FRANCE PERSPECTIVE

Paris, May 21, 2026. Seventeen years after flight AF447 crashed into the Atlantic, killing 228 people, the Paris appeals court delivered a historic verdict: Air France and Airbus are guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The two companies, which had been acquitted in the first instance in April 2023, are now declared "solely and entirely responsible" for the worst aviation disaster in French civil history.

The court fined each company 225,000 euros, the maximum penalty for a corporate entity. A paltry sum compared to the financial fortunes of the two groups, but one with significant symbolic weight. As predicted by prosecutor Rodolphe Juy-Birmann during the appeal trial in the fall of 2025, "this conviction will cast a shadow, a discredit on these two companies" and "should serve as a warning".

The chain of causality established by the judges rests on two distinct and cumulative failures. Air France is found guilty of failing to provide pilots with adequate training on icing conditions for Pitot probes, the external speed sensors whose malfunction disabled the autopilot in the troubled "Pot au noir" zone near the equator. Airbus, on the other hand, is condemned for underestimating the gravity of these probe failures and for failing to alert airlines in an emergency. For the public prosecutor, these mistakes are "characterized" and "contributed, with certainty, to the occurrence of the air crash".

This verdict comes after a notable procedural reversal: during the first trial, it was the public prosecutor himself who had requested acquittal — and obtained it. It was then this same prosecutor who filed an appeal to "allow the full potential of the judicial procedure to unfold," before finally requesting conviction during the fall 2025 hearings. The two prosecutors had then lambasted "a granite defense" and "16 years of telling any old tale," denouncing "the indecency" of the two companies in the face of the victims' families.

Airbus and Air France maintained their defense line to the end, attributing the accident to "pre-determining human factors" — namely the pilots' decisions in the critical seconds. The Air France representative even admitted at the bar that the company "had the means to conduct high-altitude training, but did not do so because it sincerely believed it was unnecessary".