A French group of enthusiasts , known as Olympus 593, has this week got permission to start preliminary work that could lead to the powering up the engines on the retired Air France Concorde

The team, who are made up of former Air France Concorde engineers, will initially work on inspections of the engine systems to ensure that they could be safely re-fit after being idle since June 2003, when the aircraft flew for the final time.

If the inspections are successful then funding will be required to be sought to allow the Concorde hall to be modified with a suitable door, which allow the aircraft to easily move outside, where work can start on the fuel system, which in turn could eventually lead to the first engine being run.

Gérard Feldzer, the "Museum Director", has set a target of returning all 4 engines to ground running condition, but once 2 engines and their respective systems are re-commissioned, he believes that it will be possible to taxi the aircraft.

A lot of work is required, with minimal spares availability, to accomplish these ambitious goals. Without any secured funding, no timescale has been announced.

There is is further information and discussion about this hot topic on the ConcordeSST.com Forum

Nearly 10 years after the Concorde crash, lawyers and experts have started to re-debate the cause of the accdent, this time to apportion blame.

The four month trial, will, examine at least three contradicting, explanations for the crash of the Air France Concorde near Charles de Gaulle airport on 25 July 2000. Did the aircraft, its 100 passengers, nine crew and four people on the ground fall victim to an 18in strip of titanium which dropped onto the runway from a previous, Continental Airways, flight? Or is this - the official explanation - simply a cover-up for a blunder by Air France in the maintenance of the doomed Concorde's undercarriage?

The trial will also examine more fundamental questions about the safety of the iconic aircraft, which was for 24 years the pride of the French and British aviation industries. Both prosecution and defence lawyers will claim that Concorde suffered from design weaknesses which were systematically ignored for at least 20 years to keep the aircraft flying. The crash led, after a brief resumption of flights, to the abandonment of Air France's and British Airways' supersonic services across the Atlantic in April 2003 due to the deteriorating economic climate.

The accused, in an especially enlarged court-room at Cergy-Pontoise, west of Paris, will be the Continental Airways company itself, two of the airline's Paris ground staff, two elderly retired Concorde engineers, and a former senior French air safety official (see box). All are charged with the manslaughter of 113 people when the aircraft, carrying German holidaymakers to the Caribbean, crashed into a motel two miles from the end of the Charles de Gaulle runway.

More than a million pieces of the aircraft were painstakingly gathered and collected in a hangar after the accident, which partially - but only partially - explains why the trial has taken a decade to come to court.

The immediate cause of the accident is not in dispute. At least one of the Concorde's left-hand undercarriage tyres burst as it was gaining take-off speed. A shower of hard rubber fragments penetrated a fuel tank in the left wing, causing a fire and a loss of power. The pilot, who was beyond the point of no return on his take-off run, tried to save the aircraft by lifting it into the sky prematurely, something that on a delta winged aircraft should not be done. One engine was halted deliberately by the flight engineer, against standard operating procedure before the aircraft had obtained the V2, safe flying speed, speed. The other engine later began to lose power. As the pilot struggled to remain airborne with an essentially fully laden airraft on on only 2n engines, F- BTSC's right wing lifted, the pilot with had no option but to reduced the thrust on the 2 good engines to try to level the aircraft, but according to one eye-witness the aircraft with no significant forward airspeed fell "like a leaf" - onto the Hotêlissimo motel. All passengers and crew and four motel employees were killed.

According to the prosecution, the tyre was punctured explosively by hitting an 18in-long titanium thrust reverse wear strip which fell from a Continental Airlines DC10 which had taken off from the same runway four minutes earlier. Titanium, a much harder metal than aluminium or stainless steel, is not supposed to be employed for temporary repairs on aircraft. Continental Airways is accused of systematically using titanium for such repairs, even though the danger to aircraft tyres was well known. Two of its ground staff in Paris are accused of ignoring the titanium ban and botching the repair. Continental rejects these accusations. Its principal defence lawyer, Olivier Metzner, claims that 28 witnesses saw the doomed Concorde catch fire before it reached the part of the runway where the titanium strip was lying. "Their evidence has been ignored. Everything has been done to obscure the truth," said Mr Metzner, who was also the lawyer for the former prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, in his successful defence against charges of trying to smear President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Metzner will argue that the Concorde's tyre burst because an important element of the undercarriage had been accidentally left out by Air France ground staff. As a result, too much weight was bearing on the tyres, one of which exploded when it hit a bump in the runway. Air France and the French air accident bureau admit that there was a mistake in repairing the Concorde's undercarriage but they insist that it could not have caused the tyre burst. However there is no factual evidence of any fire on the aircraft before it hit the piece of metal and the tyre burst from any marks observed on the runway.

The other main battleground in the trial will be the safety record, and design, of Concorde itself. Two Concorde engineers and a French air safety official are accused of deliberately playing down or ignoring the evidence of weaknesses in the aircraft's tyres and its wing fuel tanks. In the 24 years of Concorde flights before July 2000, there were 65 incidents of burst tyres, six of which led to the perforation of fuel tanks early in Concorde’s life. The rate was significantly reduced by use of better non-remolded tyres and strengthened wheel rims.

The lawyers representing the families of the crew will argue that the three individuals on trial are merely scapegoats for a policy that was agreed at a higher level. In the dock: The accused Six defendants have been accused of manslaughter in the Concorde trial. All deny the charges.

*Continental Airlines Accused of negligently allowing its staff to use banned titanium strips for aircraft repairs. If found guilty the company faces a fine of up to €375,000.

*John Taylor, 41, Continental Airlines mechanic He fitted the titanium strip which fell onto the runway before the doomed Concorde flight. Like the other four individuals on trial, he faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of €75,000 if found guilty.

*Stanley Ford, 70, head of the Continental Airlines maintenance team He is accused of approving the banned repair.

*Henri Perrier, 80, head of the Concorde programme at Aerospatiale from 1978 to 1994 Accused of failing to respond to evidence of weakness in the aircraft's tyre and fuel tank designs.

*Jacques Herubel, 74, chief Concorde engineer at Aerospatiale from 1993 to 1995 Accused of not taking action to strengthen the fuel tanks.

*Claude Frantzen, 72, senior official at the French civil aviation directorate from 1970 to 1994 Accused of underestimating the gravity of previous tyre and fuel tank incidents and failing to demand design changes.

Agency copy is unsed in this article from PA and Reuters