Fight to get justice for young Roscrea doctor Aisling Butler continues

The father of the young Roscrea doctor, Aisling Butler who died when a plane she was travelling in crashed into the Atlantic Ocean 14 years ago says the pain of his family's loss is still piercing.

In an interview on Prime Time on RTÉ last week, John Butler said he is still angry over what happened to his 26-year-old daughter and determined to get justice.

“Every morning I get up, I talk to Aisling, and, every night I go to bed, I have a picture of her and I give it a hug,” John told the programme.

In May 2009, Air France Flight 447 took off from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil for what was supposed to be an 11-hour flight to Paris.

There were 228 people on board that night, including Aisling, who was returning from a holiday in Brazil.

John, who owns the haulage firm, Adare Transport, and who is a part-time farmer, was getting ready to bale silage when Evelyn, Aisling’s mother, phoned him to say that there had been a plane crash.

They had initially concluded that the plane that had crashed was travelling in the opposite direction. But John sat down at his computer and came to a horrifying realisation.

“I looked up the news and then I saw the real fact that it was coming from Rio to Paris,” he said. “Everything lined up that this was the flight.”

Within days of the crash, French and Brazilian naval forces recovered the remains of 50 victims along with partial wreckage.

It would be almost two years before the Airbus plane’s flight recorders, along with its fuselage, would be found by an international team, including those involved in locating the Titanic’s wreckage. The remains of a further 104 of the victims were discovered with the fuselage.

John and his family desperately hoped that Aisling’s body would be among those found. But Aisling has never been found.

DISASTROUS COMBINATION

Investigators concluded that a disastrous combination of crew failures, systems disconnection and bad weather had brought the plane down.

In 2019, manslaughter charges against Air France and manufacturer Airbus were dropped.

This decision was appealed and, last October, a French criminal court opened a historic trial, with devastated relatives demanding justice 13 years after the crash. It will hand down its verdict in April. Aisling's father, John, was among those who gave a moving impact statement to the court. He has been campaigning in his daughter's memory since the disaster.

Almost a decade and a half after the disaster, John remains devastated over what happened. “The pain, you know, it never gets better,” he told Prime Time.

Still determined to get justice, he said: “I think it’s imperative for the travelling public to realise and know that these people can be prosecuted and will be brought to heel.”

John believes that the French courts should find the accused – airline Air France and manufacturer Airbus – guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

“We would feel that our efforts in the last number of years have been vindicated and that what has happened has been recognised.”

John said that he has learned to live with the pain of the loss – that it has become familiar to him.

That Aisling’s body has never been located has made it all the harder, however.

“I look out on the ocean and, especially, I look out on to the Atlantic,” he said.

“You just think of Aisling out there, you know?”

TROPICAL STORMS

The plane had been travelling at a normal cruising altitude when the pilots became aware of tropical storms ahead, David Learmount, an aviation expert and former Royal Air Force pilot, told Prime Time.

“They knew how to avoid those,” he said, “but, all of a sudden, an external sensor got blocked by ice crystals.”

The plane then sent an alert to the pilots to inform them that the autopilot function had been switched off – to let them know that they were now in full control.

“Their reaction to this situation was very surprising,” Mr Learmount said.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know exactly why they reacted as they did, except that it was panic.”