Welcome to Africanews

Please select your experience

Watch Live

News

news

Former boss of Flash Airlines indicted by a court in Paris

  -  
Copyright © africanews
JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER/2004 AFP

Egypt

Eighteen years after the air crash in Sharm el-Sheik, in Egypt, that left no survivors the former boss of Egyptian company Flash Airlines was indicted by a court in Paris.

Mohamed Nour's indictment was done in December and confirmed by judicial sources on Tuesday.

The case was initially dismissed as the charges were considered as insufficient.

But the families of the victims commissioned experts who produced a report published in 2007 pinpointing all the actors.

In 2019 the Court of Appeal of Paris to ordered new investigations.

Families of the victims hope that this means that finally the accused will be standing trial.

"In the seventeen years that it's been going on, eighteen years, we've had to do it on our own to mourn. (...) The aircraft was flown by a pilot who was not fully trained and had not completed his flight hours. The crew was not balanced in such a way as to be able to correct the captain's mistakes, the plane was in poor condition, the crew was overworked, most of the basic rules of aviation safety had been violated", said David Fouchard, son and brother of crash victims.

On January 3, 2004, a Boeing 737 of the company Flash Airlines crashed into the Red Sea, three minutes after takeoff killing its 148 passengers, including 134 French.

View more