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Five people, including two Continental Airlines employees, face up to five years in prison if a French court finds them responsible for the crash of an Air France Concorde supersonic airliner near Paris almost 10 years ago. A four-month trial has begun into the July 25, 2000, crash that killed all 109 people on the airplane and four employees of the hotel the airliner, trailing a tongue of flame, hit when it crashed. The five, along with Continental itself, are charged with involuntary manslaughter. The case centers around investigators' findings that a piece of metal fell from a Continental DC-10...

Washington (CNN) -- Confronted with signs that his plane was entering an aerodynamic stall, the pilot of Continental Flight 3407 pulled on the plane's control column when he should have pushed -- a simple but inexplicable error that led to the death of 50 people, the National Transportation Safety Board ruled Tuesday evening. The board's ruling, coming a year after the crash near Buffalo, New York, is stark in its simplicity.

Here is Raw Video of an Ethiopian Plane taking off from Beirut, Lebanon that crashed after takeoff yesterday. The video shows the faint light of the airliner after it had taken off and then it goes out of the video frame but you see a bright light as if the plane had exploded in the air. No official word has come as to the cause of the disaster that killed 90 people. . . . (VIDEO)

A Navy pilot whose training airplane crashed Saturday in Lake Pontchartrain is presumed dead, and the search has shifted from a rescue to a recovery mission, a Navy spokesman said Monday. As of Monday afternoon, the Coast Guard was still searching for the pilot, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Jaclyn Young in New Orleans. Navy Lt. Clinton Wermers, 33, a native of Mitchell, S.D., was an instructor pilot aboard a T-34C Turbomentor airplane that also carried a Navy student aviator who survived the crash, Navy spokesman Jay Cope said Monday. The aviators were assigned to Training Squadron Six, based at...

AN AIRCRAFT that crashed minutes after taking off in a thunderstorm, killing all 90 people on board, is thought to have been struck by lightning. The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 had just left Beirut in Lebanon for the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa when it burst into a "ball of fire" and plunged into the Mediterranean. There were two Britons among the 83 passengers on board. One of them was named as haulage firm owner Afif Krisht, 56, who had dual British-Lebanese nationality, and whose former wife lives in Plymouth. Flight ET-409 crashed into the sea two miles offshore. It disappeared...

An Ethiopian Airliner with 90 passengers on board has crashed in the Mediterranean Sea just off the coast of Lebanon. The plane took off from Beirut and was headed to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia when is crashed shortly after takeoff. The BBC reports 21 bodies have been recovered, and there are no reports of survivors: The Boeing 737 bound for Addis Ababa in Ethiopia fell into the Mediterranean in a ball of fire with 90 people on board. The Foreign Office said one British national and one with dual nationality were on board Flight ET409. No further details about the...

An Ethiopian airliner with 90 people aboard crashed into the Mediterranean Sea minutes after takeoff from Lebanon early Monday, authorities said. The Lebanese army and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon were scouring the area off the Lebanese coast where the Boeing aircraft was thought to have gone down. Rescue crews had not found the wreckage, said Ghazi El Aridi, Lebanon's minister of public works and transportation. The plane left Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut at 2:27 a.m. and was headed to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. It disappeared from radar a few minutes after takeoff, El Aridi said....

BEIRUT, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Rescue workers have located the crash site of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that went down just off the Lebanese coast on Monday, Lebanon's Transport Minister Ghazi al-Aridi said. "(The crash) site has been identified three-and-a-half km (two miles) west of the (coastal) village of Na'ameh," Aridi told reporters at Beirut international airport. He said search and rescue operations were under way but refused to give any further details. He also said it was too early to say what caused the crash but confirmed the plane took off from Beirut international airport in stormy weather

An Ethiopian Airliner with 92 passengers and crew on board has crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after takeoff from Beirut airport in Lebanon. Aviation sources said flight 409 was heading for the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa when it crashed at 2:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) on Monday. According to Lebanon's Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi, the Boeing 737-800 disappeared from radar screens only five minutes after takeoff amid heavy rains and storms, and crashed into the sea about 12km (7 miles) south of the Rafiq Hariri airport. Witnesses who live near the coast have reported seeing a ball of fire as...

