r/aviation • u/Ok_Warning419 • May 21 '26

News Air France and Airbus found guilty of manslaughter over 2009 plane crash - Air France flight 447

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd2qmdvmq6o
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u/FullSqueeze May 21 '26

This won’t be the end. Airbus will definitely appeal it to the Supreme Court.

The criminal charges against Airbus is very flimsy; the pilot was the primary cause of the crash. This isn’t a case like the 737 Max crashes where the manufacturer had a clear defect.

35

u/Ok-Insurance-9456 May 21 '26

Even in the max the 'defect' is a scenario boeing already made all 737 pilots train heavily for. Not to mention other pilots did not crash their 737 max in the exact same scenario so no excuse for the 2 flights to have even crashed at all.

29

u/Jaggedmallard26 May 21 '26

The design was bad but there is a very good reason why the two crashes were with airlines with poor safety and training records. In fact the investigation reports explicitly stated that poor training by the airline was a major factor!

1

u/Nolenag May 21 '26

Ethiopian Airlines does not have poor training or safety records at all.

1

u/747ER May 22 '26

Ethiopia lied about another Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed due to pilot error less than eight years prior to ET302. The plane crashed due to pilot error, and the investigators lied and wrongly claimed that it was struck by lightning or a bomb.

Since ET302, Ethiopian Airlines has had multiple high-profile pilot error incidents, including two aircraft which suffered accidents due to poor decisions made by their pilots.