Trial over Air France plane crash in which Tipperary woman died due to open in Paris

A trial in which aviation giants Airbus and Air France are charged with manslaughter over the crash of a flight travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009, is set to open in Paris this Monday.

Aisling Butler, 26, from Roscrea, a former student at the Ursulines in Thurles, died in the crash along with two other Irish women and a Dublin-based Estonian national who worked for Aer Lingus.

Aisling and her friends Jane Deasy, 27, from Rathgar, Dublin, and Eithne Walls, 28, from Ballygowan, county Down, had studied medicine together in Trinity College and remained friends after graduating in 2007.

The trio were returning home from a holiday when the plane came down.

Maksim Ivanova, 25, an Aer Lingus worker from Estonia but who was living in Dublin at the time also died in the tragedy.

The companies insist they are not criminally responsible, and Air France has already compensated families. Investigators argued for dropping the case, but unusually, judges overruled them and sent the case to court.

The trial is expected to focus on two key factors: the icing-over of external sensors called pitot tubes, and pilot error.

The Airbus A330-200 disappeared from radars over the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and Senegal with 216 passengers and 12 crew members aboard.

The first debris was only spotted at sea five days later.

France’s air accident investigation agency BEA found the accident involved a cascading series of events, with no single cause.

As a storm buffeted the plane, ice crystals present at high altitudes disabled the pitot tubes, blocking speed and altitude information.

The autopilot disconnected and the crew began manual piloting, but with incorrect navigation data.

Air France is accused of not having implemented training in the event of icing of the pitot probes despite the risks.

It has since changed its training manuals and simulations and has provided compensation to families, who had to agree not to disclose the sums.

Airbus is accused of having known that the model of pitot tubes on Flight 447 was faulty, and not doing enough to urgently inform airlines and their crews about it and to ensure training to mitigate the resulting risk.