Airbus Faces Charges Over 2009 Rio-Paris Crash

mayberry42 writes "A French judge filed preliminary manslaughter charges Thursday against Airbus over the 2009 crash of an Air France jet — opening a rare criminal investigation against a corporate powerhouse. The order from Judge Sylvie Zimmerman targeting the European planemaker centers on the June 2009 crash into the Atlantic of an Airbus A330 bound for Paris from Rio de Janeiro, killing all 228 people on board."

Comments

Re:Double engine?

[zonky]

Operating too close to limits has long been the suggestion: http://trueslant.com/milesobrien/2009/06/08/the-coffin-corner-and-a-mesoscale-maw/

Re:What happens if they're found guilty?

[cappp]

I'm assuming the French law is similar to the UK one in that the outcome is pretty much financial with a dash of policy change. Corporate Manslaughter in the UK is governed by the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 which notes that:

A court before which an organisation is convicted of corporate manslaughter or corporate homicide may make an order (a “remedial order”) requiring the organisation to take specified steps to remedy—

(a)the breach mentioned in section 1(1) (“the relevant breach”);
(b)any matter that appears to the court to have resulted from the relevant breach and to have been a cause of the death;
(c)any deficiency, as regards health and safety matters, in the organisation's policies, systems or practices of which the relevant breach appears to the court to be an indication.

There is however no personal responsibility assigned i.e. the employees aren't found guilty of aiding or abetting.

It shouldn't of happened so they are in court

[FlyingGuy]

This is the result of a computer controlled fly-by-wire airplane having a cascade failure.

Glass cockpits are pretty and they really take a load of the pilot for a lot of things, but there is such a thing as to much of a good thing

If it is every factually determined what little chunk of silicone or line of code brought airplane down it will be studied in depth and hopefully they designers will learn something. But one thing is clear, in their rush to make everything digital and get those damn pesky analog instruments the hell out of there, they have taken away many of the pilots most reliable tools to do the one thing they are there to do which is fly the fucking airplane!

There are two ways to fly an airplane, by reference to the ground or using instruments.

In the middle of the night, over the ocean, in a storm you do not have reference to the ground so you have to use your instruments, that is if they work.

To keep a plane in the air, without reference to the ground / horizon a pilot needs a very few things and the are:

• Attitude Indicator aka an Artificial Horizon
• Altimeter
• Air Speed Indicator

Now even without an airspeed indicator, most or the presumptions were a frozen and clogged pilot tube, you can still get a good clue about airspeed with nothing more then throttle setting. The attitude indicator tells you climb and dive left or right bank and the altimeter is obvious. With everything else dark, a pilot should be able to keep a plane in the air.

My educated guess is that when the whole interconnected and interdependent system went down they lost the ability to control the engines and the ability to move the aircraft's control surfaces and after that it was just over.

This is why Boeing for years always ran a hybrid system. The basic control over the airplane was not interdependent on anything and were separate systems that would accept input from the flight computer and make things like autopilot and all that possible while still keeping everything independent from all the other systems. It made for a pain in the ass system but the flight computer taking a shit would not keep the pilot from controlling the engines or other critical systems.

Unfortunately pilots listened to anymore and neither are engineers. MBA's are running airlines now and all they care about is reducing the head count, cramming more people into the planes and increasing the buck made per mile so they can get 8 figure salaries. This is why Boeing's trusted and proven hybrid system is in it's last throws or is gone completely because AIRBUS sells the bling baby and no CEO wants to be caught short on bling baby!

Re:It shouldn't of happened so they are in court

[Jester99]

There was a NOVA episode about this crash (an earlier commenter linked to it, but here it is again: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/crash-flight-447.html).

I won't go into the findings of the NOVA team, but I will point out that your educated guess is completely wrong.

The airbus does have a considerably more advanced and automated autopilot system than Boeing provides. However, that only is engaged during "Normal Law" flight. When any of the sensors on the plane detect a fault, an alarm chimes, and the system informs the pilot that "Alternate Law" is engaged. In Alternate Law mode, the pilot is allowed to use the full control capabilities of the plane, not the restricted range that the sensors believe to be safe.

After alternate law engaged, the pilot can control the engines, and all control surfaces to whatever degree of capability he'd like. The plane in question definitely switched to Alt. Law mode; this fact was radio broadcast back to the Airbus HQ shortly before the plane disappeared. There's a high probability that the pilot was mislead by weather radar readings that said that he could shoot through a "hole" between two storm clouds, but which masked the fact that there was a third (much larger) storm further beyond. Once he was stuck in the middle of all those storms, it was game over.

The pilot and the passengers were not at the mercy of an autopilot that refused to allow corrective action; it is probable that bad data presented to the pilot did not allow him to correctly act.

Re:What happens if they're found guilty?

[arivanov]

First, it is not. French law is Napoleonic law and it is extremely strict on the concept of "innocent until proven guilty". The Blair style playing fast and lose with it and declaring all management guilty until proven innocent in an H&S case as per UK H&S legislation is impossible there. No comment who exactly sponsored Blair to push that one.

Second, for the time being the charge is mostly a formality. This allows resources to continue to be allocated to the case. Otherwise it would have had to go on the cold case shelf. This way the French government can subsidize the search for the black boxes without getting into the usual Boeing vs Airbus or Air France vs the rest of the world subsidies debate. Granted the money in this case is 20-30M so it is a fraction of the usual sums discussed in the context of Airbus or Air France subsidies, but it is money none the less. Additionally, there are resources you cannot buy officially with money like military vessel involvement. This allows these resources to continue being allocated to the case.

Re:What happens if they're found guilty?

[cappp]

Found it. Seems the French are tougher than their British neighbours. According to the government memo I found the following:

Articles 131-37 to 131-39 of the Penal Code define ten types of penalty specific to legal entities:8 fine, dissolution (for the most serious offences9), prohibition to exercise certain activities for a certain period (especially for the offences of torture and barbarity10), placement under judicial supervision, closure of the establishment for a given period, disqualification from public tenders, prohibition to make a public appeal for funds, prohibition to draw unauthorised cheques or to use payment cards, and confiscation of the thing used or intended for commission of the offence or of the proceeds of the offence.

Re:Napoleonic Law declares innocent until proven .

[e70838]

I am french. What is a speedy trial ?
In France, we have slow trial, very very slow trial and almost never ending trial.
We have also trial that ends because suspects death before the end of the trial.