Air France and Airbus found guilty of manslaughter over 2009 plane crash

5/24/2026 at 3:01:49 AM

Hmm I don't think it's as black and white as just blaming airbus. The pilots literally flew a perfectly flying plane straight into the ocean. And they had plenty of time to understand what was going on. But they didn't. They didn't willingly do it and the system misguided them but that wasn't the only factor.

I agree airbus shares the blame but it's not the only one. The pilots should have realised the situation they were in, their training should have been better, there were a lot of factors.

Admiral cloudberg has a good deep dive on it. https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-cr...

by wolvoleo

5/24/2026 at 3:53:25 AM

There were other near accidents before due to the exact same problem, the problem was well understood, and the changes needed to solve it was known.

Air France didn't implement them and Airbus didn't require them because of money. They thought the chance of it causing a real accident was low and decided to risk it. Despite there being known near accidents already.

And yes, "[the pilots] training should have been better" is part of the things that put both companies at fault. It's not the pilots fault that their training didn't cover it.

by marcosdumay

5/24/2026 at 5:26:29 AM

> Airbus didn't require them because of money

I am pretty confident that aircraft manufacturers themselves cannot require these things, only regulators can. The FAA in particular used to lean heavily on budget constraints for airlines (who would also push back against expensive upgrades); but I am sure the same applies to EASA and other regulators as well.

by Svip

5/24/2026 at 7:01:42 AM

They should be able to recall a plane for a safety flaw. In which case they have to pay for the upgrade themselves.

If the airline doesn't comply afterward, it would be on them.

But they didn't issue a recall, so they wouldn't have to pay for the fix, an over 200 people paid the price instead.

At least, that's how I read the blame distribution.

by etiennebausson

5/24/2026 at 8:15:41 AM

Do we want airlines that only put in fixes for safety issues once they are forced to?

by ktallett

5/24/2026 at 1:53:07 PM

The FAA and its international counterparts were created because airliners were constantly cutting corners or putting pressure on their pilot to do unsafe things.

by PearlRiver

5/24/2026 at 8:55:07 AM

This is a real problem with the current FAA setup. The limited amount of legal liability seems like a major problem, even switching from 200k euros to 2 million or 10 million euros as the max penalty per soul would add a minor amount of heft to lawsuits against the airlines and manufacturers.

by borisBigAi

5/24/2026 at 8:26:59 AM

Fixes have to go through the FAA, which can be difficult, bureaucratic and very expensive.

by WalterBright

5/24/2026 at 9:34:56 AM

Well yes of course they have to be checked by a regulator, but you should still have the thought of, we must do this, no matter the cost as safety matters above everything else in this industry.

by ktallett

5/24/2026 at 10:49:45 AM

> you should still have the thought of, we must do this, no matter the cost as safety matters above everything else in this industry.

This premise implies that if you could prevent one plane crash for $10 trillion dollars then you should do it, but then ordinary people wouldn't be able to afford air travel. In reality they do have to consider the cost and then do the things that are justified based on the cost and the risk. Which means that high regulatory costs compromise safety because the more it costs to make a change that improves safety, the fewer of those changes can be implemented for an amount of money that can be justified by the risk.

by AnthonyMouse

5/24/2026 at 7:10:40 PM

> no matter the cost

Means nobody can fly. The FAA does understand this, but the mass media does not.

A 100% safe airplane won't move an inch, let alone fly at 30,000 feet.

by WalterBright

5/24/2026 at 4:21:58 PM

The manufacturers literally write the manual. The regulators only approve or reject it. And yes, EASA approved it too.

by marcosdumay

5/24/2026 at 6:11:00 AM

That's right, Airbus is responsible for the faulty equipment onboard, not pilot training. Air France is responsible for its pilots' operational training and recurrent training.

by iepathos

5/24/2026 at 8:17:15 AM

It's not that black and white. Airbus will be responsible for educating Air France too and giving appropriate training. These planes are not purchased by Air France without significant documentation and access to support.

by ktallett

5/24/2026 at 4:05:40 PM

Ahh good to know, thanks for clarifying.

by iepathos

5/24/2026 at 9:14:05 AM

Separating "regulators" and "manufacturers" in such distinct categories is overly simplistic, I'm afraid. As we saw with the whole Boeing debacle, the manufacturers are the experts on what they build, and we expect them to give clear, levelheaded, and honest guidance to operators and regulators. That also means they must have some responsibility for the outcomes of that guidance.

