Investigation: Air France 296

On Sunday June 26, 1988, the airclub at the airfield of Mulhouse-Habsheim in Alsace/France had organized with Air France a low approach of a brand new Airbus A320 in landing configuration. Michel Asseline was the pilot in command of F-GFKC, Pierre Mazière was his first officer, when the aircraft overflew the airfield at 2 pm in wonderful sunny weather. Some seconds later the aircraft touched the tops of the trees behind the runway and crashed into a forest. 3 passengers died in the accident and about 50 were injured. The accident was filmed by a video amateur and has been shown dozens of times on TV. F-GFKC was the first of a couple of aircraft of this type to be lost in the next few years.

The Black Boxes were taken undamaged from the aircraft 2 hours after the crash, but unfortunately they have been out of control of justice for 10 days, and since May 1998 it is proven that the Flight Data Recorder was substituted during this period. The Lausanne Institute of Police Forensic Evidence and Criminology (IPSC) comes to the conclusion that the Black Boxes used in the trial to declare the pilot guilty are NOT the ones taken from the aircraft.

The aircraft was new, Airbus was waiting for commands, a lack of confidence in the highly computerized aircraft would have meant a commercial disaster - not only for the manufacturer, but also for the French administration, which has a share in the European Airbus consortium.

(rest of article here)