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| Photo Credit: AP. |
PARIS (AP) — Nicolas Toulliou had just proposed marriage to his girlfriend. Nelson Marinho Jr. was heading off on a new oil exploration job. Eric Lamy was about to celebrate his 38th birthday.
They were
among 228 people killed in 2009 when their storm-tossed Air France flight from
Rio de Janeiro to Paris slammed into the Atlantic. After more than a decade of
legal battles, their families have a chance at justice in a courtroom.
Aviation
industry heavyweights Airbus and Air France are charged with manslaughter in a
trial that opens Monday over the crash of Flight 447 on June 1, 2009. The worst
plane crash in Air France history killed people of 33 nationalities and had
lasting impact, leading to changes in air safety regulations, how pilots are
trained and the use of airspeed sensors.
But it
almost didn’t come to trial. The companies insist they are not criminally
responsible, and Air France has already compensated families. Investigators
argued for dropping the case, but unusually, judges overruled them and sent the
case to court.
“We made a
promise to our loved ones to have the truth for them and to ensure that they
didn’t die for nothing,” Ophelie Toulliou, whose 27-year-old brother Nicolas
was killed, told The Associated Press. “But we are also fighting for collective
security, in fact, for all those who board an Airbus every day, or Air France,
every day.”
She said the
companies present themselves as “untouchable,” and that Airbus made no effort
to address families’ concerns. “For them, we are nothing. They did not lose 228
people. They lost a plane.”
Few families
in Brazil, which lost 59 citizens in the crash, can afford to travel to France
for the trial. Some feel the French justice system has been too soft on Airbus
and Air France — two industrial giants in which the French government has an
ownership stake.
The trial is
expected to focus on two key factors: the icing over of external sensors called
pitot tubes, and pilot error.
The Airbus
A330-200 disappeared from radars over the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and
Senegal with 216 passengers and 12 crew members aboard. The first debris was
only spotted at sea five days later. And it wasn’t until 2011 that the plane —
and its black box recorders — were located on the ocean floor, in an
unprecedented search effort at depths of more than 13,000 feet.
France’s air
accident investigation agency BEA found that the accident involved a cascading
series of events, with no single cause.
As a storm
buffeted the plane, ice crystals present at high altitudes disabled the pitot
tubes, blocking speed and altitude information. The autopilot disconnected.
The crew
resumed manual piloting, but with erroneous navigation data. The plane went
into an aerodynamic stall, its nose pitched upward. And then it plunged.
The pilots
”did not understand what was happening to them. A difficulty of interpretation,
in an all-digital aircraft like all the aircraft in the world today — well,
it’s easy to be wrong,” said Gerard Feldzer, a former pilot and pilot trainer
for Air France.
He said he
and pilots around the world asked themselves afterward “if it had been me,
would I have acted in the same way? It has been a very difficult question to
answer.”
No one risks
prison in this case; only the companies are on trial. Each faces potential
fines of up to 225,000 euros — a fraction of their annual revenues — but they
could suffer reputational damage if found criminally responsible.
Nelson
Marinho, whose son Nelson Jr was killed, is angry that no company executives will
be tried.
“They have
changed various directors, both at Airbus and Air France, so who will they
arrest? No one. There won’t be justice. That’s sadly the truth,” Marinho, a
retired mechanic who leads a support group for victims’ families, told The AP.
Air France
is accused of not having implemented training in the event of icing of the pitot
probes despite the risks.
In a
statement, the company said it would demonstrate in court “that it has not
committed a criminal fault at the origin of the accident” and plead for
acquittal.
Air France
has since changed its training manuals and simulations. It also provided
compensation to families, who had to agree not to disclose the sums.
Airbus is
accused of having known that the model of pitot tubes on Flight 447 was faulty,
and not doing enough to urgently inform airlines and their crews about it and
to ensure training to mitigate the resulting risk.
An AP
investigation at the time found that Airbus had known since at least 2002 about
problems with pitots, but failed to replace them until after the crash. The
model in question — a Thales AA pitot — was subsequently banned and replaced.
Airbus
blames pilot error, and told investigators that icing over is a problem
inherent to all such sensors.
“They knew
and they did nothing,” said Danièle Lamy, president of an association of
victims’ families that pushed for a trial. “The pilots should never have found
themselves in such a situation, they never understood the cause of the
breakdown and the plane had become unpilotable.”
Lamy lost
her son Eric a few days before his 38th birthday. She has struggled ever since
to find out the truth.
“The plane had sent messages to the ground
about the problem but had not warned the pilots. It’s as if you were driving a
car at 130 (kph, about 80 mph), your brakes were no longer working but the car
sent the alert to the mechanic and not to the driver,” Lamy told the AP.
She is among
489 civil parties to the trial, which is scheduled to last through December.
The crash
forced Airbus and Air France to be more transparent and reactive, Feldzer said,
noting that the trial will be important for the aviation industry as well as
for families.
“The history
of aviation security is made from this, from accidents,” Feldzer said.
This story
corrects the type of plane to A330-200 and corrects the spelling of Toulliou’s
last name.
Vaux-Montagny
reported from Lyon, France. David Biller in Rio de Janeiro and Angela Charlton
in Paris contributed.