PARIS --

Seventeen executives at Airbus parent company EADS went on trial Monday for allegedly making millions in profits on the back of their company's troubles with the delayed A380 superjumbo project.

The current and former officials are accused by French stock market regulators of insider trading as they sold stock options before the planemaker announced a big production delay that sent shares plunging.

It is an unusually visible case for France's Financial Markets Authority, or AMF, and could result in embarrassing fines for European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. NV, one of the continent's biggest manufacturers. The closed-door hearings run all week in the former Paris stock exchange.

The French market regulator has been investigating for nearly three years what the EADS executives and board members knew about profit-damaging technical problems with the A380 superjumbo and mid-range A350 aircraft when they sold shares or exercised stock options worth millions of euros (dollars) in 2005 and early 2006.

When the A380 problems were made public in June 2006, EADS shares plunged 26 percent in one day and the company sank into months of management troubles.

Two investigations into the stock trades ensued, one by the AMF and a criminal probe by the Paris prosecutor that is still under way. Both may demand millions of euros (dollars) in fines, and the criminal probe may even seek prison terms.

The AMF probe earlier named 17 EADS and Airbus officials as suspects, but chief investigator Antoine Courtault winnowed the list down to seven people he accuses of insider trading: former EADS co-CEO Noel Forgeard; Jean-Paul Gut, a former deputy chief executive who oversaw strategy; chief Airbus salesman John Leahy; Andreas Sperl, director of the EADS site in Dresde; Olivier Andries, a former EADS vice president; human resources director Erik Pillet, and Alain Flourens, in charge of training centers.