- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- US trade chief defends tariff hikes when paired with investment
- EU court blocks French ban on vegetable 'steak' labelling
- Meta AI turns pictures into videos with sound
- US dockworkers return to ports after three-day strike
- DR Congo to begin mpox vaccination campaign Saturday in east
- Meta must limit data use for targeted ads: EU court
- Oil extends gains, jobs report lifts Wall Street
- US hiring soars past expectations in sign of resilient market
- As EU targets Chinese cars, European rivals sputter
- Top EU court finds against FIFA in key transfer market ruling
- Oil extends gains, Hong Kong stocks resume rally
- 'A man provides': Ukrainian miners send families away as Russia advances
- EU states greenlight extra tariffs on EVs from China
- Hong Kong stocks resume rally, oil dips after Middle East-fuelled surge
- Crude stable after Israel-Iran surge, Hong Kong stocks resume gains
- Hera spacecraft to probe asteroid deflected by defence test
- US dockworkers to head back to work after tentative deal
- After Helene's destruction, North Carolina starts to rebuild
- Dockers end three-day strike at Montreal port
- What next for OpenAI after $157 billion bonanza?
- Israel-Hamas war causes 86-percent dive in Gaza GDP: IMF
- Milan's Morata moves house after Inter-fan town mayor 'violates' privacy
- 'Devastating' storm hits Augusta National but Masters will go on
- Relief in Brazil, Asia over delay to EU deforestation rules
- Oil prices jump, stocks fall on Middle East tensions
- Biden says 'discussing' possible Israeli strikes on Iran oil facilities
- Oil prices rise, stocks fall on Middle East tensions
- Oil rallies, stocks mostly retreat on Middle East tensions
- Phasing out teen smoking could save 1.2 mn lives: study
- 'Welcome relief': Asia producers hail EU deforestation law delay
- Japan PM slated to announce plans for 'happiness index'
- Turkish inflation falls less than expected in September at 49.4%
- Easing inflation lifts profit at UK supermarket Tesco
- Skiing calls on UN climate science to combat melting future
- China wine industry looks to breed climate resilience
- Tokyo rallies on weak yen, Hong Kong drops after surge
- Dutch airline KLM unveils 'firm' cost-cutting measures
- Carpe diem: the Costa Rican women turning fish into fashion
- Senegal looks to aquaculture as fish stocks dwindle
- Will AI one day win a Nobel Prize?
- Climate change, economics muddy West's drive to curb Chinese EVs
- Argentina's Milei vetoes university budget after huge protests
- TotalEnergies plans to grow oil and gas production until 2030
- 2024 Nobels offer glimmer of hope as global crises mount
- Tokyo rallies on weak yen, Hong Kong reverses after surge
Air France, Airbus face trial over 2009 Rio-Paris disaster
Air France and aircraft maker Airbus go on trial in Paris on Monday on charges of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 crash of a flight from Brazil, killing all 228 people aboard.
The case focuses on alleged insufficient pilot training and a defective speed monitoring probe, which was quickly replaced on planes worldwide in the months after the accident.
Flight AF 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm in the early hours of June 1, 2009, when it stalled after entering a zone of strong turbulence.
The Airbus A330 was carrying 12 crew members and 216 passengers, including 61 French. It was the carrier's deadliest crash.
Debris was found in the following days but it took nearly two years to locate the bulk of the fuselage and recover the "black box" flight recorders.
Air France and Airbus were charged as the inquiry progressed, with experts determining the crash resulted from mistakes made by pilots disorientated by so-called Pitot speed-monitoring tubes that had frozen over in thick cloud.
Both companies have denied any criminal negligence, and investigating magistrates overseeing the case dropped the charges in 2019, attributing the crash mainly to pilot error.
That decision infuriated victims' families, and in 2021 a Paris appeals court ruled there was sufficient evidence to allow a trial to go ahead.
"Air France... will continue to demonstrate that it did not commit any criminal negligence that caused this accident, and will request an acquittal," the airline said in a statement.
Airbus, maker of the A330 jet that had been put into service just four years before the accident, declined to comment ahead of the trial but has also denied any criminal negligence.
They each face a maximum fine of 225,000 euros ($220,000).
- 'Lost our speeds' -
The court will hear testimony from dozens of aviation experts and pilots, along with second-by-second details of the final minutes in the cockpit before the plane went into free-fall.
As it approached the Equator en route for Paris, the plane entered a so-called "intertropical convergence zone" that often produces volatile storms with heavy precipitation.
Around this time the captain, 58, handed over to his 32-year-old senior co-pilot and went to bed, with the second co-pilot sharing the controls.
To avoid the worst of the storm they veered off route to the left and slowed their speed, having warned the crew of coming turbulence.
Shortly after the automatic pilot functions stopped working, just as the Pitot tubes froze over, leaving the pilots with no clear speed readings.
"We've lost our speeds," one co-pilot is heard saying in the flight recordings, before other indicators mistakenly show a loss of altitude, and a series of alarm messages appear on the cockpit screens.
The pilots quickly point the nose of the plane higher to start climbing, but soon a "STALL" alert sounds once, then pauses, then sounds nonstop for 54 seconds.
The plane keeps climbing, engines at the max, and reaches 11,600 metres (38,060 feet) before the stall begins. "I don't know what's happening," one of the pilots says.
At this point the captain is back in the cockpit trying to help but the plane is falling rapidly, at 3,000 metres per minute. "Am I descending?" the senior co-pilot asks. "No, now you're climbing," the captain answers.
The recordings then stop, four minutes and 30 seconds after the Pitot tubes froze.
- 'The human element' -
Testimony will also be heard from some of the victims' family members, 476 of whom are civil plaintiffs in the case.
"It's going to be a very technical trial... but our goal is also to re-introduce the human element," said Alain Jakubowicz, a lawyer for the victims' group Entraide et Solidarite (Mutual Aid and Solidarity).
Its president, Daniele Lamy, said that instead of trying to pin the blame on the pilots, "We want this trial to be that of Airbus and Air France."
"We expect an impartial and exemplary trial so that this never happens again, and that as a result the two defendants will make safety their priority instead of only profitability," she said.
But Nelson Faria Marinho, president of the Brazilian association of victims' relatives, said, "I'm not expecting anything from this trial."
His 40-year-old son, also named Nelson, perished on his way to an oil industry job in Angola.
"Even if there is a conviction, who will be punished? The CEOs? They were changed at Airbus and Air France a long time ago," he told AFP during an interview at his Rio home.
Despite having travelled to France 18 times to meet authorities and investigators, Faria Marinho will not be at the trial.
He will be represented by former French pilot Gerard Arnoux, who has advised several of the victims' families and wrote a book titled "Rio-Paris Is Not Responding: AF447, the Crash that Should Not Have Happened".
"The French government isn't going to pay for the trip, and the tickets are much too expensive. I'm retired and don't have the resources," he said. "But if I could, I would."
C.Smith--CPN