COLMAR, France, March 14 (Reuter) - A French court on Friday
sentenced the pilot of an Airbus airliner which crashed at a
1988 air show, killing three people, to six months jail for
manslaughter with another 12 months suspended.
         The verdict vindicated Airbus Industrie , the plane's
makers, blaming human error and irresponsibility by operators
Air France for the disaster.
         The Air France A320 ploughed into a forest and exploded into
flames on June 26 1988 after a very low altitude pass over an
airfield at Habsheim, near the eastern city of Mulhouse, killing
three of the 130 passengers.
         At the trial, pilot Michel Asseline blamed the cockpit
computer displays and said the flight recorders had been
tampered with. But the prosecution said he and co-pilot Pierre
Mazieres had recklessly endangered the passengers' lives.
         Mazieres was given a one-year suspended sentence.
         The prosecutor called Asseline ``a reckless daredevil who
tried to prove out of pride he was as good as a test pilot''.
         The defence failed to show that the flight data and voice
recorders had been rigged. Experts testified that the plane
crashed because it was pushed beyond its mechanical limits.
         Three other officials, including Air France's director of
flight operations at the time, the state-owned airline's then
security director and the organiser of the air show, received
suspended prison terms of six months or less.
         Asseline and Mazieres declined to comment on the judgment or
say whether they planned an appeal as they left the court.
         Air France was declared liable for the accident and ordered
to pay undisclosed damages to victims of the crash.
         The prosecution said Air France had regularly run
low-altitude demonstration flights with passengers aboard in
violation of civil aviation regulations.
         ``Airlines should be transporters, not circus performers,''
expert witness Michel Bourgeois told the court.
         Jean-Claude Boetsch, a spokesman for an association
representing victims and their families, said he thought the
sentences were misguided and too heavy.
         ``As far as the court is concerned, the verdict is clear and
the case has been proven, but in our view there is no proof. The
plane is still partially in question, but the stakes are so high
that they preferred to make one man pay rather than the system,''
Boetsch said.
         The association supported the pilots' accusations of a
shortcoming in the aircraft.
         Asseline had brought the plane down to within about 10
metres (30 ft) of the ground and flown slowly over the crowd. He
was unable to pull the plane back up quickly enough to avoid
trees at the end of the runway.
         The crash occurred at a sensitive time for the European
Airbus Industrie consortium as the A320 had just begun flying in
France and was awaiting commercially vital certification from
the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority.
         French pilots' unions had objected to the cockpit design,
which they said was over-reliant on computers and eliminated a
third flight officer.
         Airbus Industrie is a consortium of France's state-owned
Aerospatiale , British Aerospace Plc , Daimler-Benz Aerospace, a
unit of Daimler-Benz AG and Construcciones Aeronauticas SA
(CASA) of Spain.