US airline Continental and five individuals have gone on trial in France over the crash of an Air France Concorde nearly 10 years ago.

The jet took off in flames from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport and crashed minutes later, killing 113 people.
An official report said Concorde had hit a metal strip from a Continental plane that had taken off earlier.

As well as Continental, five individuals are being prosecuted.

They include John Taylor, the Continental mechanic who allegedly fitted the metal strip to the DC-10, and Stanley Ford, a maintenance official from the airline.

Also facing charges are Concorde's former chief engineer Jacques Herubel, and Henri Perrier, a former head of the Concorde division at Aerospatiale - now part of the aerospace company EADS.

Claude Frantzen, a former member of France's civil aviation watchdog, is the fifth individual defendant.

Manslaughter charges can carry penalties of up to five years in prison and a 75,000-euro ($104,000) fine - but correspondents say that in the case of guilty verdicts, suspended prison sentences are more likely in this case.

The trial is expected to last four months.