The company and engineers accused of negligently causing a Concorde supersonic jet to crash outside Paris with the loss of 113 lives went on trial for a second time today.
A previous prosecution after the 2000 disaster found US carrier Continental and one of its employees guilty of allowing a sliver of metal to fall from one of its jets onto a runway, where it burst the tyre of the Air France Concorde.
But four French defendants were cleared -- in a 2010 ruling that Continental denounced as French "protectionism" -- and prosecutors demanded a second trial at which all six accused parties once more face prosecution.
The trial began in Versailles, outside Paris, on Thursday and was to continue until May 9, as judges reconsider technical evidence about the 12-year-old crash and the design and safety record of an obsolete plane.
The court ruled that two elderly French defendants would be tried separately from the others early next year.
"This case has been tainted from the start," Continental's lawyer Olivier Metzner told journalists on arriving at the court.
"Air France, a civil party, could have been among the accused if some...
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