The second day of hearings was marked by the hearing of the director of the investigation, overwhelmed by the emotion at the time of evoking the recovery of the bodies of the victims of the crash of the Rio-Paris flight.
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The floor was given Tuesday, October 11 to investigators at the Paris Criminal Court where the Rio-Paris crash trial is being held. A retired colonel of gendarmerie advances in front of the bar, right in his boots, the impeccable suit. His clear and concise explanations, he who investigated the Concorde crash in 2000. However, when talking about these 228 bodies at the bottom of the Atlantic, Xavier Mulot’s voice breaks. Choices had to be made. Some families wanted their loved one to rest in peace in the ocean. Others wanted to offer them a burial, it was not always possible. Tears are welling up. Long silence in the courtroom. “We were only able to bring up the people still attached to their seats. The others, we had to leave them”. Tears also flow down faces on the benches of the civil parties, sparse. Everyone remembers the choice he had to make thirteen years ago, when the first bodies were spotted.
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The civil parties fear that the trial of Air France and Airbus will turn into a trial of the pilots. A trio of which Colonel Xavier Mulot, of the air transport research section, paints a first portrait. The good testimonies of their colleagues are followed by these elements: the particular mental rigidity of one of the co-pilots who, moreover, separated from his wife. Then, this feeling of panic, perceptible from this crew. A lawyer asks:Could these elements have counted in the crash? The constable responds: “I do not know”. According to him, the decisive element of the crash remains the role played by the Pitot probes which help to determine the speed of the plane.
Why have they not been found? Have they been sufficiently and well researched? The director of investigation attempts an answer:“There was a scattering of the elements over thousands of kilometers and anyway, even if they had been found, they would have been in very bad condition.” On the pilots’ flight plan – another central point of the file – why did the pilots rush into the storm, when all the others passed by? And then, if communications with the control centers had been possible, could this have avoided the crash? “Nope”, replies the gendarme, powerless in the face of the distress of the relatives of the victims.
On June 1, 2009, flight AF447 Rio-Paris crashed into the Atlantic. 228 lost their lives in this air disaster. Businesses Airbus and Air France are tried for manslaughter. The trial opened on Monday October 10 before the Paris Criminal Court and will close on December 8.