Seventeen years after the crash of flight AF447 from Rio to Paris in the Atlantic Ocean, the Paris Court of Appeal has issued a verdict different from the one in April 2023. Air France and Airbus are now "exclusively and entirely responsible" for the deaths of 228 people - 12 crew members and 216 passengers. A verdict that the first-instance proceedings did not deliver.

It is the largest aviation disaster in French aviation history. The plane lost its own lift in a storm, and fell from 11,580 metres of altitude into the Atlantic. Pieces of the wreckage were found after an extensive search that covered 10,000 square kilometres of sea bed. The flight data recorder was not retrieved from the ocean until 2011 - two years after the crash.

French investigators in 2012 concluded that the cause was a combination of faulty airspeed sensors and pilot error - the pilots, instead of pushing the nose of the plane down to regain lift, pulled it up. That's a reaction flight manuals strictly warn against, but also a reaction new pilots often have in moments of panic.

Both companies have now been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Each pays the maximum penalty of 225,000 euros. That's a laughable sum for two corporations with annual revenues in the billions - but the symbolic meaning is different. It means the court recognised the systemic failures both in the sensor design (Airbus) and in the pilot training (Air France).

The victims came from 33 countries - 61 French, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans. Among them, Brazilian Prince Pedro Luiz de Orleans e Bragança (26) and Croatian sailor Zoran Marković (45). Seventeen years later, many of the families still attend annual remembrance gatherings without having found final peace.

As Danielle Lamy, a representative of the victims' association who lost her own son, put it: justice "finally recognises the suffering of families facing a collective tragedy with unbearable brutality." For the two companies, the verdict will be appealed with certainty. For the families - this is the first verdict that returns part of what no court can return.