Airbus and Air France have been acquitted of "involuntary manslaughter" by a French court on Monday, almost 14 years after the AF447 flight crashed into the Atlantic

Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 people on board. The ruling comes after a public trial that lasted for several years, during which families of the victims demanded justice, while Paris prosecutors acknowledged that formal blame could not be proved.

This verdict is significant because it marks France's first-ever trial for corporate involuntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum fine of €225,000. Following a two-year search for the A330's black boxes, investigators found that the pilots had responded clumsily to a problem involving iced-up speed sensors, causing the plane to enter a freefall without responding to stall alerts.

The trial also shed light on earlier discussions between Air France and Airbus regarding the growing problems with external "pitot probes" that generate the speed readings. Despite evidence of negligence by both companies, the judge stated that a probable causal link was insufficient to establish firm liability for France's worst air disaster. In announcing the verdict, the judge listed several acts of negligence but concluded that they did not rise to the level necessary for criminal liability. Photo by Kentaro Iemoto from Tokyo, Japan, Wikimedia commons.