POLAND PERSPECTIVE

Warsaw, May 21, 2026. The Paris appeals court delivered a historic verdict on Wednesday: Air France and Airbus are guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the AF447 disaster, which crashed into the Atlantic on June 1, 2009, taking 228 people on board. The Polish media RMF24 describes the event as 'the greatest tragedy in Air France's history' and notes that the two companies were fined 225,000 euros each - the maximum legal amount applicable to legal persons in French law.

The crash, which occurred on the Rio de Janeiro-Paris route, was initially attributed to the icing of the Pitot probes, these speed-measuring sensors. The black boxes, recovered from the ocean floor two years after the accident, confirmed this technical hypothesis. In 2012, the Bureau of Investigations and Analyses (BEA) concluded that the failure of the probes had generated incorrect indications, to which the crew had not responded in an adapted manner: the pilots had not reacted to the repeated stall alarms, leading to the impact with the ocean in less than four minutes.

But in 2023, the first-instance court had pronounced a resounding acquittal. The judges had recognized 'imprudences' and 'negligences', without establishing a certain causal link between these faults and the disaster. Air France and Airbus had then only seen their civil liability engaged. This reversal by the appeals court, whose complete re-examination of the evidence has lasted since September 2025, marks a clear break with this reading.

According to RMF24, the prosecutors had supported throughout the appeal procedure that the flight crew lacked adequate training and that the lessons from previous incidents had not been drawn. They emphasized the absence of clear procedures in case of Pitot probe icing and the fact that the crew was unaware of how to detect such a failure. On the other hand, Air France and Airbus maintained until the end that the 'human factor' was decisive, rejecting most of the responsibility on the decisions made in the cockpit.

Of the 489 civil parties present in the first instance, 281 joined the appeal procedure. Several families of victims, however, expressed their dissatisfaction with the amount of the fines, deemed derisory in light of the gravity of the facts. The question of a cassation appeal remains open, which means, as RMF24 notes, that this judicial battle could continue for several more years.