ORDEAL FOR RELATIVES OF VICTIMS
Lawyers had said further appeals to France‘s highest court would potentially drag the process out for years, prolonging the ordeal for relatives. Any appeals will shift the focus from the AF447 cockpit to the intricacies of law.
Relatives and lawyers sat in a high-windowed courtroom that has witnessed some of France‘s most historic trials as a judge read out a list of victims, many sharing the same family names.
The trial was seen as a cathartic moment for many relatives, turning the page on almost two decades of infighting within France‘s aviation establishment over the cause of the crash, which led to changes in training.
Flight AF447 vanished from radar screens on Jun 1, 2009, with people from 33 nationalities on board. The plane’s black boxes were recovered two years later after a deep-sea search.
In 2012, BEA crash investigators found the plane’s crew had pushed their jet into a stall, chopping lift from under the wings, after mishandling a problem to do with iced-up sensors.
Prosecutors, however, focused their attention on alleged failures inside both the planemaker and airline. Those included poor training and failing to follow up on earlier incidents.
To prove manslaughter, prosecutors had to not only establish that the companies were guilty of negligence but also pull the threads together to demonstrate how this caused the crash.