Original subtitles

It's the first public demonstration

of the world's most sophisticated passenger jet.

Ok, you have 100 feet there.

The Airbus A320 is being introduced to the world.

Mesdames et messieurs,

votre attention, s'il vous plait,

l'Airbus A320 arrive.

That introduction turns into a fatal calamity.

It can't be!

Merde!

It could not possibly have come

at a worse time for Airbus.

The crash was a major embarrassment.

There's enormous pressure on investigators.

If Airbus is to survive,

they must find the answer to one crucial question.

Was it the pilot or was it the plane?

Ladies and gentlemen,

we are starting our approach.

We lost both engines!

Put the mask over your nose.

Emergency descent.

Mayday, mayday.

Brace for impact!

I think I lost one.

Investigation starting...

He's gonna crash!

It's 2:30 in the afternoon

on June 26, 1988.

An unusual charter flight

prepares to depart Basel-Mulhouse Airport

in France, near the Swiss border.

Anti-ice.

Captain Michel Asseline

is one of air France's most distinguished pilots.

On.

Though only 44, he's the head of pilot training

for the company's newest plane--

the Airbus A320.

It's only the third of its kind to roll off the assembly line.

He flew this very aircraft from the factory in Toulouse

just two days earlier.

I was in charge of the launching of the 320

in air France.

The company used me to promote the aircraft.

I had speeches to make.

I was constantly on the, on the television, on newspaper.

Air charter 296, we'd like to roll, please.

Asseline's first officer, Pierre Mazieres,

is also a senior air France pilot.

He's invited two off-duty flight attendants

to come along for the ride on this special flight.

The aircraft is booked to perform a low-altitude flyover

at a local air show.

There are 130 people on board this A320,

which is unusual for an air show demonstration flight.

They have no luggage.

For some, it's their first time on an airplane.

There are even children,

like seven-year-old Mariama Barry,

unaccompanied by their parents.

After the flyover, they will be taken on a sightseeing tour

around Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Western Europe.

Most got their tickets as promotional gifts

from a local bank and newspaper.

Jean-Marie Schreiber is a young reporter

covering the launch of the new plane.

As a journalist ,

I was thrilled to be on the flight,

to have a chance to see how people reacted inside the plane.

Another journalist on board, Jean-Claude Boetsch,

has been busy recording the event.

As I got on the plane,

I thought: "Great,

this is going to be an unforgettable experience",

and it really was unforgettable.

The A320 is the first civil aircraft

to use fly-by-wire, a cutting-edge technology

that computerizes flight controls.

The system had previously mainly been used by the military.

On the fly-by-wire system,

the pilot essentially flies the computer,

and the computer flies the aircraft.

Fly-by-wire alters the relationship

between pilot and plane.

It gives computers the ability to override human inputs

to prevent pilot error.

The A320's flight computer won't let its human operators

do anything it determines to be dangerous.

Airbus is the first civil aircraft maker

to embrace this technology.

It hopes this will give it an edge

over its longtime American rival, Boeing.

In its first public presentation,

Airbus has a lot on the line.

Ok, tell me what you want

in terms of speed and altitude.

Ok, then, takeoff right turn,

we go nice and easy to find our thing.

We tried to demonstrate

the capability of this aircraft.

To say we wanted to show off, not exactly.

We wanted to make a good job,

and we were sure to make a good job.

Once we identify the airfield,

we extend flaps to three,

we'll do the flyover at 100,

landing gear out, and you just leave it up to me.

I'll give it alpha max.

I've done it 20 times.

Ok.

Captain Asseline is planning

a breathtaking maneuver:

A low-altitude nose-high flyby at alpha max.

That is the slowest a plane can fly without stalling.

Ladies and gentlemen,

hello and welcome aboard this Airbus A320,

which was put into service just two days ago.

We will soon be taking off for a short sightseeing flight,

which we'll start from the Habsheim flying club

and then we'll be flying around Mont Blanc.

I wish you a very pleasant flight.

That's done.

ACF 296C, clear for takeoff.

Runway 16.

We're rolling.

Takeoff. Go.

Parameters normal.

100.

100.

It's already requesting climb.

Do you see that?

Yes, that happens.

I know the bug.

V-1.

Rotate.

Gear up, flaps one.

After takeoff checklist completed.

It's only a five-minute flight

to Habsheim airfield, where the air show is being held.

For this sleepy Alsatian town,

the air show is the highlight of the summer.

The air show drew more than 5,000 people.

There was significant interest from the public.

