Continental Airlines lodged an appeal Monday against a conviction by a French court which found it criminally responsible for the 2000 Concorde air disaster in which 113 people were killed...A court on December 6...said [the crash] was caused by a strip of titanium that fell from a Continental DC-10 and later shredded the supersonic jet's tyre, which led to a fire in the fuel tank. Continental was ordered to pay a fine of 200,000 euros for the crash and to pay the Concorde's operator Air France a million euros in damages. The US airline said the ruling was "absurd". The judge also gave Continental employee John Taylor a 15-month suspended jail sentence for having incorrectly manufactured and installed the titanium strip.