Could the Air France disaster ruling set a new legal precedent? | Global News Podcast

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Welcome to the Global News Podcast from the BBC. I'm Janet Jalil and today I'm joined by our international business correspondent Theo Leggett. And today we're looking at a dramatic court verdict over France's worst ever aviation disaster when a Rio to Paris flight plunged into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 228 people on board. A Paris Appeals Court has found Air France and the plane manufacturer Airbus guilty of corporate manslaughter.

[00:00:32]Theo, take us back to 2009 and what happened. This was a regular flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris that took off in early June in 2009.

[00:00:41]And the early stages of the flight went normally. It disappeared from radar because back then planes were not tracked all the across all their journey. And it failed to arrive in Paris. It failed to appear on radar. Air traffic control couldn't get in touch.

[00:00:57]So it became apparent pretty quickly that something had happened this plane and within a week some bits of wreckage showed up and a few bodies.

[00:01:05]And that was the point at which investigations began. But although there were suspicions quite early on that this had something to do with speed sensors on the aircraft called pitot tubes. They check they measure the air speed. Um it wasn't clear for 2 years afterwards that that was the cause of the accident.

[00:01:25]And the reason for this was although some wreckage had been found, the plane was at the bottom of the ocean. It's an extremely deep ocean and it was extremely difficult to find.

[00:01:36]It took 2 years and it's a minor miracle that the flight data recorder, the cockpit voice recorder, which carried crucial data, were ever found. But they were found using remote submarines. They were brought to the surface.

[00:01:50]They were taken back to Paris to the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses, which is the French air accident investigation branch.

[00:01:57]And equally remarkably, readable data was found on them. So, we now know what happened to that plane, and that in itself is a remarkable story.

[00:02:08]But for years that there was a lot of mystery about how this plane just came to suddenly plunge into the Atlantic Ocean, and it turned out it was the faulty speed sensors that were at the heart of this. They were at the heart of it, and the pilot's reactions to a situation that rapidly developed beyond their control. So, in the space of 4 minutes, this aircraft went from flying normally at its cruising altitude to hitting the surface of the ocean. And what happened was the plane had been flying through a storm. It's thought that the pitot tubes, which as I said measure the air speed of the aircraft, iced up. Ice crystals formed inside them, so they weren't producing reliable data. That caused the autopilot to stop working, and also put the controls of the aircraft into what's known as alternate law. That's a kind of backup mode in which the controls themselves are more sensitive than normal, and a number of the safety systems, including a stall avoidance system, are not working. So, if you picture it, this was the middle of the night, the aircraft is at altitude, the autopilot suddenly stops working, and the pilots are left dealing with a situation that they weren't expecting, and which if you believe the verdict >> And the captain wasn't on the flight Yeah, the captain The captain was not on the flight deck. So, you had two first officers, two co-pilots on the flight deck. The captain um was trying to get some sleep, so he was not there. Um so, you have these two co-pilots trying to work out what to do, and they didn't communicate with themselves with one another terribly well. Um the inputs they were putting into the controls were contradictory.

[00:03:51]Um there was no authority on the flight deck because the captain wasn't there and ultimately they were caught out by developing situation they didn't understand. The aircraft went into an aerodynamic stall, so it lost lift and very rapidly started descending and ultimately it did crash. The The captain reappeared on the flight deck less than a minute before the crash occurred and realized what was going on, but it was too late.

[00:04:20]And 3 years ago a court found the pilots were to blame. That finding has now been overturned by this Paris appeal court.

[00:04:29]It didn't exactly find the pilots to blame. It said there was no certain causal link between the actions of Airbus and the actions of Air France and the crash occurring because what was at stake here was claims about the design of the cockpit for a start. The The design of the cockpit and how it would encourage the pilots to react when something went wrong. The design of the pitot tubes which we know probably iced up and the training the pilots had been given. So the prosecutors were trying to say that Airbus was responsible for the design of the aircraft which made an accident like this more likely and Air France was responsible for pilot training. The pilots were not adequately trained to deal with a stall at high altitude and therefore it was training that was at fault.

[00:05:20]The blame was not so much put on the pilots as it was not proven that Airbus and Air France were responsible and that's what's been turned around in the latest verdict. But this is a kind of vindication for the pilots, one one of whom also had his wife on board.

[00:05:37]And also this this this verdict has been welcomed by the families of the passengers who died.

