The two sisters and the brother of David Robert, at the controls of the AF447 which crashed in the Atlantic on June 1, 2009, affirmed this Tuesday November 29 in court that this one had done its maximum.
With our special correspondent at the Paris courthouse, Marina of the Moissonière
” Our brother David is first of all a victim of this tragedy “says Sylvie Robert. ” Even more than before this trial, I am convinced that he committed no piloting fault. Neither he nor any of the other pilots. A certainty reinforced by listening to black boxes, explain in turn Sylvie, Sarah and Teddy.
For them, from now on, the verdict does not matter; the trial rehabilitated the memory of their brother and his colleagues. These weren’t not idiots » as the media and « expert nicknames “After the crash, insists Sarah, the youngest of the siblings. All three pay a fine tribute to this brilliant, demanding, curious, competent big brother, who loved ” his profession, his son, his family and life. »
Airbus found guilty
On June 1, 2009, the three Pitot probes, which make it possible to calculate the speed of the plane, iced up. In the cockpit, this failure led to the disconnection of the autopilot, the switch to a degraded piloting mode and numerous alarms. Destabilized, the two co-pilots, soon joined by the captain, lost control of the aircraft, which hit the Atlantic less than five minutes later. Defending himself from any mistake “having led to the accident, Airbus, tried like Air France for manslaughter, argues that ” pilot errors are at the root of the disaster.
But for the Roberts, the culprit is Airbus. ” If only we had explained this failure to the pilots. You just had to teach them once, only once », regrets Sylvie. ” Since the beginning of the lawsuit, one does not cease asking if the crash could have been avoided if the pilots had done this or that. Well, the question I ask is: if Airbus had done its job correctly, would this tragedy have taken place? »