Air France is judged with Airbus for manslaughter. The accident on the Rio-Paris flight in June 2009 claimed the lives of 228 people. First day of interrogation for the company Wednesday, November 9 at the Paris Criminal Court. At the helm, the representative of Air France rejects any form of responsibility in the crash.
For nearly five hours, Pascal Weil, a former pilot and Air France instructor, answered questions from the president and his assessors. Aged 63, retired for two years, this former executive of the company, is at ease, sometimes too much. Quickly cropped by the judge, whom he interrupts several times. “I’m sorry, I’ll give you the floor”he dares.
Air France is criticized for not having sufficiently informed and trained its pilots on the icing of the Pitot speed probes, which was the cause of the crash. Initial pilot training? She is not “not within the purview of the company”, he assures. “And anyway we don’t train for all breakdowns, it’s impossible.” The president reminds him: “Wasn’t it important to include this failure on the probes in your simulators?” “I will not have the audacity to say that Air France did everything well, but the training we were giving before the crash seemed valid to me”, he retorts.
So is it “because of the costs generated by the implementation of a new training program that Air France did not consider useful to train its pilots?”asks the president. “It was never a subject, never” .
The question of the cost, again put on the carpet by one of the assessor judges: Why not have changed before the crash of model of speed probe, for others which do not ice in high altitude? “Sincerely, deeply, it was never a question of means”.
His words are still very muted vis-à-vis the aircraft manufacturer. There are indeed a few spades against Airbus, but still with speckled foil. “Airbus will specify”, slips the air of nothing the one who does not want “not criticize Airbus”… “You can”the judge cuts him off.
So he regrets the appearance in airplanes of cockpits that are too rich in information. Information that may have saturated the minds of the pilots just before the accident. The Air France representative also recalls that during the months preceding the crash, “we increased our pressure on our questions to Airbus”. “The company, he said, wanted to know if it was necessary to change these defective probes in the event of frost”. No response from Airbus.
But the real contest between the two companies will begin on Thursday, when the aircraft manufacturer’s lawyer will ask his questions to the airline’s representative. A moment eagerly awaited by the relatives of the victims, only about twenty of them attended the hearing on Wednesday.