Having a separate regulator, which does no building themselves, somehow maintain a separate team of independent experts is a fools errand. We should of course have independent evaluators, but the people building the thing are the experts on the thing.

by delusional

5/24/2026 at 6:14:35 PM

It's a challenging problem. Going back to when I was in aerospace even just with the FAA we had FAA west and FAA east, and they were treated as different entities within our company because they had such different approaches/understanding and then the EASA which was from our experience a protectionist entity that would look for gotchas on American competitors and not a neutral safety focused party and refused to recognized treaty obligated acceptance of FAA certification (and it was a big issue that the US refused to step in on our behalf and require the treaty be followed because the US authorities put safety first even though the US had agreed we were safe and had demonstrated it).

by _DeadFred_

5/24/2026 at 11:47:11 AM

>There were other near accidents before due to the exact same problem, the problem was well understood, and the changes needed to solve it was known.

Could you be more specific here? The article doesn't even say which problem Airbus are considered to be criminally liable for.

by foldr

5/24/2026 at 4:26:00 PM

The plane was prone to lose its airspeed sensors on some weather conditions.

by marcosdumay

5/24/2026 at 10:03:12 AM

As much as I understand the culture of blameless post-mortems and the fact that people in that cockpit don't get the benefit of hindsight, maybe those other companies didn't have an accident because they followed procedure (which was a simple one)

Yes there were UX factors. Yes training could be better. Yes distractions happen

But if I'm going to blame the companies I'm going to blame them on putting someone inexperienced and probably who did not have the right mindset in navigating the profession. And meanwhile companies waste time in making automations on top of manual processes that make things even more complicated

by raverbashing

5/24/2026 at 4:36:09 AM

Such an incredible write up, the piece about the importance of flying less technological planes to get a "sense" of what flying really is hits like a brick, specially in the world of LLMs producing code.

How do you get this "sense" of writing code and building systems by yourself if all you do is instruct some agent to do it? Are we all going to be like Bonin in the future where we just don't understand anything outside of the agent box?

This is both terrifying and sad.

by mlinhares

5/24/2026 at 6:25:25 AM

I'm a software engineer and recently got my pilot's license, and the training for the pilot's license increased my (already-high) respect for the aviation profession. All pilots learn to fly basic airplanes and have to do everything by hand (often on paper, but an iPad is allowed) to show they know the basics. The result is that by the time you work up to more advanced planes you have climbed the ladder of abstraction and know what underpins the automation.

The other piece of the picture is that pilots acknowledge that their skills are perishable, and they have to commit to ongoing training. This would be analogous to writing code by hand and getting a licensed engineer to sign off on your currency periodically even if you use LLMs for work.

by ottobonn

5/24/2026 at 6:38:33 AM

But I mean flying a cessna vrs something that has fly-by-wire like Airbus jets, its not really about understanding abstractions or anything, since the plane is basically a fundamentally different machine no? Basic principles of gravity and physic apply sure, but the flying experience is 100% different and not like a levelling up thing right? Like i would not trust someone with a Cessna pilot license to fly the airbus i am on.

by altmanaltman

5/24/2026 at 7:18:17 AM

I’ve flown a couple single engine aircraft.

I put it this way:

Commercial aviation pilots don’t really fly the plane as such. It’s more like a 1:1 real-time flight sim. They’re sort of up there having a LARP.

They’re flying in a similar sense that a DJ creates music.

by thrownthatway

5/24/2026 at 8:32:14 AM

A Cessna has very different aerodynamic issues than a jetliner. Multi-engine also has its own issues (such as if one engine dies, the airplane tries to turn around it).

