A Paris appeals court has found Air France and Airbus guilty of manslaughter over the 2009 crash of Flight AF447, which killed all 228 people on board after the aircraft plunged into the Atlantic Ocean.
Gatekeepers News reports that according to BBC News, the court held both companies guilty of corporate manslaughter in connection with the Air France flight travelling from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France.
The court ordered both companies to pay the maximum fine of €225,000 each, equivalent to about $261,720 or £194,500.
Despite the ruling, some families of the victims criticised the penalties, describing the fines as merely symbolic.
The judgment overturned an earlier ruling delivered in April 2023, which had cleared both Air France and Airbus after both companies repeatedly denied the allegations against them.
The Airbus A330 aircraft disappeared from radar during a storm over the Atlantic Ocean, triggering a large-scale search operation covering roughly 10,000 square kilometres of the ocean floor.
Investigators later recovered the wreckage of the aircraft and retrieved the black box in 2011 following months of deep-sea search efforts.
The crash killed all 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board after the aircraft plunged into the ocean from an altitude of 38,000 feet.
During closing arguments in November, deputy prosecutors described the conduct of both companies as “unacceptable,” accusing them of “spouting nonsense and pulling arguments out of thin air.”
