Pilot error and faults led to Air France crash The inability of insufficiently trained pilots to cope with confused information triggered by a technical failure caused the devastating crash of an Air France Airbus passenger jet en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in June 2009, investigators said on Thursday. Both Air France and Airbus are under a separate judicial probe on suspicion of manslaughter as a result of the crash, in which all 228 passengers and crew died when the A330-200 widebody aircraft crashed into the Atlantic. The outcome of the judicial inquiry is due to be presented to the families of the victims on July 10. But in its final technical report, BEA, the French air accident investigator, confirmed an earlier finding that the crash, Air France's worst, was triggered by ice crystals clogging speed sensors on the aircraft, sending false information on its airspeed and disengaging the autopilot while it was at cruising altitude. "The occurrence of the failure in the context of flight in cruise completely surprised the pilots," the 220-page report said. "The crew likely never understood that it was faced with a "simple" loss of three sources of airspeed information." The co-pilot at the controls, one of three pilots on board, wrongly angled the aircraft's nose higher in response. But it stalled and fell within four minutes into the sea. "The crew never understood they were in a stall situation and therefore never undertook any recovery manoeuvres," the investigators said. They said a lack of training in manual flying at high altitude, a "highly charged emotional response" by the two co-pilots in the cabin at the time and a lack of clear display of the airspeed information contributed to the crash. The report recommended more training for pilots "in degraded or unusual situations," better crew management and for improved simulation of abnormal situations in flight simulators. It also called for improved layout of cockpit instruments to help crew better recognise and manage unusual situations. One person familiar with the situation said the crash had caused tensions between Air France and Airbus, although both companies steered clear of criticising each other on Thursday. Airbus said safety was its "overriding priority" and stressed the type of Thales pitot probes - the airspeed sensors - that failed on the Air France jet were no longer used on Airbus aircraft. "Airbus has already started working at industry level to further reinforce the robustness of pitot probe requirements," said Airbus. Air France said flight safety remains "an absolute priority" for the airline, adding: "Air France is currently involved in an ongoing process of improving flight safety procedures ... such as changes to the crews" training programmes." There are 862 jets from the Airbus A330 family in operation today with 90 airlines, and Paul Hayes, director of safety at Ascend, the aviation consulting firm, said the aircraft had a "very good" safety record. Only one other A330-200 has crashed - in Libya in 2010 - since the aircraft entered service in 1998. Air France-KLM's shares closed down almost 4 per cent at €3.893. Shares in EADS, parent of Airbus, fell almost 2 per cent to €28.5.