Setting a Cessna down on the runway is fairly strait forward. A jetliner, on the other hand, is quite complex to land.

by WalterBright

5/24/2026 at 8:52:08 AM

I don't know if you can claim one is more straightforward. Sure a Cessna flies slower and has relatively simple aerodynamics. However, you could also be operating it out of a 400m sloping grass strip with a mountain off one end.

An A320 might be flying 3 times faster but is generally flying between relatively flat, straight runaways several miles long with approaches typically flown on a stable instrument approach from several nautical miles away. It's control laws mean flying straight or maintaining a particular bank is as simple as letting go of the control stick. If anything the stick and rudder skills in normal circumstances are much less involved. Systems management, obviously the autopilot, but also environmental, hydraulic, navigation an the operational concerns are obviously vastly more complex.

by VBprogrammer

5/24/2026 at 9:00:45 AM

> you could also be operating it out of a 400m sloping grass strip with a mountain off one end.

Why? Not as a regular thing I hope, that's about 90m short of "tight".

If you're intent on proselytizing PNG at least get a PAC STOL ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAC_P-750_XSTOL )

by defrost

5/24/2026 at 11:18:06 AM

Not if the Cessna is a King Katmai 182...that would have room to spare.

by VBprogrammer

5/24/2026 at 10:07:39 AM

I see where you're going here but no

A Cessna an a big jet fly by the exact same principles and they stop flying due to the exact same principles as well

Sure the procedures and parameters and automations are different (as well as things like wing positioning, engine positioning, swept wings, number of engines, sure)

But you raise the nose of both of them enough they will both stall. If you lose speed they will both stall. They will behave similarly (or maybe weirdly) enough in curves.

And I think this is what was forgotten here. Having a fancy cockpit does not make it less than a dual-engine swept-wing fixed-wing aircraft. The principles are the same

by raverbashing

5/24/2026 at 7:08:02 PM

Flying at near supersonic speeds at high altitude with a swept wing airplane is quite different from low and slow with a straight wing and thick air. Jetliners have a rather small envelope at altitude where the airplane will fly, things like overspeeding it will cause it to go out of control.

A fair amount of effort goes into designing the cockpit so it feels to the pilot like a low and slow aircraft, but it is not the reality.

For example, jetliners are unstable and require a yaw damper.

by WalterBright

5/24/2026 at 10:27:03 AM

But it wasn't at all just about Bonin: Robert and Bonin repeatedly kept trying to override each other; Robert was giving Bonin some information with which he could have figured out he was stalling (although Robert was also trying to climb); and Dubois had gone to deal with his sleep deprivation without designating either of them as PIC, and when Dubois finally returned (2:11:40, sounds still sleep-deprived based on his confusion) he didn't recognize the obvious stall or take control until they had lost almost all of their altitude.

It makes Air France look worse that all three pilots didn't react properly (or weren't trained or experienced), than just faulting Bonin. And at least two of them were sleep-deprived. But there were multiple systemic failures, not just the pilots.

by smcin

5/24/2026 at 4:53:00 AM

Novella "Profession" by Isaac Asimov.

by deepsun

5/24/2026 at 5:58:35 AM

"Profession" is often cited with regard to LLMs, but honestly, in reminded more of (and scared by) "The Feeling of Power".

by riffraff

5/24/2026 at 6:34:24 AM

The irony of not understanding almost 100% of the code on modern airplanes is actually done by instructing a program to actually generate the code. It is neither terrifying nor sad. You expect humans to write millions of lines of code? At that scale, procedureally generating code is much safer and smarter.

by altmanaltman

5/24/2026 at 10:23:22 AM

Those millions of lines of code can often be reduced 10x or 100x with just a bit of common sense, and with that also reducing the potential bug count by 10x to 100x.

Also unlike LLMs, traditional code generation techniques are deterministic.

by flohofwoe

5/24/2026 at 8:42:25 AM

I'm not flying anymore if that's the case.

by hunterpayne

5/24/2026 at 6:04:45 AM

Actually there are more planes flying today than ever and the number of accidents is very very low, thanks to technological planes and protocols that lean from mistakes.

