Paris court convicts Swiftair of corporate manslaughter in 2014 Mali air disaster

A Paris criminal court on Monday convicted the Spanish airline Swiftair of corporate manslaughter over the 2014 crash of an Air Algerie flight in northern Mali that killed all 116 people on board.

The court imposed the maximum fine of €225,000 following a three-week trial earlier this year. The company, which has ten days to appeal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Swiftair had denied the charges and sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds that it could not be tried in France because a Spanish court had already dropped its own proceedings. A French judge nonetheless allowed the case to proceed.

Flight AH5017, a Swiftair-owned MD-83 operating on behalf of Air Algerie, went down less than an hour after taking off from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Everyone on board was killed, and about half of the passengers were French.

Investigators concluded that the aircraft lost control after being struck by ice while an anti-icing system remained switched off. Prosecutors had alleged negligence in the training of Swiftair pilots for handling icy conditions and erratic instrument readings. The airline, for its part, blamed shortcomings in regulation and manuals.

In its ruling, the court rejected some of the prosecution's arguments regarding poor training. It did find, however, that the captain had not undergone a proper proficiency check and that the crew had not completed the required number of refresher flights after a period of inactivity.