Gobonastick. I'm not sure f you understand anything about this dreadful tragedy, but the French Judiciary are blaming Continental Airllnes for the bulk of the accident. Most relevantly learned people here are of the opinion that the explosive destruction of the tyre was more due to a comnination of being grossly overweight, the front wheels on the L/H U/C skewing badly from true (due to the missing spacer) and running over a very rough (awaiting repair) initial runway surface, NOT the strip on the runway.. Oh, and also the fuel tanks were under pressure, due to illegal placement of fuel inlet valves to over-ride, ('hiding' fuel in the fuel transfer galleries from the fuel gauging system/fuel weight computation). So when the tyre destruction occured (not a blow out in the normal sense) we have a terrible set of ingredients. This overweight aircraft veered hard along the L/H side of the runway, took out a taxi llight which in turn seriously damaged an engine. It then took off on 3 1/2 engines, way below V2 and in flames. A good, thrust producing engine was then shut down leaving 2 1/2 engines. RAF studies show that the only hope of extinguishing such a fuel fed fire is enough IAS to cause the flames to become detached from the source. The Bogie Beam alignment circuit on the L/H gear had been damaged, preventing raising of the gear. The aircraft desperately needed to climb and accelerate to survive; it could do neither, and tragically came down on the hotel at Gonez.
Last edited by M2dude; 2nd Feb 2010 at 15:52.