So low in fact that the majority of the recent "accidents" look like suicides from the pilots. The pilots know exactly what they are doing when crashing the planes.

by cladopa

5/24/2026 at 7:18:51 AM

Boooo!

by thrownthatway

5/24/2026 at 9:39:41 AM

> Hmm I don't think it's as black and white as just blaming airbus.

Then it’s a good thing they didn’t. Both Airbus and Air France were found guilty, and poor pilot training was specifically called out as a reason why Air France was considered guilty. It’s in the article.

by pdpi

5/24/2026 at 10:21:55 AM

    --dangerously-skip-reading-the-article

by krig

5/24/2026 at 11:13:26 AM

I mean, one doesn't even need to read the article to learn that the blame went to both companies - it's even in the title here on HN.

by swores

5/24/2026 at 4:04:20 AM

Is this the crash where the pilot failed to recognize the airspeed sensors had frozen up and he stalled the plane? I could see how this was an Air France fault since the pilot was not properly trained or experienced to fly this plane in these conditions. Not sure why Airbus is responsible.

by 404mm

5/24/2026 at 4:15:08 AM

it's the crash where pushing nose of the plane down (correct enough-altitude stall response) caused alarms to activate, while pulling nose up caused alarms to silence

no wonder airbus was found guilty

by NooneAtAll3

5/24/2026 at 4:42:40 AM

Airbus kind of embodies the "trust the computer" mentality; and if you're going to do that the computer damn hell better be right all the time - it must not have "backwards" failure modes.

Boeing, in similar situations "in the past" would just sound a "computer is giving the fuck up, fly this pig dog" bell and leave it to the pilots to figure it out.

by bombcar

5/24/2026 at 1:25:17 PM

As a computer person the airbus approach (and Boeing adopting some aspects of this in the max8) is terrifying

by steveBK123

5/24/2026 at 2:31:52 PM

Comparing Boeing's compliance hack and Airbus' system that's pushing 40 years now is very questionable. Airbus planes don't get in the way of flying, and there's extensive procedures and redundancies for everything that could go wrong. It's a proven system, and events like these are the exception proving the rule, especially since there was also a human factor here.

As another computer person, I'd trust aviation more than any other field, especially when it doesn't involve the modern US. Computers can't be perfect, but they can be almost always good at integrating and helping humans that remain in control. Advocates against including any fly-by-wire or computerization in aircraft at all fail to consider all the accidents that said computerization has helped avoid. Putting a billion steam gauges and blinking lights in front of pilots and asking them to correlate and understand everything themselves is actually not simpler, easier or safer.

by tavavex

5/24/2026 at 3:06:00 PM

The fly by wire as implemented by Airbus results in illogical states that are impossible in mechanically linked systems.

The most jaw dropping one is the stick input averaging.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/10w54e4/...

by steveBK123

5/24/2026 at 6:07:56 PM

The same thing happens on the 777 and 787: if too much opposite force is applied on both yokes, they lose their linkage and are averaged. There is no warning or priority button, unlike on Airbus planes.

Older Boeing planes also have a mechanism to unlink the controls if too much opposite force is applied. The left yoke would control the left side of the plane, the right yoke would control the right side.

Interestingly, the dual-input rate is roughly the same on Airbus and Boeing planes: 0.44 per 1000 flights and 0.4 per 1000 flights, respectively: https://bea.aero/fileadmin/user_upload/F-GSQJ_finalreport_EN... pages 45 and 47.

by cccbbbaaa

5/24/2026 at 6:12:17 PM

I don't really understand what's so jaw dropping about input averaging. Let's be clear - this is a fallback state that handles a situation that should never come up. Pilots aren't supposed to try to control the aircraft from both seats at the same time, both fly-by-wire and not. What we're talking about isn't a deficiency that can sporadically cause a dangerous situation, like the MAX, but a situation where the pilots have already made a massive mistake and the automation didn't bail them out. It's not like there's no workaround, either. Making conflicting commands results in the plane blaring a 'dual input' warning at you, and if one of the pilots desires exclusive control, they can press the side stick priority button. A further improvement of the system would be to add force feedback to the side sticks, to simulate the linked yokes of a non-fly-by-wire aircraft, but even without it, I feel like this issue is given way more publicity, and it's used as the scapegoat for the ultimate cause, pilot error. All incidents that involved this were ruled as being caused by pilot error - in the crash this article is about, the PF was literally holding his side stick full back until almost the very end. A force feedback system might've helped them realize it sooner, or it might not have - there's plenty of historical incidents where pilots managed to stall conventional aircraft out of nowhere in a similar fashion, but those were ruled to be their mistake only.

