Rio-Paris crash: Approaching appeal against Airbus and AirFrance revives grief for victims' families

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A mother's gaze on her son's photos, and a wound that has never healed for 16 years now. "This is the last photo of Eric. It was taken in Rio, a few days before he took the plane," says Danièle Lamy, mother of Eric Lamy, a deceased passenger , and president of the association Entraide et solidarité AF 447.

Éric Lamy was one of the 228 people to board flight AF 447 on June 1, 2009. The plane was scheduled to fly from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, but a few hours after takeoff, it encountered a violent freezing storm. The airspeed sensors froze, the pilots flew blind, and lost control of the aircraft. The plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. There were no survivors.

"That's all I can think about. The moment when we're at Roissy, when we're waiting, when everyone is trying to reassure the families. That's what I keep in mind all the time," confides Danièle Lamy, now head of an association for victims of the crash. "These are all the files that I've accumulated over 16 years and which allow me to manage the association," she shows us.

A quest for meaning and a thirst for justice. An attempt to prove that Air France and Airbus are responsible for the crash. Two years ago, the two companies were acquitted. Danièle Lamy is determined to secure their guilt at the new trial scheduled for September 2025. Along with former airline pilots, she has blogged about the mistakes she believes Airbus and Air France made.

"This is the fight of my life. This is not how I envisioned my life. This is certainly not how I envisioned my retirement. But unfortunately, events have meant that I have been drawn into it and, as I told you, I am going to the end of things and I will go to the end of things," the mother assures us.

Seeing through to the end in a long-running case. It took two years to find the plane's wreckage. Thirteen years to have a trial. Were Airbus and Air France fully aware of the speed probe failures? Did they take the necessary measures? In April 2023, the court will rule. Negligence was certainly committed, but it is not certain, according to the judges, that it caused the accident. For the lawyer representing some forty victims' families, the acquittal is incomprehensible.

"These are the successive errors and shortcomings: not having replaced the speed sensors, not having trained the pilots sufficiently... It's a cascade of elements. And the role of professionals as specialized as Air France and Airbus is precisely to anticipate them. They didn't do it, it's a criminal offense for us," points out Alain Jacubowicz.

Ophélie Toulliou, secretary of the Entraide et solidarité AF 447 association, will not miss a single day of this appeal trial. She lost her brother in the accident. As she did two years ago, she will take note of everything that happens in court for the families who cannot attend. "I'm thinking in particular of my parents, but I imagine there are many others for whom it is psychologically complicated to come. It's a real ordeal to finally recover from this pain, to confront the societies that caused the death of our loved ones," she explains.

For its part, Air France continues to plead its innocence. The company will now continue to demonstrate before the appeals court that it did not commit any criminal wrongdoing that caused this accident. The manufacturer, Airbus, declined to respond to our requests. Both companies face a fine of €225,000 each.