Paris: US airline Continental and 2 of its employees go on trial this week for the manslaughter of 113 people who died in Concorde crash that put an end to the dream of supersonic travel.
The New York-bound jet crashed in a ball of fire shortly after take-off from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on July 25, 2000, killing all 109 people on board -- most of them Germans -- and four hotel workers on the ground.
The plane, born of British and French collaboration, embarked on its maiden commercial flight in 1976. Only 20 were manufactured: six were used for development and the remaining 14 flew mainly trans-Atlantic routes at speeds of up to 1,350 miles (2,170 kilometres) per hour.
A French accident inquiry concluded in December 2004 that the Paris disaster was partly caused by a strip of metal that fell on the runway from a Continental Airlines DC-10 plane that took off just before the supersonic jet.
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