"Air France and Airbus guilty of corporate manslaughter for 2009 plane crash", 21 May 2026

A Paris appeals court has found Airbus and Air France guilty of corporate manslaughter over the 2009 Rio-Paris plane crash that killed 228 passengers and crew...

Relatives of some of those who died when the Airbus A330 vanished in darkness during an Atlantic storm gathered to hear the verdict after a 17-year legal battle to pinpoint blame.

The court ordered the companies to pay the maximum fine for corporate manslaughter, €225,000 (£194,500) each, after the request of prosecutors during the eight-week trial.

In 2023, a lower court had cleared the two companies, both of which have repeatedly denied the charges.

The maximum fines, amounting to just a few minutes of either company’s revenue, have been widely dismissed as a token penalty. But family groups said a conviction would represent a recognition of their plight...

Prosecutors, however, focused their attention on alleged failures at the planemaker and the airline. These were said to include poor training and failing to follow up on earlier incidents.

To prove manslaughter, prosecutors needed not only to establish that the companies were guilty of negligence but to pull the threads together to demonstrate how this caused the crash...[Airbus and Air France have declared they would appeal to the French Supreme Court.]