The Trial Revisited: Manslaughter Charges and the Long Shadow of AF447Sixteen years after Air France Flight 447 disappeared from radar on its overnight flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, the legal fight over culpability has restarted. The 2009 disaster — the deadliest in France’s aviation history — became a global moment for aviation safety and corporate responsibility. “If you remove one of those acts of negligence, the chain breaks,” said Sébastien Busy, a lawyer representing an association of victims’ families. “The sensors failed, but the cockpit did not manage the failure the way training and culture demanded,” said a senior aviation safety analyst. In memory and in law, that is why this trial matters, and why the consequences extend far beyond a courtroom in Paris.