The court acquitted Air France and Airbus of involuntary manslaughter after the plane crashed in 2009, flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The airliner crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, and no one survived, reports the Daily Star.
Litigation in the case of the crash lasted more than 14 years. It took two years just to lift the flight recorder and the bodies of the dead from the bottom of the ocean.
The court listened to the last words of the pilots before the crash:
“F***, we’re going to crash! That’s not true! What’s going on?”
“F***, we’re dead!”.
The main subject of disagreement at the meetings was the question of the competence of the pilots, through whose fault, according to the prosecution, the crash occurred.
The investigation found that the senior pilots of the aircraft fell asleep, leaving control of the vessel to a younger colleague. According to investigators, this was the cause of the crash. They believe that if more experienced pilots had been awake at the time the aircraft hit the turbulence and taken the necessary measures, the catastrophe could have been avoided.
“If the ship’s captain, Mark Dubois, had remained at the helm during the passage of the intertropical convergence zone and went to bed 15 minutes later, the story would have ended differently,” said the head of the investigation, Alain Bouillard. He also said that he does not believe in the fatigue of pilots and their sleep, in his opinion, is rather part of the culture of piloting at Air France.
At the same time, the investigation admits that pilots are not forbidden to sleep on flights.
During the investigation, the cause of the captain’s drowsiness was also found. He told colleagues that he spent the night before the flight with his mistress and slept for only an hour. By the way, his beloved was also on board the ill-fated flight and died.
Air France officials maintained their innocence and denied that the hired pilots were incompetent, noting that they had received advanced training.
After listening to all the arguments and reviewing the evidence presented, on April 17, the court decided that there was no evidence of corporate guilt on the part of Air France and Airbus. The cause of the crash was an exclusively human factor and violations by the pilots.