{"id":460188,"date":"2026-05-21T14:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T14:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/460188\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T14:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T14:37:09","slug":"airbus-air-france-found-guilty-of-corporate-manslaughter-over-2009-crash-in-which-three-irish-doctors-died-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/460188\/","title":{"rendered":"Airbus, Air France found guilty of corporate manslaughter over 2009 crash in which three Irish doctors died \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Paris appeals court on Wednesday found \u200bAirbus and Air France<\/a> guilty of corporate manslaughter over the 2009 Rio-Paris plane crash that killed 228 passengers and crew, including three Irish women.<\/p>\n

Dr Aisling Butler (26), from Roscrea, Co Tipperary; Dr Jane Deasy (27), from Dublin; and Dr Eithne Walls (28), from Co Down, were returning from a holiday in Brazil when they died in the crash on June 1st, 2009. <\/p>\n

The verdict on France\u2019s worst air disaster is the latest milestone in a legal marathon involving two of the country\u2019s most emblematic \u200bcompanies and relatives of the mainly French, Brazilian and German victims.<\/p>\n

Relatives of some of the 228 passengers and crew who died when \u2060the Airbus A330 vanished in darkness during an Atlantic storm gathered to hear the verdict \u200cafter \u200ctheir \u200b17-year legal battle to pinpoint blame for France\u2019s worst air disaster.<\/p>\n

The court ordered the companies to pay the maximum fine for corporate manslaughter, \u20ac225,000 ($261,720) each, following the request \u2060of prosecutors during the eight-week trial.<\/p>\n

In \u200b2023, a lower court had cleared the two \u200bcompanies<\/a>, both of which have repeatedly denied the charges.<\/p>\n

The maximum fines, amounting to just a few minutes \u200cof either company\u2019s revenue, have been widely \u200bdismissed as a token penalty. But family groups have said a conviction would represent a recognition of \u2060their plight.<\/p>\n

French lawyers have \u2060predicted further appeals \u200bto the country\u2019s highest court, potentially dragging the process out for years more and prolonging the ordeal for relatives.<\/p>\n

Flight AF447 vanished from radar screens, with people from 33 nationalities on board. The black boxes were recovered two years later after a deep-sea search.<\/p>\n

In 2012, BEA crash investigators found the plane\u2019s crew had pushed their jet into a stall, chopping lift from under the wings, after mishandling a problem to do with iced-up sensors.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors, \u200chowever, focused their attention \u2060on alleged failures inside both the plane maker and airline. Those included poor training and failing to follow up on earlier incidents.<\/p>\n

To prove manslaughter, prosecutors needed not only to establish that \u200cthe companies were guilty of negligence but pull the threads together to demonstrate how this caused the crash.<\/p>\n

Under the French \u200bsystem, last year\u2019s appeal proceedings involved a completely new trial with \u200bevidence reviewed from scratch. Any further appeals following Thursday\u2019s verdict will shift the focus from the AF447 cockpit to intricacies of law. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Paris appeals court on Wednesday found \u200bAirbus and Air France guilty of corporate manslaughter over the 2009…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-460188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}