Supersonic airliner plans continue, say Russians

The Russian aircraft manufacturer, Sukhoi, has announced it's moving ahead with plans to develop its own supersonic airliner, in spite of last week's Concorde crash.

The aircraft's designer Andrei Ilyin told reporters it would cost up to three billion dollars to develop the plane, and he expected funding to come from agreements with a number of international plane manufacturers.

He said the Concorde crash, in which one hundred and thirteen people died, would in no way influence the development of supersonic airliners in Russia.

Accident investigators in France have today begun removing engine fragments from the site of the crash in the hope of determining what caused the accident.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service