On 25 July 2000, the Concorde, with 113 people on board – passengers and crew – crashed into a hotel in Gonesse whilst taking off, killing everyone on board and four people in the hotel. The following were prosecuted for manslaughter: the director of the SFACT (the DGAC’s aeronautical training and technical inspection service), who had previously been acquitted in the Mont Sainte-Odile case; the programme’s technical director (EADS); the company Continental; its managing director; a worker; and a foreman.
The BEA very quickly identified the cause of the accident: a tyre on the Concorde had burst, probably after running over a piece of metal; a large chunk of rubber had ricocheted off a fuel tank, causing it to explode. Thanks to the international cooperation between investigation and safety agencies, the BEA was able to trace the aircraft that had taken off just before, a Continental DC10. Having travelled to Texas with the agreement of the airline and the FAA, the BEA investigators found that a titanium part was missing from a thrust reverser. This part, found twisted and almost standing upright on the runway, had caused the tyre to burst and thus the accident. The hole in the fuel tank had caused a massive fuel leak, which ignited immediately, leading to the loss of the aircraft’s engines; the plane crashed one minute and thirty seconds later.
The programme’s technical director was prosecuted for design faults in the aircraft; the director of the SFACT was prosecuted for having certified it; Continental as a legal entity, its director for corporate liability, and the foreman for failing to supervise the work of the worker who had incorrectly fitted the part that fell onto the runway. Following the conviction of Continental and its staff, and the acquittal of the SFACT director and the programme director by the Court—against which the Public Prosecutor’s Office lodged an appeal—the Versailles Court of Appeal acquitted everyone in its judgment of 29 November 2012.
Finding that this case was not of a criminal nature, the Court ordered Continental to pay Air France 1 million in damages. The conduct of the other parties involved was deemed not to be criminal because, whether it was the worker or the foreman, they could not have foreseen the consequences of a part being incorrectly secured, whereas the foreseeability of the damage caused by an offence is an essential requirement. Similarly, the director of the SFACT, in carrying out his airworthiness monitoring duties, did not act in a manner that could with certainty be said to have caused the accident.
This Concorde judgement, following that of Mont Sainte-Odile, is highly significant as it appears to mark the end – or at least a pause – in the systematic pursuit of criminal proceedings in relation to aviation accidents.
Having represented the DGAC for 40 years, and following the acquittal of the staff prosecuted in virtually every case, the defence notes that an era of indiscriminate prosecutions appears to have come to an end. Whilst not denying the possibility of civil liability – as was held in the case of Continental Airlines – the trial judges, in accidents with very significant media and even political repercussions, have on two occasions reverted to the long-forgotten distinction between civil and criminal liability. This outcome is therefore significant for professionals and appears to mark a trend that has been confirmed by the decision of the investigating judge hearing the Rio–Paris accident case to dismiss the case in September 2019. More broadly, however, it forms part of an effort to clarify the distinction between civil and criminal matters, which have for too long been conflated in French case law out of a desire to protect and support victims.
Undoubtedly, the length of these proceedings (17 years in the case of Mont Sainte-Odile, 12 years for the Concorde) also raises questions about the French practice of bringing charges of manslaughter too systematically.
Finally, for the aviation sector, this case has highlighted the value of the BEA’s analyses, which the courts have always ultimately followed after having strongly contested them during the preliminary investigation. In the Concorde case, the judicial expert report demonstrated the errors in the court’s own analysis and showed that it was pointless to seek at all costs and at every turn to challenge the technical analyses produced by the BEA.