Nicolas Touillou had just proposed marriage to his girlfriend. Eric Lamy was about to celebrate his 38th birthday. They were among 228 people killed in 2009 when their storm-tossed Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris slammed into the Atlantic.
As a storm buffeted the plane, ice crystals present at high altitudes disabled the pitot tubes, blocking speed and altitude information. The autopilot disconnected.
He said he and pilots around the world asked themselves afterward “if it had been me, would I have acted in the same way? It has been a very difficult question to answer.” In a statement, the company said it would demonstrate in court"that it has not committed a criminal fault at the origin of the accident” and plead for acquittal.
An AP investigation at the time found that Airbus had known since at least 2002 about problems with pitots “They knew and they did nothing,” said Danièle Lamy, president of an association of victims' families that pushed for a trial. “The pilots should never have found themselves in such a situation, they never understood the cause of the breakdown and the plane had become unpilotable."
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