Air France and Airbus on trial 13 years after Atlantic jet disaster in which three Irish women died

Flight 447 vanished in pitch darkness during an equatorial storm en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009. File picture: AP /Christophe Ena

More than 13 years after an Air France jet plunged into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board, the French carrier and planemaker Airbus go on trial in a Paris court next week with relatives seeking "light at the end of a long tunnel".

Flight 447 vanished in pitch darkness during an equatorial storm en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009.