Thirteen years have passed since flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro-Paris disappeared and evaporated into the Atlantic Ocean. It took two years to find his remains.. Finally Air France and Airbus will appear this Monday before the French criminal court for “involuntary manslaughter”. The investigation concluded that the companies were at fault, but have so far denied any criminal liability.
Airbus A330 flight AF447 left Rio de Janeiro at 22:29 on May 31, 2009 and was en route to its destination, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, with 216 passengers on board and 12 crew members.
Three hours after take-off, the plane entered an area well known to pilots on this trajectory, The downhill”. A space where the air masses of the northern and southern hemispheres meet, conducive to stormy developments.
Tremors in the cabin
Some tremors were felt in the cabin. Co-pilot Pierre-Cédric Bonin suggested to the captain, Marc Dubois, to change the flight level to exit the turbulence zone.
“It is perceived some concern at their insistence “, according to the exchanges collected by the flight recorders, studied by the Office of Investigations and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA).
“Captain he is very numb to the concerns expressed by the colleague. He seems to have a good experience and doesn’t seem personally worried (at worst he hopes the turbulence will disturb him in his rest), ”the researchers report.
At 02:00, Major Marc Dubois, 58, lie down in the rest area, leaving the two co-pilots in command as foreseen in the procedure. But ten minutes later, the turbulence has intensified. Suddenly autopilot gone offline and the speed indications lost all consistency for a few seconds.
Lost control
Thinking that the plane was losing altitude, the co-pilot Pierre-Cédric Bonin tried to correct the trajectory pulling the control column. But the stall warning went off and rang continuously for 54 seconds. In a panic, David Robert, the other co-pilot, signaled to the rest area warn the captain.
Commander Marc Dubois returned to the cockpit approximately 1 minute and 30 seconds after the alarms had been activated. But could not identify the source of subsequent failures. The co-pilot continued to pull on the control column, thinking of righting the plane. In reality this maneuver prevents the completion of the stall. AF447 fell flat for four minutes, before collapsing in the middle of the Atlantic at 2:14 am, leaving no survivors.
The first remains of the A330 were found five days after the accident, on 6 June 2009. But it took nearly two years to locate the remains. 3900 meters deep.
The biggest French plane crash
The biggest accident in French aviation history: 228 people from 32 different nationalities, including 73 French women, died in the accident. Among them Nicolas Toulliou, 27, passionate about business travel, Ivan Lorgéré and Olivier Guillot-Noël, members of the CNRS, returning from a Franco-Brazilian conference, François Henry, 39, of Air Austral on vacation with her friend Céline Guittard, 34, an Air France hostess. On the plane was Pablo Gabriel Dreyfus, son of the famous Argentine publicist.
From this Monday until December 8, the relatives of the victims will be in court in Paris for the trial of the Air France and Airbus companies, accused of manslaughter. So far, 489 civil parties have been filed and are waiting, after 13 long years of waiting, for a “fair” sentence to be finally issued.
“This is the greatest French aviation tragedy. It is extremely important that a trial punishes those responsible. There must be no impunity,” explained Danièle Lamy, president of the AF447 association, mutual aid and solidarity.
This former teacher she lost her son, Eric, in the accident. During the trial he will testify on behalf of his family and members of his association, which represents 33 passengers. “It will be very difficult to relive this painful moment, but it is an essential step,” he says. “This trial, we fought for this, we will go to the end”.
In 2019 the examining judges issued a general dismissalwhereas the accident was due to human errors committed by pilots. Outraged by this decision, the families of the victims, as well as the prosecution, filed an appeal and the negligent violations of the airline and Airbus were finally confirmed.
frozen Pitot probes
At the origin of the accident, the investigations indicates the freezing of the Pitot probes, three sensors installed in the front of the plane to measure its speed. The final minutes of Air France flight AF447 will be reviewed at the start of the trial.
The excruciating final minutes of the Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro will be examined in this historic trial in Paris which begins on Monday.
“In the aftermath of the disaster, EASA forced everything to change,” commented an aviation safety expert. “From the Thales AA probes, we have moved on to BA and today to the Goodrich brand. But, at that point, different probes probably wouldn’t have changed anything. Knowledge of ice crystals and “supercooled water”, which can appear at high altitudes in the event of extreme weather events, at the time it was not advanced enough to develop Pitot probes capable of resisting it. “continued the same source,
Since then, Airbus has added sensors in the engines of its state-of-the-art aircraft to calculate the speed of the aircraft in the event of a Pitot probe failure.
The European manufacturer has also chosen to display the “stall” warning in its entirety, which means the aircraft it had stopped on the cockpit control screens. The three pilots of the flight did not hear or ignore the beep, unable to identify the stalemate.
first time on trial
It is the first time that French companies have been prosecuted directly after a plane crash, rather than individuals. Family lawyers have been fighting for years to take the case to court.
The incident of June 1, 2009 rocked the world of air travel, when flight AF447 disappeared from radar as it crossed the night sky during an Atlantic storm, between Brazil and Senegal. The Airbus A330 had disappeared without an emergency signal.
Days later, a wreck was found in the ocean. But it took nearly two years to locate most of the fuselage and recover the flight recorders from the “black box”. The unprecedented French research effort involved the “combing” of 17,000 square kilometers ocean floor at depths of up to 4,000 meters for more than 22 months.
Airplanes crash to the ground more frequently, and the AF447 maritime accident was seen as one of the few accidents that changed aviation. I drive to changes to the rules safety, pilot training and use of speed sensors.
The trial will hear extensive details of the last and fateful minutes in the cockpit as the confused captain and co-pilots they struggled to control the plane.
When the plane approached the equator headed for Paris, it had entered the so-called “intertropical convergence zone”, which often produces volatile thunderstorms with heavy rainfall. When a storm hit the plane, ice crystals present at high altitudes had disabled the plane’s speed sensors. blocking of speed and altitude information. The autopilot functions have stopped working.
The 205-ton plane stopped and then it sank.
“We have lost our speed,” a co-pilot is heard saying in flight recordings, before other indicators mistakenly show a loss of altitude and a series of warning messages appear on the cockpit screens. “I don’t know what’s going on”, says one of the pilots.
The historical test will take into consideration the role of speed sensors and drivers.
family members in court
Daniele Lamy, president of the Entraide et Solidarité victims’ group, told AFP: “We hope an impartial and exemplary process so that this never happens again and that, consequently, the two defendants make safety your priority rather than just profitability “.
Air France and Airbus face fines of up to 225,000 euros, a fraction of your annual income. But they could suffer reputational damage if held criminally responsible.
both companies they denied any criminal negligence. Coroners overseeing the case dropped the charges in 2019, attributing the incident primarily to pilot error.
That decision angered the victims’ families and in 2021 a Paris appeals court ruled that there was sufficient evidence to allow the trial to begin.
“Air France will continue to demonstrate that it did not commit any criminal negligence that caused this incident and will seek acquittal,” the airline said in a statement to AFP.
Airbus, manufacturer of the A330 aircraft put into service only four years before the accident, did not comment before the trial. But she also denied any criminal negligence.
Paris, correspondent
ap
Source: Clarin
