Airbus and Air France are acquitted in the Atlantic plane crash that killed 228 people in 2009.

A Paris court on Monday acquitted European manufacturer Airbus and airline Air France of manslaughter after the 2009 Rio de Janeiro-Paris connecting flight crash that killed 228 people.

Nearly 14 years after the crash, a Parisian criminal court acquitted both companies, ruling that while there was “guilt”, it “failed to demonstrate any causal relationship” to the crash of Flight AF447, an Airbus A330-200.

The accident led to a long-term change in the aircraft’s safety measures, as an official investigation found that several factors contributed to the accident, including pilot error and icing on external sensors.

According to the France-Presse (AFP) news agency, the reading of the decision was watched by the families of the victims, some weeping as they awaited the verdict from both companies.

The trial, which lasted for about two months (from October 10 to December 8, 2022), left the families of the victims in anger and frustration.

Unusually, even the State Department upheld the acquittal, acknowledging that the process did not provide sufficient evidence of the criminal acts of the two companies.

The prosecution blamed mainly the pilots, who also died in the crash. Airbus lawyers also blamed the pilot for a mistake, while Air France lawyers said the true causes of the crash would never be known.

No one faces arrest as only the companies are on trial in the deadliest accident in French airline history.

Air France has already paid compensation to the families of the victims from 33 countries, mainly from France (72) and Brazil (58).

The A330-200 aircraft disappeared from radar during a storm over the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

It took two years to find the plane, which made it possible to recover the records contained in black boxes found on the ocean floor, at a depth of more than 4,000 meters.

The first wreckage was discovered a few days after the accident, but the main part of the aircraft was not found until two years after a long search.

The black boxes confirmed the starting point of the accident: icing on the Pitot’s speed sensors while the aircraft was flying at high altitude in a complex zone of “turbulence” near the equator.

One of the co-pilots, worried about the consequences of this accident, took an upward trajectory, and in a state of confusion, the three pilots were unable to regain control of the aircraft, which stalled and crashed into the ocean after 4.23 minutes.

The investigation showed that incidents with such sensors occurred repeatedly in the months leading up to the accident.

For the trial, Airbus made “four indiscretions or sloppiness” in particular by not replacing the “pito” sensor model known as “AA” which seemed to hang more frequently on the A330-A340 fleet, and the fact that it showed “information retention » companies.

Air France made two “negligents” related to the way it sent out an information note to its pilots about sensor failures.

However, according to the court, from a criminal point of view, “a probable causal relationship is not enough to characterize a violation.”

At the same time, in relation to failures, a causal relationship with an accident cannot be proven.

During the trial, which took place from October 10 to December 8, 2022, the Ministry of Health asked for an acquittal, considering the guilt of the companies “impossible to prove.”