The airfield is so small,

its coordinates aren't stored in the plane's navigation database,

so the pilots must find it by sight.

You're at eight nautical miles,

you'll soon see it.

There's the highway.

We leave the highway to the left, don't we?

No, to the right of the highway.

It's slightly to the right of the highway.

There's the airfield!

You've got it, have you?

The pilots have spotted the airfield late.

They will have to rush

to descend to the planned altitude for the flyover.

Many passengers have friends and family watching from the ground.

Air charter 296, good afternoon.

Habsheim, hello.

We're coming into view of the airfield for the flyover.

Yes, I can see you.

You're cleared.

The sky is clear.

Gear down.

Ok, we're going in

for low-altitude, low-speed flyover, 296.

Roger.

Flaps two.

Quebec November hotel, Habsheim, Fox Echo 984.

Ok.

984, put in 984.

Flaps three.

Flaps three.

That's the airfield, you confirm?

Affirmative.

Flight 296 makes a gentle turn

to line up with the runway.

The pilots must now lose more altitude and speed

to get into position for the flyover.

200.

200.

Mesdames et messieurs,

votre attention, s'il vous plait.

L'Airbus A320 arrive.

Ok, you're at 100 feet there.

100.

Watch it, watch it.

The aircraft is now at the planned altitude.

For Asseline, this will be

the most delicate part of the maneuver.

He must keep the plane in a stable position,

with the nose up, but not too high.

I looked at the ground and said:

"Look, he's not high enough",

because you could see the grass right out your window.

Ok, I'm ok there.

Disconnect auto throttle.

He disables one of the plane's safety features

so that the computer won't speed up the slow-moving plane.

Only now, Captain Asseline sees something

that makes his blood run cold.

The A320's low speed flyover at the Habsheim airfield

is suddenly not going according to plan.

There's a forest in the path of Captain Asseline's plane.

30.

Takeoff, go-around power!

He selects the highest thrust setting

and pulls back on the controls,

expecting the aircraft to pull up.

But the plane keeps dropping.

It can't be!

Merde!

I started to see through the window, tree branches.

I was astonished.

You can imagine being on a trail in a large vehicle,

a bumpy trail, driving at 80 or 100 kilometers an hour

and you're shaking from all sides.

It was like that.

I was saying to myself:

"The plane has to stay in one piece,

"because if the plane stays whole, we'll be ok.

If it breaks up, we're done for".

Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!

Still full of fuel,

the right wing of the jet is sheared off.

The fuel ignites immediately on impact.

We stopped very quickly.

And on the ground, I broke my seat,

just because I was holding very firmly,

I broke my seat and I could see a lot of flames all over.

The first officer is badly injured.

And he has a lot of blood.

And even with a full harness,

he hit something in front of him.

What the hell have you done?

I don't know.

I don't understand.

There was a moment of silence

when the plane finally stopped.

Incredibly, the fuselage is still in one piece.

Everyone has survived the impact.

But they're not out of danger yet.

So I lean to the right

and I see red flames, the windows were red.

And I think: "We held together

but we're going to burn to death".

Only two exits can be used for evacuation--

the rest are engulfed in flames.

But thick branches block the doors,

making evacuation difficult.

In the chaos of the cabin,

some passengers struggle with their seatbelts.

Marie Francoise Froesch

is one of the last passengers to leave her seat.

She comes across Mariama Barry, who's trapped in her seat.

Mariama Barry, she was seven, eight.

After the accident, people pushing toward the exit,

pushed on the backs of the seats,

the backs that folded over her

and then she was trapped by her seatbelt.

No one saw her. She was forgotten.

But it's too late.

We'll be ok.

Both are overcome by smoke

before they can get off the plane.

In the cockpit, Captain Asseline struggles

to get his injured first officer out of the burning aircraft.

I took him from his seat, unbelt him,

carried, I don't know how, and I put him on the slide.

When the passengers, all of them,

the last one was out of the plane,

I saw my crew.

They told me: "Captain, Captain, they are all out".

I couldn't believe it.

But the crew is wrong.

Not all the passengers make it out.

Marie Francoise Froesch, Mariama Barry,

and another young boy are dead.

In addition to the tragic loss of life,

the accident is a pr disaster for Airbus.

The crash could not possibly have come

at a worse time for Airbus.

They were trying out this new concept,

which they had touted very widely

as a new level of safety for civil flight,

and here's a pilot going and crashing one.

For those who actually saw the accident,

and it was broadcast on the news media

throughout the world the same evening that it happened,

there was amazement.

Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no...

The crash was a major embarrassment.

Investigators from France's

Accident Investigation Bureau

are on the scene of the crash within hours.

They recover the plane's data and voice recorders.

Claude Bechet will head the investigation.

Was it the pilot or was it the plane?

We need to know.

Like the pilots of flight 296,

he also works for Air France as an airline Captain...

Let's get to work.

...which is unusual for a state investigator.

Along with the flight recorders,

investigators have a remarkable piece of evidence to consider:

A high-quality video of the accident

recorded by a French cameraman.

It was the first time we had video of an accident.

Normally, an accident happens in the middle of nowhere,

where nobody is there with a camera to film it.

The tape clearly shows the plane

flying right at the trees at the end of the runway.

It doesn't seem to be climbing at all.

The cockpit voice recorder offers a confounding clue.

Takeoff, go-around power.

30.

30.

It can't be!

Merde!

It's clear, the crew had no idea

there was an obstacle at the end of the runway.

Investigators are puzzled.

How could a forest take a pilot by surprise?

Investigators bring Captain Asseline in

for questioning about the flyover at Habsheim.

They need to know what his plan was.

My intention was to carry out a flyover

at slow speed.

As a qualified A320 pilot,

Claude Bechet is familiar with the plane's capabilities.

...over the airstrip, and we go to alpha max.

Very good.

He sees nothing wrong with Captain Asseline's plan.

It was not bad.

Making a slow pass, it was well planned.

And he seemed to me to be very open

and ready to help,

to work with the Investigation Commission.

Investigators turn their attention

to how Air France prepared the flight crew

for the air show.

They discover a memo setting out the rules

for all air show flights.

What draws the attention of investigators

is the minimum altitude air France had selected

for air show flyovers: 100 feet.

It was in violation of national regulations.

He should have been at 500 feet as a matter of fact.

But there was, there had at the time

a tendency for pilots

who were making air shows like that

to go a little bit lower and sometimes much lower.

Chief investigator Claude Bechet now wonders

if there were any other mistakes

in the planning of the flight.

He soon learns that Air France's flight division

didn't start drawing up

a flight plan for the demonstration

until less than 48 hours before the air show.

Air France employees had prepared maps of the airfield

for the crew of flight 296.

Investigators find a serious flaw.

The forest around Habsheim airfield

did not show up on the photocopies.

The Air France employee who put together the flight package

didn't have time to double check.

You were using a navigation chart?

While questioning Asseline,

Bechet discovers that the pilots

were also given little time to prepare.

- Here's the flight package. - Thanks.

That's highly unusual

for an air show flight.

Investigators then make an intriguing discovery

at the crash site.

They measure the height of the trees hit by flight 296...

And discover the average height of the forest

to be only 40 feet.

This poses an urgent question:

How could an Airbus

that was supposed to be flying at 100 feet

hit trees less than half that height?

It's clear to investigators

that flight 296 fatally deviated from its original flight plan,

losing altitude before plunging into a forest.

But only the black box data can help them understand

how and why this happened.

Information from the A320's flight data recorder

is recovered within hours of the crash.

The device records information about 200 aircraft functions.

It paints a detailed picture of how flight 296 was operating

in the final minutes of its journey.

It can't be!

We could reconstruct the entire accident.

We could live with the crew

as the accident was happening.

Investigators make two striking observations

from the data.

The first is that flight 296

suffered no mechanical breakdowns.

The second is that the A320

followed a very different flight path

than the one Captain Asseline had planned.

Instead of maintaining a stable airspeed and altitude,

flight 296 had slowed down and lost altitude

as it performed the flyover.

As the A320 crossed the Habsheim airfield,

its speed dropped to only 112 knots.

The plane's deceleration was so dramatic

it was even visible on the video.

Michel Asseline was one of Air France's top pilots.

Claude Bechet is hard pressed to understand

how he could have mishandled such a high-profile flight.

Pressed further,

Asseline explains how the trouble started.

You were using a navigation chart?

Yes.

We had some difficulty locating the airfield.

We leave the highway to the left, don't we?

No, to the right of the highway.

It's slightly to the right of the highway.

There's the airfield.

You've got it, have you?

They spotted the airfield too late.

So when they did,

they reduced the power and they descended.

So they rushed their descent

in order to get into position for the flyover.

And they were still slowing down

when they reached the airfield.

That's the airfield, you confirm?

Affirmative.

But then another problem emerged.

The spectators were lined up on a different runway

from the one the crew was heading for.