by tavavex

5/24/2026 at 7:00:56 PM

I struggle to think of a situation where "average the pilots' inputs when they disagree enough to sound the alarm" would ever be the expected or correct action to take, especially given the existence of the sidestick priority logic

Really seems to violate the "principle of least astonishment"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-stick#Handling_of_dual_in....

by anonymars

5/24/2026 at 8:56:44 AM

You made me laugh out loud! Very well put.

by actionfromafar

5/24/2026 at 7:00:29 AM

The behaviour you describe above only occurred after the pilot flying stalled the plane. There was a procedure for unreliable airspeed indication. Had the pilot flying performed it, the situation would have been resolved without incident.

AF could perhaps be held liable for insufficient training on high-altitude stalls or recognising and responding to reversions to alternate law. But it's hard to see how Airbus can be responsible for a pilot ignoring the most basic first response.

by exidy

5/24/2026 at 9:10:53 AM

The article from this subthread contradicts this, though. Regarding recoverability of the situation, it says this:

> By now the airspeed indications had returned to normal, but the pilots had already set in motion a sequence of events which could not be undone.

That was before the prolonged stall warnings. But maybe this phrasing is just an embellishment?

But further down, the article is pretty clear that the training was inadequate for this type of unreliable airspeed indication:

> Although procedures for other phases of flight could be found in the manual, the training conditioned pilots to expect unreliable airspeed events during climb, to which they would respond with a steady nose-up pitch and high power setting that would ensure a shallow ascent. Such a response would be completely inappropriate in cruise.

by fweimer

5/24/2026 at 1:42:22 PM

Once the aircraft was stalled there was a narrow window to recover from it, which obviously did not occur. But the stall was entirely caused by pilot input of full nose up! The procedure for unreliable airspeed (which was in both the QRH and the FCOM) was simply to fly a known safe power / pitch from the tables provided in the QRH.

At no time was any of the pilot's Attitude Indicators (Artificial Horizons) inoperative -- all they had to do was maintain straight and level flight at a known power setting and everyone would have come home safely.

by exidy

5/24/2026 at 4:46:45 AM

Thank you, this accident reminds me a bit of the McDonald's coffee lawsuit, where the popular narrative of "be less of a dummy" is not really fair

Edit -- to wit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253931

by anonymars

5/24/2026 at 7:39:39 AM

While true, pilots aren’t trained to just “respond to the alarm” they are trained to fly the plane.

Once there were multiple alarms that made no sense at all (petty early in the event), the pilots should have ignored them as per the checklist.

But the most damning thing is the one pilot pulling the stick back and holding it back for almost the entire event. There aren’t any flying conditions where that’s an appropriate input. Not to mention being told to give up control and ignoring that request.

I agree Airbus has some blame in terms of the computer system not adequately communicating when it drops out of normal mode.

by refurb

5/24/2026 at 2:08:54 PM

> There aren’t any flying conditions where that’s an appropriate input.

