Paris, France

Two France-based aviation giants went on trial last October over the crash of Air France Flight 447 some 13 years ago. On Monday (April 17), a Paris court acquitted the two companies that have been blamed for one of the worst aviation disasters which killed 228 passengers and crew in 2009. 

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Here is a timeline of the series of events related to the case:

June 2009

On June 1, 2009, Air France flight AF447 took off from Rio in Brazil and was en route to Paris before disappearing off the radar in the middle of a storm. It took a little over four minutes for the plane to fall 11,500 metres out of the sky.  Days later, the wreckage was found of the Airbus A330 which was crossing the night sky during a storm over the Atlantic between Brazil and Senegal and vanished without a Mayday sign. 

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May 2011

After two years and a multi-million-dollar search, the aircraft’s “black boxes” or flight recorders were found nearly 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) below sea level. The search effort involved combing 17,000 square kilometres of the ocean bed at depths of up to 4,000 metres for nearly 22 months. 

October 2011 

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Lawyers and victims’ families were allowed to listen to the in-flight voice recording of the pilots’ final minutes for the first time. “We’ve lost our speeds,” said one pilot, as recorded warning sounds of “stall, stall, stall” were heard and the aircraft began to plunge towards the sea. In the same year, the two aviation giants were being investigated for manslaughter. 

Findings and reports from the retrieved black box

Over the next couple of years, sporadic findings and reports emerged about the crash. One of them said the plane had entered what is called an “intertropical convergence zone” which is said to often produce volatile storms with heavy precipitation. 

Reports indicated that the plane’s speed sensors had been iced up and errors were made and the pilots were disoriented because of this. The “stall” warning was sounded in the cockpit at least 75 times. 

Subsequently, the pilot took manual control after the autopilot system shut down and the wrong navigational data set off a catastrophic chain of events due to which the plane went into an “aerodynamic stall,” the nose pitched upward and the plane plunged into the ocean. 

French investigators from the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), found that the pilots had mishandled the temporary loss of data from iced-up sensors and pushed the 205-tonne jet into a freefall, without responding to alerts, at speed of around 200 kilometres per hour.

The plane was flying through a storm over South Atlantic ocean when it entered a blackspot between air traffic control towers in Brazil and Senegal. However, it kept sending automatic communication “pings” every 10 minutes. It was four minutes and 23 seconds after its last ping, and it vanished, said the report. 

July 2019

In 2019, the prosecutors recommended dropping charges against Airbus and  that Air France face trial for manslaughter and negligence over the crash. 

The French prosecutors concluded that Air France was aware of technical problems with a key speed-measuring instrument or pilot tubes but failed to inform or train pilots on how to resolve the issue. However, this ruling was overturned two years later. 

October 2022

After nearly 13 years the trial for Airbus and Air France over the crash began in Paris. The hearing opened with the judge reading out the names of all 228 victims. The chief executives of both Air France and Airbus who were present pleaded not guilty to the charges of involuntary manslaughter. 

Air France claims that it was the complicated alarms that confused the pilots, whereas Airbus argues that it was the pilots’ fault. Air France has been accused of not properly training their pilots in the event of icing of the pilot probes despite knowing the risks. 

On the other hand, Airbus has been accused of knowing that pilot tubes on Flight 447 were faulty and not doing enough to inform airlines and their crew about the issue which would help ensure training to mitigate the risk.  

The pilot tubes 

The case of the pilot tubes, on board the Airbus A330 were at the centre of the recent hearings. The instrument in question is used to measure the flight speed of aircraft. The court heard about how the malfunction with the tubes, which became blocked with ice crystals during a mid-Atlantic storm, was the reason for the alarms blaring in the cockpit and the autopilot system switching off.

April 2023

The Paris court acquitted both companies, maintaining that even though “errors” had been committed, “no certain link of causality” between those shortcomings and the accident “could be proven.” 

(With inputs from agencies) 

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