French Court Acquitted Airbus and Air France Of "involuntary manslaughter" Over Their Role In the 2009 AF447 Plane Crash .

A development , which can be a bitter disappointment for the families of the 228 victims awaiting a ruling in thier favour, Airbus and Air France have been acquitted of "involuntary manslaughter" charges today by a French court over their role in the 2009 crash of a flight from Rio to Paris that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, almost 14 years after the accident.

• Air France was accused of not having implemented training in the event of icing of the pitot probes despite the risks.
• Airbus was accused of not doing enough to urgently inform airlines and their crews about faults with the pitots or to ensure training to mitigate the risk.

The ruling followed a historic public trial over the disappearance of AF447 in an equatorial storm on 1 June 2009, with families for the 228 victims demanding justice but Paris prosecutors acknowledging that formal blame could not be proved.

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

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Today's Verdict was surely historic , that followed France's first ever trial for corporate involuntary manslaughter, for which the maximum fine is €225,000.

Reports suggest, the Airbus lawyers  blamed pilot error, and Air France said the full reasons for the crash will never be known. Unusually, even state prosecutors argued for acquittal, saying that the proceedings did not produce enough proof of criminal wrongdoing by the companies.

Air France has already compensated the families of those killed, who came from 33 countries. Families from around the world are among the plaintiffs, including many in Brazil.

• It took two years to find the aircraft and its black box recorders on the ocean floor, at depths of more than 13,000ft (around 4,000m).
• The official investigation found that multiple factors contributed to the crash, including pilot error and the icing over of external sensors called pitot tubes.

After a two-year search for the A330's black boxes using remote submarines, investigators found pilots had responded clumsily to a problem involving iced-up speed sensors and lurched into a freefall without responding to stall alerts.

Final Investigation Report Summary

The BEA released its final report on the accident On 5 July 2012. This confirmed the findings of the preliminary reports and provided additional details and recommendations to improve safety. According to the final report, the accident resulted from this succession of major events:

• Temporary inconsistency between the measured speeds, likely as a result of the obstruction of the pitot tubes by ice crystals, caused autopilot disconnection and [flight control mode] reconfiguration to "alternate law (ALT)".
• The crew made inappropriate control inputs that destabilized the flight path.
• The crew failed to follow appropriate procedure for loss of displayed airspeed information.
• The crew were late in identifying and correcting the deviation from the flight path.
• The crew lacked understanding of the approach to stall.
• The crew failed to recognize the aircraft had stalled, and consequently did not make inputs that would have made recovering from the stall possible.

The trial also highlighted earlier discussions between Air France and Airbus about growing problems with external "pitot probes" that generate the speed readings.

While announcing the verdict, the Paris criminal court judge listed several acts of negligence by both companies but said these fell short of the certainty needed to establish firm liabiity for France's worst air disaster.

"A probable causal link isn't sufficient to characterize an offence," the judge told the packed courtroom. Both companies had pleaded not guilty.