Airbus fined over Concorde death

Aviation giant Airbus has been fined £200,000 plus £58,000 costs for health and safety failures which resulted in a Bristol pensioner falling to his "avoidable" death as he visited the Concorde exhibition in Filton.

Horace Livall, 71, stepped back on a gantry leading to the supersonic plane to take a photo of his daughter Julie Nash and son-in-law Mark, when he fell through a metre-wide gap between the walkway and fuselage, onto the plane's wing and a further 15ft to the tarmac below. The former milkman from Southmead died in hospital from chest and head injuries.

Airbus UK and charity BAC (Bristol Aero Collection) Trading both admitted a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act on September 24, 2004, having allowed the attraction to open to visitors without a risk assessment nor health and safety inspection being done.

At Bristol Crown, BAC, which organised and ran the exhibition, was also fined – £10,000 plus £1,000 costs.

Judge Julian Lambert said global firm Airbus should "bear the heaviest burden of responsibility".

"The people of Filton were rightly proud of Concorde and that the masterpiece of modern engineering came home," he said. "But what has happened has left people feeling let down and with a sense of anger at the unnecessary loss of life that was foreseeable and avoidable.

"Airbus should not have let the exhibition open without a safety assessment which would have made the risk glaringly obvious.

"They provided an unsafe structure in the first place and then handed it over to BAC who were lulled into a false sense of security, expecting that what Airbus provided would be safe."

Prosecuting, James Bennett said Airbus was responsible for co-coordinating the design, fabrication and installation of the exhibition, which opened to the general public on August 18, 2004.

However, until plans to permanently bridge the gap between the gantry and wing door were finished, visitors had to walk along a wooden plinth, with no hand rails on either side.

Mr Bennett said: "They should not have opened the exhibition without first establishing it was safe. It is inconceivable that Airbus did not have the resources and the knowledge to make a safe access gantry.

"Regardless of what standards Airbus were looking at, the availability of information pointing to this danger was clear and obvious."

Mr Bennett said Airbus was warned several times by employees and contractors about the gap before the exhibition opened. He also said the fact there was no formal or written information between the two parties as to who was responsible for health and safety "contributed to the accident and risk".

The court heard a representative of BAC had promised to contact South Gloucestershire Council to organise a risk assessment, but this never happened. And volunteers who were to be guides did not receive any health and safety training before the opening.

Oliver Campbell, mitigating for Airbus, said the firm, which had a £1.8 billion turnover in 2007, had a good safety record and took steps immediately after the tragedy to tighten up procedures.

Kerry Gwyther, mitigating for BAC, said: "Because of their size, BAC felt that Airbus would look after everything."

After the hearing, Mr Livall's son-in-law Mr Nash, 44, said: "We're just happy now its all over and finished with. At the time it made us angry but we feel both Airbus and BAC have taken it seriously and its nice to see it's been put right. Mr Livall was a big Concorde fan, it was something he was looking forward to seeing."

Airbus UK spokesman Maarten Abele said: "The incident at the Concorde exhibit in September 2004, resulting in the death of Mr Livall, was a terrible tragedy and our deepest sympathy and concern has been with his family and friends throughout the years since."

Oliver Dearden, BAC chairman of trustees, said: "BAC has always bitterly regretted being in this position and would again like to express publicly their sincere condolences to the Livall family. The judge made his views clear about the relative responsibilities in the case and reflected that in his sentence."

Last June, an inquest jury recorded an open verdict into Mr Livall's death but was highly critical of both Airbus and BAC.

In December 2003, Airbus was fined £18,000 for failings over the fall of a worker at a manufacturing site in Wales.