Long-awaited trial begins into 2000 Air France Concord crash
That finding, insisted upon by French investigators for a decade, will be scrutinised and debated in a long-awaited trial starting today. Prosecutors argue that the supersonic passenger jet never would have crashed in July 2000 – killing 113 – if a Continental Airlines DC-10 hadn’t dropped a piece of titanium onto the Charles de Gaulle Airport runway just minutes before the Concorde soared into the sky.
Continental lawyer Olivier Metzner says the American airline is simply a convenient scapegoat. He will argue that a fire broke out on the Concorde eight seconds before it even reached the titanium strip.
