Shocked passengers witnessed an alleged brawl between pilots and cabin crew as an Air India jet flew at 30,000ft, it was revealed today.

Some 25,000 commercial aircraft with a total value of $3.1 trillion (£1.9 trillion) will be delivered over the next two decades as emerging economies, the need for more ecologically-efficient planes and growing low-cost carriers boost demand, Airbus said yesterday.

It would have been, aviation experts say, Australia’s worst civil air disaster, and it was averted only by seconds. Details have emerged of how an Airbus carrying 275 passengers and 18 crew disappeared off radar screens soon after a botched take-off from Melbourne airport and narrowly avoided crashing into a densely populated residential area.

The former French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, was the leading figure in a “cabal” which tried to smear Nicolas Sarkozy in 2004 to destroy his chances of becoming president, a French investigative judge has been told.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is set to rule this week on the vexed question of state aid to Airbus. An investigation has been running for four years after a US complaint accusing European government grants for the A380 Superjumbo, above, of violating WTO rules and giving the company an unfair advantage over rival Boeing.

The Government is to back an Airbus A350 aircraft project with a £340 million loan, it was announced today.

Could the stormy skies in which British and Irish airlines have found themselves become even more turbulent? Until Flight International revealed passenger fatalities were running at 20 a week globally, it seemed unlikely.

British Airways announced further reductions in its summer 2009 and winter 2009/10 schedules as well as delays to the delivery of its fleet of 500-seat Airbus A380 superjumbos.

An intact Air France Flight 447 slammed belly first into the Atlantic Ocean at high speed, a top French investigator said yesterday, adding that problems with speed sensors were not the direct cause of the crash.

The Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic last month with 228 people on board was not destroyed in mid-air but hit the water intact and at high speed, French investigators said today.