[ad_1]
The pilots ”did not understand what was happening to them. A difficulty of interpretation, in an all-digital aircraft like all the aircraft in the world today — well, it’s easy to be wrong”, said Gerard Feldzer, a former pilot and pilot trainer for Air France.
He said he and pilots around the world asked themselves afterward “if it had been me, would I have acted in the same way? It has been a very difficult question to answer”.
No one risks prison in this case; only the companies are on trial. Each faces potential fines of up to 225,000 euros — a fraction of their annual revenues — but they could suffer reputational damage if found criminally responsible.
Nelson Marinho, whose son Nelson Jr was killed, is angry that no company executives will be tried.
“They have changed various directors, both at Airbus and Air France, so who will they arrest? No one. There won’t be justice. That’s sadly the truth,” Marinho, a retired mechanic who leads a support group for victims’ families, told The AP.
Air France is accused of not having implemented training in the event of icing of the pitot probes despite the risks.
In a statement, the company said it would demonstrate in court “that it has not committed a criminal fault at the origin of the accident” and plead for acquittal.
Air France has since changed its training manuals and simulations. It also provided compensation to families, who had to agree not to disclose the sums.
Airbus is accused of having known that the model of pitot tubes on Flight 447 was faulty, and not doing enough to urgently inform airlines and their crews about it and to ensure training to mitigate the resulting risk.
An AP investigation at the time found that Airbus had known since at least 2002 about problems with pitots, but failed to replace them until after the crash. The model in question — a Thales AA pitot — was subsequently banned and replaced.
Airbus blames pilot error, and told investigators that icing over is a problem inherent to all such sensors.
“They knew and they did nothing,” said Danièle Lamy, president of an association of victims’ families that pushed for a trial. “The pilots should never have found themselves in such a situation, they never understood the cause of the breakdown and the plane had become unpilotable.”
Lamy lost her son Eric a few days before his 38th birthday. She has struggled ever since to find out the truth.
“The plane had sent messages to the ground about the problem but had not warned the pilots. It’s as if you were driving a car at 130 (kmh), your brakes were no longer working but the car sent the alert to the mechanic and not to the driver,” Lamy told the AP.
She is among 489 civil parties to the trial, which is scheduled to last through December.
The crash forced Airbus and Air France to be more transparent and reactive, Feldzer said, noting that the trial will be important for the aviation industry as well as for families.
“The history of aviation security is made from this, from accidents,” Feldzer said.
[ad_2]
Source link