It's the procedure for various GPWS cautions and warnings on Airbus planes, and can also be done in a windshear.

by cccbbbaaa

5/24/2026 at 2:03:46 PM

Yeah the computer is never flying the plane it is always the pilots who have final decision. Which is ofcourse also why the computer will let you fly into a mountain if you want.

by PearlRiver

5/24/2026 at 6:01:48 AM

It reads exactly like "Ironies of Automation" by Bainbridge would predict.

by clickety_clack

5/24/2026 at 3:58:17 AM

Yes, an autonomous plane would have worked so much better. Can’t wait for AI to replace stupid apes.

by mrnicegu

5/24/2026 at 5:20:55 AM

A crash instigated by failure in software automation inputs would have been better handled by full AI software automation?

by anonymars

5/24/2026 at 8:19:15 AM

I actually think that is likely. Humans in these conditions have to make decisions under immense stress. Machines don’t, they just need to be able to understand that sensors may fail and are not completely reliable all the time. Though they would need lots of different input , just like humans, to be able to call out which part of its input is flawed.

by brabel

5/24/2026 at 8:35:48 AM

There are always unanticipated conditions not accounted for in the automation. That's where pilot training comes in.

by WalterBright

5/24/2026 at 1:36:16 PM

Even the basic stall warning couldn't understand the situation given the faulty inputs

by anonymars

5/24/2026 at 10:36:37 AM

To all here saying this is was only a pilot error. I'll ask you, do you also think it is only a programmer error when a critical memory-safety bug is introduced in C? And that they should be the only one responsible and face jail-time (or death, like here)? Or is there more at play? Why use C in safety-critical code, why wasn't it catched by reviewers, fuzzing, testing, etc ?

Error is not binary, it's a statistic. Even perfectly trained pilots/programmers do make errors depending on the situation. What you should ask is what the error chance is, and if it acceptable.

As the accident report shows, the exact same pitot tube failure happened at least 15 times and recovered by the pilots. The 16th time, it killed more than two hundred people. Do you think a 1/16 chance of dying is appropriate in modern aviation safety?

by KolmogorovComp

5/24/2026 at 10:53:02 AM

I'm not sure what you're arguing for.

Out of the X% times this error occurs, are you okay with 1/16% failure? Can you avoid the failure-mode?

What if mode 2 fails 2x of the time and it can't be averted by switching to the Y language.

by avadodin

5/24/2026 at 3:33:46 AM

My cousin was one of the pilots. I heard he was a great guy, but I never got to meet him.

by Cider9986

5/24/2026 at 3:48:59 AM

RIP

by flightsteward1

5/24/2026 at 1:47:24 PM

> The captain was on a break when the co-pilots became confused by faulty air-speed readings. They then mistakenly pointed the nose of the plane upwards when it stalled, instead of down.

Investigators concluded the co-pilots did not have the training to deal with the situation

Blame.

by motxilo

5/24/2026 at 2:05:10 PM

This is very personal to me. I took that flight several times. Always went through strong turbulence.

"At 32 years old, Bonin was the least experienced pilot on the flight crew. When the aircraft's pitot tubes froze and iced over in a storm, the automated systems temporarily failed and disabled the autopilot. This forced the crew into manual flight. Because the Airbus A330 features independent, non-linked sidesticks, the other co-pilot in the cockpit, David Robert, could not physically feel that Bonin was holding his stick back. The aircraft's computer simply averaged their opposing inputs."

The experience of pilots has been dropping like a stone. This is hidden due to new technology, but when unusual situations arise many current pilots have no situational awareness.

"A vote to reduce the 1,500-hour rule for pilot training will mean blood on your hands when the inevitable accident occurs as a result of an inadequately trained flight crew."

-- Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger

by alecco

5/24/2026 at 2:54:00 AM

Stark contrast between Boeing (US) never been guilty of anything vs Airbus (EU)

by jbverschoor

5/24/2026 at 8:09:06 AM

Not so stark when you realize that both airbus and air france were acquitted years ago. And then the prosecutors appealed! I find that terrifying.

by y1n0

5/24/2026 at 5:11:07 AM

Boeing literally pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges. https://apnews.com/article/boeing-guilty-plea-fraud-justice-...

by dcrazy

5/24/2026 at 5:46:10 AM

Manslaughter for not having enough training during a specific malfunction, one crash

Fraud for two crashes caused by knowingly having unsafe planes (and two whistleblowers conveniently die)

by jbverschoor

5/24/2026 at 7:24:50 AM

Ah, off by one error.

