The families of the victims will have the right to answers.
Seven years after the crash of Air Algeria flight AH5017 in Mali, the company Swiftair, owner of the plane, was sent back to correctional charges for “involuntary homicides”, as requested by the prosecution.
The Spanish company is accused of "negligence" in the training of its pilots, we learned from a source close to the case.
The Spanish company was the owner of the McDonnell Douglas MD-83, which it had rented with the crew to Air Algeria.
On July 24, 2014, the aircraft that was on an Ouagadougou-Algiers flight crashed in the middle of the Sahel, in northern Mali, with 110 passengers on board, including 54 French, 23 Burkinabés, Lebanese, Algerians and six crew members, all Spanish.
Read also Air Algeria crash: human errors definitively confirmed
In the middle of the night in a stormy intertropical zone, the non-activation of the anti-icing system ended up causing the engines to decelerate, without appropriate reaction from the crew, until the fatal stall.
In their 109-page order, dated May 18, the investigating judges of the Collective Accidents division of the Paris court followed the requisitions of the Paris public prosecutor's office and decided that the company had to appear before the court for lack of providing "a sufficient training for the crew ”, contributing in particular to“ their lack of understanding of the deterioration of engine parameters ”and“ their lack of an appropriate reaction to the onset of a stall ”.
The Spanish company denies any responsibility
"I can only be appalled by the unambiguous demonstration of the investigating judges which clearly reveals that the captain did not have to be in flight on the day of the accident by law", responded Me Sébastien Busy, lawyer associations AH5017-Ensemble and Fenvac, as well as several families of victims.
Read also Air Algerie crash: pilot training questioned by experts
"The trial will force the leaders of Swiftair to explain themselves before a criminal court and especially before the families of the victims on their choices and their desire to bypass the regulations to save on safety, at what cost!"
", he added.
The Madrid company, created in 1986 and which has a fleet of around fifty planes, has contested any responsibility since its indictment on June 29, 2017.
"This referral will allow the company Swiftair to finally be able to be heard, in that it has already been the subject of a full and final investigation in Spain, which ended with a dismissal", argues l lawyer the company Me Rachel Lindon, interviewed by AFP. An argument contested by the French magistrates who consider the Spanish dismissal "provisional" and not final.
