Airbus and Air France have been found guilty of corporate manslaughter by a Paris appeals court over the 2009 Rio-Paris plane crash that killed 228 passengers and crew, three years after being acquitted in a lower court.
Relatives of some of those who died when the Airbus A330 vanished in darkness and plunged into the Atlantic during a storm listened to the verdict in silence after a 17-year legal battle over responsibility for France's worst air disaster.
A lower court had in 2023 cleared the two French companies, both of which have repeatedly denied the charges.
