A verdict is expected on Thursday in the appeal trial concerning the crash of an Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009, in which 228 people died.
The airline and the aircraft manufacturer Airbus are standing trial before the Paris Court of Appeals on charges of negligent homicide.
The companies were acquitted in the initial trial, but the public prosecutor’s office wants that decision to be overturned.
The two companies are alleged to be responsible for the crash due to a lack of instruction and training. Air France and Airbus deny responsibility for the fatal flight. They face fines of up to €225,000 ($260,000).
The Air France aircraft on flight AF 447 flew into a storm front on June 1, 2009 whilst en route from Brazil to the French capital, and disappeared from radar screens. The Airbus A330 crashed into the Atlantic.
It was not until May 2011 that the last bodies and the flight data recorder were recovered from a depth of around 4,000 metres.
Specifically, Airbus was accused in the trial of having underestimated the consequences of a failure of the probes responsible for measuring airspeed, which had iced up during the flight.
The prosecution alleged that Air France had failed to train its pilots adequately and prepare them for an extreme situation such as that encountered on the ill-fated flight.