The crew of Air France flight 296

is ill-prepared for their demonstration.

In planning for the air show,

Air France provided the crew information only for runway two,

Habsheim's only paved airstrip.

But Captain Asseline sees the crowds aligned

on a much shorter adjacent grass field.

I was expecting a normal runway.

And at the last moment, I saw that it was a grass runway.

Captain Asseline lined up with the grass strip.

I have no idea

that at the end of the runway was a forest.

For me it was bushes only, or something.

Ok, you're at 100 feet there.

100.

Watch it, watch it.

Because they had to rush their descent,

by the time the flight got to the airfield

it was flying too fast.

To lose speed, Captain Asseline

kept the thrust on its lowest power setting,

well below the setting pilots normally use

for alpha max flight.

But another serious problem was developing.

The aircraft had dropped below 100 feet

and was continuing to fall.

The crew didn't seem to notice.

50.

I'm ok there.

Disconnect auto throttle.

In a matter of seconds,

the altitude had fallen to only 30 feet.

What was extremely clear

is that airplane was flying

at approximately 30 feet

above the ground.

Regardless of any other data,

this data was extremely important.

No airplane of that size or of any other size

should make a flight pass that low.

The data is clear. You were at 30 feet, not 100.

I believed I was at 100 feet.

Claude Bechet is still uncertain

how the A320 ended up

so dangerously close to the ground.

Captain Asseline insists his instruments failed him.

Flaps two.

Quebec November hotel, Habsheim Fox Echo 984.

Ok, 984.

Captain Asseline was relying

on his barometric altimeter.

It uses air pressure

to measure how high he was above the ground.

It had to be set to local atmospheric pressure

to be accurate.

Quebec November hotel, Habsheim Fox Echo 984.

Ok, 984.

Put in 984.

The cockpit recorder proves

that the tower provided the pressure reading

and the crew set their instrument.

But Asseline insists the altimeter was giving him

a false reading.

I tell you, the altimeter said the plane

was at 100 feet.

Michel Asseline stated that the barometric altimeter

was, in fact to be precise,

67 feet out.

And that is something that he claims led him

to be flying at 30 feet instead of at 100 feet.

Investigators are skeptical.

Asseline had more than one instrument

to give him altitude information.

The A320 has a second altimeter that uses radio waves

to calculate the plane's distance from the ground.

That altimeter displays the altitude on a digital display,

but Captain Asseline claims it was difficult to read.

We could not use the radio altimeter

because this radio altimeter is digital,

and nobody can fly by reading numbers.

I try that later, on a simulator,

I never succeed to do it.

But the radio altimeter

has another way of alerting pilots.

I'm ok there.

50.

A digital voice callout.

Disconnect auto throttle.

50.

But Asseline claims

he and his first officer, Pierre Mazieres,

could not hear it.

Some people said: "But you could have heard

the radio altimeter saying, 30, 30, 50, 40, 30".

No, because at that time,

this aircraft was very, very noisy.

And we have the headsets.

And we have demonstrated at that time

that the radio altimeter warnings,

the radio altimeter callouts,

they were not going through the headset.

Despite Asseline's defense,

investigators are certain

that the crew of flight 296 mishandled a risky maneuver.

Bechet has more questions for the Captain.

What did you do when you saw the trees?

I did what any pilot would do--

I tried to climb over them.

Investigators learn

that in the final moments before the crash...

Takeoff, go-around power.

...Captain Asseline applied full throttle.

And when I was waiting for the engine to spool up,

then I realized in front of me there were trees.

And then I was waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting.

But he claims the engines did not respond.

And when they finally kicked in, it was too late.

Merde!

I tell you, the engines did not come on

when I gave it full throttle!

Captain Asseline's testimony

raises a troubling prospect.

If there was a prolonged delay in engine response,

it could indicate a critical problem with the A320.

He's convinced the engines didn't respond quickly enough

in the final seconds of the flight

and makes his mission to prove it.

He uncovers an Airbus document warning of a defect in the A320

which states that the plane's engine speed

could stagnate at low altitude,

a condition caused by poor airflow.

When this occurs, the engine cannot accelerate.

But investigators can find no evidence of such a failure

in any of the data from the plane.

30.

Takeoff, go-around power.

In the five seconds after Captain Asseline

applied full power on the thrust levers,

the A320 twin engines had begun to spool up--

reaching 84% thrust, close to full power,

just before the plane hit the trees.

