Parallel investigation presents new version of events regarding the AF 447 crash.
A report by the French Justice Department points to the responsibility of Air France and Airbus in the accident that killed 228 people; in an inquiry released last week, the government agency indicated human error.
274 – A new version of events regarding the 2009 crash of flight AF 447 opens the way for the victims' families to file criminal charges against Air France and Airbus. The French justice system has challenged the BEA (Bureau of Investigation and Analysis), which pointed to pilot error as a major contributing factor. Read more in the G1 article:
A report by the French Justice Department on the Air France flight AF 447 accident points to the responsibility of both the airline and the aircraft manufacturer, Airbus, in the accident that killed 228 people on May 31, 2009.
The document, which was presented this Tuesday (10) to the lawyers of the families of the victims of the accident in Paris, was drawn up by ten judicial experts appointed by the Justice Department to carry out an investigation parallel to that of the BEA (Office of Investigation and Analysis, in French), which released its report on the accident on the 5th of last month.
According to consultant Maarten Van Sluys, a founding member of the association of families of the flight victims, the document paves the way for families to file criminal complaints against the companies.
"As we expected, the judge's report was more forceful in establishing responsibility for the equipment failure, such as the freezing of the Pitot tubes [aircraft speed sensors]," he told G1.
According to the consultant, the court experts determined that "Airbus and Air France bear primary responsibility, but also Thales, the equipment manufacturer."
In the coming days, according to Van Sluys, the 29 family members of victims of the flight who are part of the association – which includes French, German and six Brazilian families – will have to study together with the lawyer who represents them in France whether they will take legal action against the companies.
“We are awaiting an opinion from the lawyer regarding the elements of the legal report. He will advise us on whether we have a significant chance of moving this process forward or not. But I can say with considerable certainty that there is an 80 to 90% chance that there are sufficient grounds for legal action,” says the consultant, who lost a sister in the accident.
According to him, the document prepared by Judge Sylvie Zimmerman, the same judge who indicted Air France and Airbus for manslaughter last year, complements the conclusions of the report prepared by the aviation authority, which focused more on the technical elements that caused the tragedy.
“But even the BEA report already contained extremely compelling evidence of the companies' failures, such as the so-called flight director, a piece of equipment connected to the aircraft's computer that instructed the aircraft to gain altitude when, based on everything we know today, the action should have been the opposite,” he notes.