2060Rio–Paris \u200bplane crash \u2060that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13021],"tags":[739,4616,4617,13073,13076,12689,13075,3789,13046],"class_list":["post-17421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-airbus","tag-air-france","tag-airbus","tag-airbus-a330","tag-appeals-court","tag-atlantic-storm","tag-corporate-manslaughter","tag-flight-af447","tag-legal-battle","tag-plane-crash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}