When you put from idle to full power,

you have the impression that nothing happens--

for a few seconds-- and then the power comes.

That was normal, exactly as predicted by the certification.

Investigators are increasingly certain

the engines on flight 296 didn't fail.

They find a novel way to verify the data.

Video of the crash picked up the distinctive sound

of the A320's engines accelerating.

By studying that sound, engineers can determine

how much power the engines were generating

in the final seconds before the crash.

We were able to compare

the rpm of the engines from that film

and from the flight data recorder.

There was nothing wrong with the engines,

any of the two engines.

Chief investigator Claude Bechet

has a new headache.

Captain Asseline is convinced

there is a conspiracy against him.

He cuts off all cooperation with the investigation.

Very well.

The investigation committee,

I tried to cooperate with them, but I began to be suspicious.

In the press each week, "the aircraft is good,

"the aircraft has nothing,

pilot error, pilot error, pilot error".

All that was a big, big, big cover-up.

My opinion.

Captain Asseline begins a campaign

to challenge the French investigation.

He appears on British television to make a dramatic assertion.

When I pull the stick to up position,

the flight controls, the limiter control

go to down position.

So on any aircraft, if you ask up,

following the order of the pilots,

the limiter control goes to up.

And not that, on that one, it went to down.

Why?

That will be the good question.

His accusations go to the heart of doubts

about the aircraft:

That Airbus' fly-by-wire system

had given the A320's computers too much control.

Asseline's claim that the plane didn't follow his instructions

is supported by data from the plane's flight recorder.

The black box recorded every movement

of the pilot's side stick controller.

It does show that seconds before the crash,

Captain Asseline pulled it back to get the plane's nose up.

Investigators compare it with what the plane did in response.

They make a perplexing discovery.

He's telling the truth. The elevator moved down.

In the final seconds before the accident,

the pilots had desperately tried to pull up.

The side stick controls the plane's elevator.

Pulling back on it should raise the elevator

and pitch the plane upwards.

30, 30.

But that's not what happened on this flight.

One of the strange things about the crash flight

which became apparent

when the digital flight recorder

was analyzed,

was that during the last few seconds,

prior to contact with the trees,

the pilot was dragging back

on the stick as hard as he could,

but the flight surfaces were moving into a position

to put the nose down.

Captain Asseline believes the plane's descent

triggered an automatic response by the flight computers.

Asseline inadvertently brought his plane

to within 30 feet of the ground

with his landing gear down and his flaps extended.

Investigators now wonder if the plane's computer

determined that Asseline was landing

and initiated the necessary steps to accomplish that.

As the plane leveled up with the airfield,

it overflew a little copse of trees,

which took the radar altitude

momentarily below 30 feet.

That would have been sufficient

to trigger the flight control system

to enter landing mode.

It's possible that in spite

of what Captain Asseline was commanding the plane to do,

the computer brought the plane's nose down for landing.

Investigators must try to determine

whether the A320 overrode its pilot at a critical moment.

They analyze the data from the flight recorder.

Stop it there.

But to their disappointment...

So was the plane in landing mode or not?

...the flight data recorder can't confirm

if the plane went into landing mode.

The A320's systems are so advanced

that the recorder can't track all the plane's functions.

Investigator Claude Bechet

comes up with another way to find out.

He replicates Asseline's approach

to the Habsheim airfield

to see how the A320 responds.

Ok, let's start the descent.

Power to flight idle.

Now put it into alpha max.

That's it, gently.

I replayed the accident,

but on the longest runway

in Toulouse.

Altitude 40 feet.

35 feet.

We replayed the accident exactly what it was.

Bechet's plan is to descend to 30 feet,

as Asseline's A320 did.

Now pull up slightly to level off.

Hold it there.

Bechet wants to see if the flight computer

puts the plane in landing mode.

Ok, now full thrust.

Did you feel that?

Alpha protection.

The test flight has triggered a nose-down response

from the plane's computers,

like the crash of flight 296.

But the plane hadn't gone into landing mode.

Instead, the flyover had activated

one of the A320's main safety features:

Stall protection.

Due to a lack of airflow over the wings,

flying slowly in a nose-high position

can cause a plane to lose lift.

The A320's computer has been programmed

to bring the plane's nose down when it gets close to stalling.

This means that in theory,

as long as the flight control system is in operation,

the pilot cannot stall the plane.

Bechet concludes the flight's computers

did override Captain Asseline's command.

But he believes that by doing so,

it had prevented the plane from stalling and crashing

just short of the tree line.

