While there is little doubt that the French government did everything in its power to protect Airbus and to find a scapegoat in Captain Michel Asseline and his First Officer Pierre Mazière, and that there were a number of investivative irregularities, especially involving the black boxes, it should be pointed out that Captain Asseline had disabled many of the standard FBW features of the A-320 and was flying the plane as manually as possible.

Had he retained the FBW features, it is possible that this accident could have been averted.

Ultimately, one thing appears clear: Both Airbus and Asseline were taking tremendous risks to show the aircraft's capabilities. Air France asked Asseline to fly at 100-ft. altitude and force the plane into a stall to demonstrate its FBW ability to avoid a crash. Why did Asseline disable the FBW features? He says that he was asked to do so by Air France and Airbus to demonstrate the capacities of the aircraft even is a "disabled" mode.

The fact that there were passengers on the plane, however, was absolutely unacceptable.

Finally, regarding the manslaughter charges, which seem shocking to an American aviation observer, these are a standard part of the French legal system in any airplane accident. That said, the preponderance of the evidence would suggest that the French government tampered with the black boxes (they were held by the French civil aviation authority, the Direction générale de l'Aviation civile, for ten days in contravention of French law, and returned with an eight-second gap at the crucial time frame). Asseline and his supporters believe this was done in order to railroad the crew and to protect the repuation of Airbus.

Asseline, who had been Air France's chief training pilot, was sentenced to six months in prison, had his pilot's license suspended. He later wrote a book, "Le Pilote est-il Coupable?" (Is the Pilot Guilty?) which came out in 1992.

While there have been many issues with the Airbus since then, no Airbus has ever recorded a definitively provable FBW failure.