US airline Continental and five individuals went on trial Tuesday on manslaughter charges for the crash of the Concorde that left 113 dead, nearly a decade ago.
A French criminal court will examine conflicting explanations of why the Air France jet smashed into a hotel in a ball of fire just after take-off from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on July 25, 2000.
Continental and two of its employees are accused of the manslaughter of 109 people on the New York-bound plane — most of them German tourists — and four hotel workers on the ground.
A former French civil aviation official and two former Concorde engineers face the same charge in the trial that is expected to last four months.
The presiding judge began the proceedings by reading out the names of all 109 people onboard the doomed flight and the four people who died on the ground.
The court will decide whether to side with investigators and technical experts who say the crash was caused by a strip of metal that fell off a Continental jet which took off shortly before the Air France Concorde.
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It will also ask whether the French official and engineers failed to correct faults on the iconic jet favoured by the rich and famous for their trans-Atlantic trips.
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