That airplane didn't stall

and let's say landed on the trees.

The investigation into the crash at Habsheim

is coming to an end.

Claude Bechet prepares to deliver his verdict.

The conclusion of my report

was that the airplane was too low, too slow

and with not enough power.

Bechet concludes that mistakes

made by Captain Asseline

led to the Airbus crash.

As far as Claude Bechet is concerned,

the report is the final word on the Habsheim tragedy.

The case, however, is far from over.

The French justice system

is moving towards a judgment of Captain Asseline.

He is charged with involuntary homicide

in the deaths of three passengers

and faces the prospect of a long prison sentence.

But Captain Asseline believes he has found evidence

that will exonerate him.

He's convinced there was a conspiracy

to tamper with the plane's black boxes,

to conceal problems with the A320's fly-by-wire technology.

There has been a cover-up with

some phony recorders.

That's the first point.

The second point,

they have been changing the content of the recorders.

It all begins, according to Asseline,

at the crash site.

An employee of France's civil aviation authority

is photographed carrying the A320's flight recorders

from the scene.

Those same black boxes

are presented as evidence at Asseline's trial.

But inexplicably, they look different.

I had a chance to see the black boxes

held by the court,

but when I see the state they're in,

they're old boxes, full of scratches,

dusty, with chipped paint.

I think: "Wait, these can't be the boxes from the crash.

The plane was new. They're not the right ones".

Captain Asseline hires

a Swiss criminology institute

to compare the two photographs.

Its conclusion: They're not the same flight recorders.

Captain Asseline claims

the black box data from his flight

has been tampered with.

But investigator Claude Bechet

rejects the accusations as outrageous.

They were trying to prove

that the tapes had been tampered with,

which we could not understand

because every recorder expert

knew that it was physically impossible.

But there is one expert

who believes the black boxes are suspicious.

Ray Davis is a former head of flight recorder analysis

at Britain's Air Accidents Investigation branch.

He has been hired by British television

to review the French investigators' work.

It was a little bit of an eye opener in a way,

in that prior

to reading the report,

I had a totally different impression

of the possible causes of this accident.

Whereas when I read the report, there were so many anomalies

and questions raised by the report

that my whole attitude towards the accident

changed completely.

Davis discovers evidence

that could vindicate Asseline.

It raises questions about when the crew applied power

to try to over-fly the trees.

30...

Takeoff, go-around power.

30.

While studying the black box data,

Davis comes across a curious inconsistency.

French investigators had synchronized the black boxes

with a transcript of air traffic control communications.

Davis examines the last conversation

the pilots had with the tower before the crash.

It was recorded by both air traffic control

and the plane's own black box.

Ray Davis discovers a time discrepancy

between the two recordings,

amounting to a loss of several seconds.

According to the black box data,

the aircraft was five seconds from impact with the trees

when Captain Asseline commanded full thrust from the engines.

But according to Ray Davis' analysis,

this actually took place four seconds earlier.

This four-second gap

dramatically changes the calculus of the accident.

It's the difference between a normal delay in engine response

and a serious malfunction.

Merde!

Asseline claims that on this particular occasion,

the delay was more than he expected.

And depending upon which side

of the argument you come down at,

as to whether or not

the four-second delay in the digital flight data recording

was real or not,

then, you know,

he's either an idiot,

or you know, he's right.

The French justice system

does not believe that Asseline is right.

After multiple appeals,

Michel Asseline is convicted of involuntary homicide

and sentenced to ten months in prison.

Still, the controversy over the black boxes

and the missing four seconds lingers on.

It promises to forever cloud the results

of the Bechet investigation.

The public opinion thought probably: "Oh, well,

"there was so much at stake, you know.

"It was the future of all

"European aviation industry

"which was at stake.

"So they managed to tamper the tapes

so they could blame the pilot and not the airplane".

But this is just impossible.

The investigation into the Habsheim accident

made several recommendations.

It calls for passengers to be banned

on all demonstration flights.

It also calls for better reconnaissance

of airfields by flight crews.

And they want airline procedures to be reviewed

to ensure they conform

with official regulations concerning altitude.

Michel Asseline went on to a career

as a teacher and inventor in the aviation industry.

He continues to appeal his conviction,

and has devoted much of his life to clearing his name.

The tragedy at Habsheim

would have little impact on Airbus industry.

The A320 would go on to become

one of the most successful commercial aircraft in history,

selling over 750 planes in its first 10 years.

And fly-by-wire technology would be safely adopted

by a new generation of passenger aircraft.