France court upholds Yemenia Airways crash verdict

A French appeals court Tuesday upheld an involuntary homicide and injuries verdict against Yemenia Airways over a 2009 crash that killed nearly everyone onboard except a 12-year-old girl who miraculously survived.

The Paris court confirmed the September 2022 ruling, which had demanded Yemenia Airways pay a fine of 225,000 euros ($248,000), the maximum allowed at the time by law.

Flight Yemenia 626 was on approach to Moroni, the capital of the Comoros islands that lie between Mozambique and Madagascar, on June 29, 2009, after departing from the airport in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Among the 142 passengers and 11 crew were 66 French citizens heading to France's overseas territory of Mayotte, part of the Comoros archipelago.

Just before 11:00 pm, the Airbus A310 plunged into the Indian Ocean with its engines running at full throttle, killing everyone on board except Bahia Bakari, then just 12 years old.

Investigators and experts found there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, blaming instead "inappropriate actions by the crew during the approach to Moroni airport, leading to them losing control".

Prosecutors accused the company of pilot training programmes "riddled with gaps" and of continuing to fly to Moroni at night despite several non-functioning landing lights.

The presiding judge in 2022 found that, even though the airline had complied with all regulations, there were "two cases of carelessness directly linked to the accident".

She faulted the continued night flights to Moroni despite the light outages and the assignment of a co-pilot with "weak spots" in his training.

Around 560 people had joined the suit as plaintiffs, many of them from the region around Marseille in southern France, home to many of the victims.

The presiding judge of the appeals court on Tuesday confirmed the 2022 verdict.

She added as a sanction that the ruling should be publicly displayed at the airports of Paris Charles de Gaulle and Marseille for two months.

The sole survivor of the crash, Bahia Bakari, was en route from Paris to attend a wedding in the Comoros with her mother, who died in the crash.

After blacking out following the plane's impact with the water, she found herself surrounded by wreckage in the sea, where she drifted for 12 hours before being rescued.