by thrownthatway

5/24/2026 at 3:30:03 AM

They have, just not criminal penalties. No one will go to prison. The nearly $19 billion in losses to the value in Boeing is chump change ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings

by readthenotes1

5/24/2026 at 2:02:15 AM

Hearing this in the news reminded me of William Langewiesche's great piece in vanity fair about the cause: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-...

by abrowne

5/24/2026 at 3:22:23 PM

That piece is an insightful pairing with season 2 of HBO’s “The Rehearsal”.

by twoodfin

5/24/2026 at 6:21:43 PM

Reminder to highlight the morality of Airbus.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/airbus-agrees-pay-ov...

by _DeadFred_

5/24/2026 at 7:52:32 AM

It's really a miracle that the black box was found.

by tverbeure

5/24/2026 at 7:26:21 AM

The are guilty of letting these terrible pilots fly humans over oceans. Sometimes the driver is bad and yet we point at the car and say it should have been designed "better". I have read a lot about this flight over the years and I have my obvious opinions.

by bahmboo

5/24/2026 at 9:35:39 AM

Can I commit manslaughter now and pay a one-digit percentage of my income as a fine?

by mike_hock

5/24/2026 at 10:21:46 AM

You can't send a "moral person" to jail, unlike "physical persons". But sometimes I wonder if taking a fraction of their shares from them would make them more... Moral I guess.

by astrobe_

5/24/2026 at 6:21:07 PM

This. Government custody for a person is incarceration. Government custody for a business would be company stock incarceration.

by _DeadFred_

5/24/2026 at 9:39:51 AM

That depends on what you make. Thankfully fines for crimes are not based around a percentage of your income.

by nekzn

5/24/2026 at 2:24:40 PM

Fines should be based on your income.

by Ylpertnodi

5/24/2026 at 9:52:56 AM

If you do it in a comparable manner? Probably.

Or, you know, just hit someone with a car. Criminal charges are often not filed even if the driver is clearly at fault.

by l23k4

5/24/2026 at 3:48:37 AM

I remember reading about this 10-15 years ago. How is it possible that this almost took decades to resolve?

by flightsteward1

5/24/2026 at 4:16:46 AM

1) It crashed in 2009

2) Flight recorders weren't recovered until 2011

3) Manslaughter charges initially recommended in 2011

4) Accident report released in 2012

5) A long time with a lot of lawyers arguing about whether or not the charges should be heard in court

6) Charges dropped in 2019

7) However, public prosecutor announced proceeding with prosecution in 2021

8) Trial began in 2022

9) Both Airbus and AF acquitted in 2023

10) Prosecutor lodges an appeal in 2023

11) Trial begins in appeals court in 2025

12) Appeals court finds both companies guilty in 2026

Basically - these are two huge companies in France, they have a _lot_ of well paid lawyers, and a lot of political heft, but then there was a large amount of public outrage - and so the debate about whether or not to actually prosecute the case continued 2012 through to 2021 - the prosecutor reopening the charges in 2021 was due to intense public pressure.

Cruically once it actually went to trial, it only took 4 years to reach a conclusion including with appeals, which is quicker than I'd expect - and something I noticed is that the appeals court was able to find them guilty, I'm not sure how it goes in other common law country judiciaries, but in my country, if this had gone to an appeals court, they don't have the power to find you guilty, but they could overturn the previous ruling, and direct the lower court to begin the trial again - so it would have been even slower.

I guess that's an aspect of civil law judicial systems that might be considered an advantage.

by EdwardDiego

5/24/2026 at 6:52:20 AM

In the french system an appeal is basically a re-trial since the appeal court can confirm, infirm or modify the lower court verdict.

by guerby

5/24/2026 at 3:52:47 AM

Welcome to Greek style justice.

by fithisux

5/24/2026 at 3:58:24 AM

The Greeks really wallow in 17 year long court cases?

That seems a bit far fetched.

by MichaelZuo

5/24/2026 at 4:17:13 AM

It's just usual justice when the defendants have a lot of very expensive lawyers.

by EdwardDiego

5/24/2026 at 3:00:08 AM

What portion of blame does the pilot who yanks back on and holds the side stick without understanding the situation deserve? This is flying 101.

