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Tag: Air France

  • Indian Passengers Stranded At Paris Airport After Air France Cancels Connecting Flight

    Indian Passengers Stranded At Paris Airport After Air France Cancels Connecting Flight

    Air France has said its flight from Paris to Toronto was cancelled due to a technical problem and unavailability of a new aircraft, amid many passengers, including those who travelled from India to take the connecting flight, getting stranded at Paris airport.

    In a tweet, Air France said it sincerely regrets the inconvenience caused by this situation and is doing its utmost to get customers to their final destination as quickly as possible.

    The airline’s response was to a series of tweets by a Twitter user highlighting the issues being faced by the stranded Indian passengers at Paris airport.

    “We confirm that flight AF356 on June 24, 2023, from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Toronto had to be cancelled due to a technical problem and the unavailability of a new aircraft.

    “Some customers without Schengen visas and therefore not allowed to leave the terminal building were taken care of and assisted by Air France teams, and accommodated in a dedicated area of the airport. Air France sincerely regrets the inconvenience caused by this situation and is doing its utmost to get customers to their final destination as quickly as possible,” the airline said.

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    In a series of tweets, Paris-based journalist Noopur Tiwari said that for the record, passengers arrived in Paris on June 23 from Bombay on flight AF 217 and were to board AF 356 to Toronto, and the latter flight was cancelled.

    She also tweeted a statement quoting Indian Embassy in Paris as saying, “Embassy officials are on way to the airport to negotiate with Air France and airport authorities to arrive at an amicable settlement”. A statement from Air France on the issue was awaited.

  • Airbus, Air France acquitted of manslaughter charges in trial over 2009 Rio-Paris crash

    Airbus, Air France acquitted of manslaughter charges in trial over 2009 Rio-Paris crash

    A French court on Monday acquitted Air France and plane manufacturer Airbus in a trial over the 2009 crash of a Rio-Paris flight that killed 228 people.

    The court said that even if “errors” had been committed, “no certain link of causality” between those shortcomings and the accident “could be proven”.

    The two France-based companies went on trial in October to determine their responsibility for the worst aviation disaster in Air France’s history, which killed 216 passengers and 12 crew members.

    The two aviation giants had been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the trial that ran to December but denied the charges.

    As the verdict was read out, relatives of the victims present in court stood up, appearing stunned, then sat down again.

    The hearings in Paris centred on the role of defective so-called Pitot tubes, which are used to measure the flight speed of aircraft.

    The court heard how a malfunction with the tubes, which became blocked with ice crystals during a mid-Atlantic storm, caused alarms to sound in the cockpit of the Airbus A330 and the autopilot system to switch off.

    Technical experts highlighted how, after the instrument failure, the pilots put the plane into a climb that caused the aircraft to lose upward lift from the air moving under its wings, thus losing altitude.

    Air France and Airbus have blamed pilot error as the main cause for the crash.

    But lawyers for the families have argued that both companies were aware of the Pitot tube problem before the crash, and that the pilots were not trained to deal with such a high-altitude emergency.

    The court said Airbus committed “four acts of imprudence or negligence”, including not replacing certain models of the Pitot tubes that seemed to freeze more often on its A330-A340 fleet, and “withholding information” from flight operators.

    It said Air France had committed two “acts of imprudence” in the way it disseminated an information note on the faulty tubes to its pilots.

    But there was not a strong enough causal link between these failings and the accident to show an offence had been committed.

    (AFP)