Twenty years after an Egyptian budget airline crashed outside the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing 148 people, a trial is underway. The public prosecutor in Paris filed a corresponding manslaughter application against the head of the then airline in France, where most of the victims came from.
The ex-boss of Flash Airlines is accused of using former military pilots for scheduled flights without sufficient training. Already in 2017, the justice department announced that pilot error was the cause of the crash. The Boeing 737 crashed on January 3, 2004, just three minutes after takeoff. All 135 French passengers and 13 crew members were killed.
The legal procedure took a very long time. An association of victims filed a report in 2007 making numerous accusations, including against the French aviation regulator for approving the flight. A first case in France was eventually dropped in 2017. Two years later, an appeals court reopened the investigation. In the same year, the French state was ordered to pay 10,000 euros in damages to the victims’ association due to the delay in the proceedings.
“Numerous failures”
More than 500 relatives of the victims have now registered as co-plaintiffs. The examining magistrate must decide whether and when a trial will take place. The French Public Prosecution Service speaks of “numerous omissions and inaccurate calculations” by the two pilots. These would have directly led to the crash. The exhaustion of the crew was also not taken into account. According to a report published in 2009, the pilot had worked heavy shifts and unusually short rest periods in the two weeks before the accident. Therefore, fatigue may also have played a role.
Source: Krone
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