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US airline Continental will present an alternative cause of the 2000 Concorde crash when the carrier faces manslaughter charges in a French court next month. The airline, two of its staff and three other individuals are due to stand trial on February 2 accused of manslaughter over the July 2000 crash of the supersonic aircraft which claimed 113 lives. Air France Concorde flight 4590 takes off with fire trailing from its engine on the left wing Investigators have concluded that the cause of the accident was a metal strip left on the runway from a Continental plane. This strip -...

NASSAU, Bahamas — Authorities say three to five people were aboard a small plane, registered to a Naples business, that crashed into the sea after taking off from the Bahamas en route to Florida. Petty officer Jennifer Johnson says the U.S. Coast Guard assisted the Royal Bahamas Police Force after the Sunday night crash. Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the plane was a Piper aircraft, and directed questions to authorities in the Bahamas. Bahamian police have identified three of those on board as David Howell, Andrew Peterson and J.P. Antonmattei, all of the Naples area. J.P. Antonmattei is...

Breaking News: At least three dead after small plane crashes near airport in Lorain County, Ohio -- NewsNet5.co

Remains of the first airplane ever taken to Antarctica, in 1912, have been found by Australian researchers, the team announced Saturday. The Mawson's Huts Foundation had been searching for the plane for three summers before stumbling upon metal pieces of it on New Year's Day. "The biggest news of the day is that we've found the air tractor, or at least parts of it!" team member Tony Stewart wrote on the team's blog from Cape Denison in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay. Australian polar explorer and geologist Douglas Mawson led two expeditions to Antarctica in the early 1900s, on the first one...

Forty passengers were reported injured when an American Airlines plane crashed and broke in two after landing at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston shortly after 10:00 last night. "The injured passengers have been taken to the Kingston Public Hospital," Information Minister Daryl Vaz told the Observer. "There are no reports of fatalities." Vaz, Transport and Works Minister Mike Henry and National Security Minister Dwight Nelson were quick on the scene and engaged in a head count from the passenger manifest to determine if anyone was missing. An injured American Airlines flight 331 passenger is being pushed in a...

FORT WORTH, Texas, Dec. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- On Tuesday, December 22, 2009, American Airlines Flight 331, a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, overran the runway on landing at Kingston, Jamaica's Norman Manley International Airport. The flight originated out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, operated into Miami International Airport, and then operated into Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport. Preliminary reports indicate there are no critical injuries. The aircraft was carrying 148 passengers and a crew of six. "The care of our passengers and crew members is our highest priority and we will offer all the assistance necessary," said Gerard Arpey, American's Chairman...

An American Airlines plane crashed and broke in two after landing at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to local reports. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Details were not immediately available, however, passengers on the plane told local media that flight 331 had just arrived from Miami in pouring rain when the accident occurred. The flight apparently originated in Washington, D.C.

A Russian military plane crashed into the sea during a training exercise in Russia's Far East region, leaving all 11 crew members missing and presumed dead, officials said on Saturday. The Tupolev Tu-142 plane disappeared from radar as it was coming to the end of a training mission on Friday over the Tatarski Strait that divides Russia's Far East island of Sakhalin from the mainland, the defence ministry said. "Given the conditions under which the catastrophe took place, we can presume that all the crew aboard the Tu-142 were killed," a source in the emergencies ministry told the RIA Novosti...

MOSCOW, Nov 1 (Reuters) - A cargo aircraft crashed soon after taking off from the eastern Russian city of Mirny in Yakutia region, killing all 11 people on board, Russian prosecutors said on Sunday. The plane, an IL-76 belonging to the interior ministry, crashed about 1 km from Mirny at the start of a flight to Irkutsk, the investigative committee of the Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement. Russia has one of the world's worst air safety records, with elderly Soviet-era planes, dated airport facilities, poor plane maintenance and lax standards contributing to a grim crash toll. Last year,...

On Halloween 10 years ago today, EgyptAir Flight 990 nose-dived into the ocean off Nantucket from 33,000 feet, leaving the families of 217 children, grandparents and lovers forever haunted by the question: Why? “You just wish you knew what the reason was. Some things break your heart so much,” said Bobbie Bergman of Colorado. Bergman’s sister Paula Barnes, a one-time Marblehead resident, perished with their parents William and Tamsin Barnes and several family friends about 1:52 a.m. on Oct. 31, 1999, a half hour into what was to be a 10-hour passage from New York to Cairo.