A French court on Monday cleared European planemaker Airbus and Air France of “involuntary manslaughter,” almost 14 years after an airliner ploughed into the Atlantic en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing everyone on board.
The ruling follows a historic public trial over the disappearance of AF447 in an equatorial storm on June 1, 2009, with families for the 228 victims demanding justice but Paris prosecutors acknowledging that formal blame could not be proved.
The verdict followed France’s first ever trial for corporate involuntary manslaughter, for which the maximum fine is 225,000 euros.
