A French court on Tuesday sentenced the former head of a Thai budget airline to four years in jail over a 2007 crash that killed 90 people, nearly two-thirds of them foreigners. The suit, filed by the families of the nine French victims aboard the flight, claimed the crash landing on the resort island of Phuket was "an accident waiting to happen". The Paris court found Udom Tantiprasongchai, the former head of the airline One-Two-Go, guilty of voluntary manslaughter and also set a fine of 75,000 euros ($82,300).

But despite an international warrant for his arrest, Tantiprasongchai has never been detained and did not respond to the French judicial summons, and was tried in absentia.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019