Air France, Airbus trial over Rio-Paris crash to open Oct. 10

A French trial of Air France and Airbus on charges of involuntary manslaughter over the 2009 crash of a plane flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris will open on October 10, a legal source told AFP on Thursday. The airline and Europe's top aircraft maker had sought to have the case thrown out, denying that criminal negligence caused Flight AF 447 to plunge into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. It took two years to find the wreckage of the Airbus A330 jet, which was eventually located by remote-controlled submarines at a depth of 3,900 metres (13,000 feet). Investigators determined the crash was caused by errors by pilots disorientated by faulty speed monitoring equipment. Yet investigating magistrates overseeing the case dropped the charges in 2019, attributing the crash mainly to pilot error, a decision that infuriated victims' families. Prosecutors contested the decision and a Paris appeals court ordered last year that a trial could go ahead. It is expected to run until early December. Air France is accused of indirectly causing the tragedy by providing insufficient training on how to react in case of malfunction of instruments known as Pitot tubes, which enable pilots to monitor the plane's speed. Both companies turned to France's top appeals court in a bid to avoid the trial, but the request was denied last August.<br/>