Originally Posted by M2dude
But this crash followed many French near-misses, spread over all the years of Concorde operation. