Almost 14 years after the crash of an Air France plane between Rio de Janeiro and Paris that killed 228 people, a Paris court has acquitted the airline and manufacturer Airbus of suspected negligent homicide. Although some of the corporations acted carelessly or carelessly, the presiding judge Sylvie Daunis said on Monday that there was no clear causal connection to the accident.
The companies had denied responsibility for the crash and demanded an acquittal. The prosecution also said in their closing arguments that they could not demand a conviction.
The Air France flight AF 447 disappeared from radar screens on June 1, 2009 en route from Rio to the French capital. The Airbus A330 crashed into the Atlantic, killing 228 people. The cause was unclear for a long time. It was not until May 2011 that the last bodies and the flight data recorder were recovered from a depth of around 4,000 meters. 28 Germans were among the victims of the accident flight.
The legal processing of the accident dragged on. In 2019, investigating judges dismissed a case. The crash was due to a combination of elements that had never happened before. In 2021, an appeals court decided otherwise and ordered the trial of Airbus and Air France. The process ran from October to early December.