[00:05:43]One woman who heads the victims association has called this whole experience, which has gone gone on for 17 years, to be a brutal, traumatic experience. And she says it's taken this long for the families to get some measure of justice. It has taken an incredibly long time, and part of that, of course, is the amount of time the investigation took. So, you had 2 years before the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder were found and recovered. Then you had a period of intense investigation, and that was just the start of the legal marathon. But, you shouldn't underestimate what this is likely to mean to the families of those involved, particularly the flight crew, in fact, because the temptation to blame them is obviously very significant in a case like this.

[00:06:28]Um but, it gives families closure. It means that somebody has been held accountable because in essence, a healthy aircraft, yes, it had a technical failing, but in essence, a healthy aircraft crashed with the loss of 228 lives. What the latest court ruling suggests is that Airbus and Air France, through mistakes made, involuntary homicide is the charge in France. So, basically, manslaughter. Um but, they were responsible for this accident occurring, and the legal repercussions for that in future could be very significant. I was going to ask you, how damaging is this for Air France and for the plane manufacturer, Airbus, given the fact that the other main plane manufacturer, Boeing, has also had its share of aviation disasters? Well, bearing in mind that this was an accident that happened now 17 years ago, um and that a lot of actions have been taken to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Um I don't think it's going to stop anybody buying Airbus aircraft.

[00:07:29]Um it is reputational damage, and some of that reputational damage will be linked to the fact that Airbus and Air France both fought this case tooth and nail um to try and vindicate themselves, and that doesn't necessarily look very good. But, again, when it comes to Airbus, the aviation market has two major suppliers of large commercial aircraft, Airbus and Boeing.

[00:07:53]Boeing has been going through all sorts of trouble in recent years. It's only just starting to recover. Um Airbus has order books that are absolutely bursting. I think last time I looked, there were some 8,000 aircraft in its backlog. So, that is not going to change. Um what may well change is how a case like this would be dealt with in the future.

[00:08:13]Now, nobody wants another aviation accident to occur, but given the number of planes flying around on a daily basis, it is entirely possible that one will.

[00:08:24]And what this ruling sets is a precedent that says the manufacturer and the airline can be held responsible even if the immediate cause is mistakes made by the pilots, because those pilots were put in a position where those mistakes could be made, if that makes sense.

[00:08:42]And you talked about a sense of closure for the families, but there isn't really, is there? Because both Air France and Airbus have said that they are going to appeal. So, this process could go on for several years more. It could still drag on, and I think the reason for that is partly because those involved don't want the situation where they're left potentially legally liable um if a if a future accident occurs.

[00:09:05]But, I think we should still accept that this ruling will be seen as a step forward by the relatives of those who died, because it does say that a very high-level court in France has concluded, based on the evidence put before it, that those two companies were liable. Those two those two companies do not want to be held liable, and they will deny liability. However, this does send out a signal.

[00:09:30]Uh but it has still been an an incredibly lengthy process, one of the lengthiest, I think, when it comes to an air disaster. It's hard to imagine what the families have gone through.

[00:09:39]It is. I've never been in that position myself, and I thank God for that. Um I think it is in the nature of aviation accidents that things take time. Um one thing you would not want is for an investigation to be completed quickly um and for things to be glossed over. You know, air air accident investigations exist for a reason. They exist to try and prevent future accidents. They're not fundamentally about attributing blame.

[00:10:09]That's what the courts do. Um but the air accident investigations are designed to ensure that thing lessons are learned. And in this case, they have been learned. Cockpits have been re- redesigned, controls have been redesigned, crew training programs have been redesigned. All of that has happened. Um and so, hopefully that makes a similar accident less likely to happen in future.

[00:10:31]When it comes to families and of those who died, that there are legal repercussions that companies will try and avoid and will fight tooth and nail to avoid. And again, that's because the financial consequences of something like this can be very serious. So, it's understandable that the companies would fight to deny liability.

[00:10:52]But when you when it comes to relatives of those who've been killed in an accident, they want closure.

[00:10:57]They want to know that somebody has been held accountable. And getting to this stage must have been incredibly painful for them because as you say, it has taken a colossal amount of time.

[00:11:08]Theo, thank you.

[00:11:10]That was Theo Leggett, our international business correspondent. And if you'd like to see more of the Global News Podcast, please click on the link below.

[00:11:19]Thanks for watching.