A Paris criminal court has fined Spanish airline Swiftair €225,000 for involuntary manslaughter over the 2014 crash of an Air Algérie flight that killed all 116 people on board, more than 12 years after the aircraft went down in the Sahel.
The ruling, delivered on Monday, found that negligence by Swiftair in the training and preparation of the flight crew had certainly contributed to the disaster, which occurred on 24 July 2014 in northern Mali.
The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft, owned by Swiftair and chartered to Air Algérie along with its crew, was operating a flight from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to Algiers when it crashed, leaving no survivors.
The €225,000 fine is the maximum financial penalty that can be imposed on a company for the offence. Prosecutors had sought the same punishment in March, following three weeks of hearings examining the circumstances of the crash and the airline's responsibility.
The verdict brought a measure of relief to relatives of the victims, many of whom attended the hearing wearing T-shirts bearing the words "116 victims".
"That makes 4,449 days" since the crash, said Sandrine Tricot, who lost her husband in the disaster, describing the lengthy legal proceedings as a painful reminder of the tragedy and its lasting impact on the families.
Claude Floury, whose daughter Katell was among those killed, said he felt both relieved and conflicted by the ruling, arguing that proper training for the pilots could have prevented the loss of their loved ones.
"Finally, criminal responsibility has been established in this tragic accident, and Swiftair, which tried by every means to avoid a trial in France, has finally been held accountable for the mistakes it made," said lawyer Sébastien Busy, who represented the vast majority of the victims' families.
In a statement sent to AFP, Swiftair expressed regret over the court's decision but did not say whether it intended to appeal. The company maintained that it should not be held responsible for the crash, citing a 2016 decision by Spain's highest investigative court to dismiss the case.
The Madrid-based airline also insisted that its safety protocols and pilot training programmes complied with the regulations and standards in force at the time of the accident.
The ruling marks a significant development in the long-running legal proceedings surrounding one of the deadliest aviation disasters involving an Air Algérie flight, establishing criminal liability in France despite the earlier dismissal of the case by Spanish judicial authorities.