How poorly trained in basic airmanship were they and how were they allowed to be pilots? That's the blame component for AF.

by burnt-resistor

5/24/2026 at 3:08:44 AM

It is indeed very sad that all they had to do is let go of that stick for a moment.

by wolvoleo

5/24/2026 at 9:34:30 AM

IIRC it seemed like that pilot was having some kind of nervous breakdown because he surreptitiously held back on the stick all the way from 38,000ft until the crash.

by frou_dh

5/24/2026 at 11:09:32 AM

If you want to have something or someone to blame then all of it. However, you want future flights to become safer, then none. Make your pick.

Your response is very human, but also deeply irrational. In practical terms of safety it is irrelevant if the pilot is to blame or not or to what degree.

All we should want to do is analyze the reasons why the crash happened and adjust the aviation safety system such that it never happens again.

If pilot actions contributed, then we must ask why and how exactly, then fix those factors through better airplane design and pilot training.

Just blaming someone, then moving on may make you feel good inside, but does nothing to improve safety.

> This is flying 101.

> How poorly trained in basic airmanship were they and how were they allowed to be pilots?

Thoughts like these about three experienced professional pilots should make you do at least a double take. It is far more likely that you're dead wrong than that those pilots were so incompetent they didn't even know the basics.

by Mawr

5/24/2026 at 5:13:16 AM

Are you type rated on any Airbus models?

by dcrazy

5/24/2026 at 6:16:14 AM

Do you need to be to understand that nose up is not how to recover from a stall?

by arcfour

5/24/2026 at 9:06:05 AM

I’m not a pilot. Zero experience except remote controlled airplanes.

But IIRC, it happened by night, over the ocean. If the instruments fail you, this is really hard to “perceive” your speed and orientation.

by plumefar

5/24/2026 at 11:50:19 AM

The artificial horizon hadn't failed.

by foldr

5/24/2026 at 10:36:26 AM

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48256023

by croes

5/24/2026 at 10:09:05 AM

Like someone else said - there doesn't exist any situation, in any plane in any conditions, where holding the stick back the entire time would be an appropriate input. Literally doesn't exist. So if you're doing that.....what exactly are you hoping to achieve? Is a fundamental lack of understanding of how planes work.

by gambiting

5/24/2026 at 1:34:44 PM

The plane was actively telling them to pitch up. Every training they had received from Air France and Airbus told them that in normal law, the plane will not stall.

by dcrazy

5/24/2026 at 12:01:03 PM

On Airbus, the GPWS “pull up” escape maneuver requires full backstick until clear of obstacle. It can also be done for a windshear escape maneuver.

by cccbbbaaa

5/24/2026 at 12:33:16 PM

> there doesn't exist any situation, in any plane in any conditions, where holding the stick back the entire time would be an appropriate input

What about the Boeing crashes?

by rplnt

5/24/2026 at 11:18:53 AM

Says you, while sitting comfortably on a couch sipping coffee, with zero risk of death, able to take as much time as you'd like to analyze the situation, with perfect information available and a fresh, unstressed mind.

Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Bravado and macho mindset are explicitly frowned upon in aviation for a reason.

Reminds me of "aviation experts" claiming Sulley didn't have to ditch in the Hudson at all, since some pilots in the simulator were later able to turn around and land back at the airport.

Sure they were! I'd be able to do so too, and I'm no pilot — I'm safe in a simulator, I already know I'm going to have a double engine failure x seconds after takeoff, and I get to try to land an infinite amount of times until I get it right. Easy peasy.

Things look a bit different when it's your ass in the seat and you lose both engines on a random takeoff.

They also look different when you're subjected to massive G forces, your plane isn't listening to your inputs, the computer is shouting erratic warnings at you, you're rapidly losing altitude, and your training didn't cover this scenario.

by Mawr

5/24/2026 at 1:30:34 PM

Other than writing a lot about obvious things, what is your actual point?

by gambiting

5/24/2026 at 12:14:48 PM

[dead]

by camgunz