The second Airbus crash occurred on the Bloss Plateau near Mount Sainte-Odile on January 20, 1992. Six people stood trial for involuntary manslaughter and injury, including the technical director of Airbus and the former director general of civil aviation, as well as his deputy, head of the Aviation Training and Technical Inspection Service (SFACT) within the Directorate General of Civil Aviation; both were represented by the law firm.
The question arose as to whether the cause was an error in operation—due to poor ergonomics for which Airbus was held responsible—involving a single button that determined the angle or rate of descent; or a pilot error resulting from a lack of proficiency with the non-automatic approach and landing system (DME); or the absence of a Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS), which the two DGAC officials represented by the firm were accused of failing to mandate for the entire fleet.
In Airbus’s defense, it was argued that the pilots’ excessive descent rate could not have been definitively caused by poor button ergonomics. In the officials’ defense, it was argued that the GPWS—which pilots had rejected when it was first introduced to the market—was not mandatory. The court-appointed experts themselves agreed that this imperfect device would not have certainly prevented the accident. With the assistance of Prof. Guy Carcassonne, the defense argued that, under constitutional rules, the civil court lacked jurisdiction to rule on a failure to enact regulations. The government officials could therefore not be prosecuted on this charge.
Given the absence of criminal fault, the court did not issue any criminal convictions, except for a civil judgment against Airbus “because of the button.” Since the preliminary question of whether the descent was intentional or not could not be resolved, the Colmar Court of Appeals, overturning the judgment that had held Airbus civilly liable, issued a general acquittal on March 14, 2008. The appeal to the Court of Cassation was rejected in September 2009.
For the BEA, it was impossible to determine whether the descent was intentional or not. However, as a precaution, it recommended creating two separate buttons—one for the angle of descent and the other for the descent rate. This recommendation was not implemented on the Airbus aircraft operated by U.S. airlines, as the NTSB considered it an unnecessary precaution.
Seventeen years elapsed between the accident and the Court of Cassation’s ruling. This excessive delay led the victims to sue the government, a case they lost: their insistence on obtaining expert reports that satisfied them and demonstrated the liability of the government, the manufacturer, and the airline had largely contributed to prolonging the proceedings indefinitely.
This case once again highlighted the difficulties that can arise from the vindictiveness of certain civil parties. The president of the Colmar Court of Appeals, while questioning psychological experts for the civil parties who were explaining the victims’ trauma, made this historic remark: “Are the experts trying to tell us that if the Court acquits the defendants, it will be an additional trauma for the victims?”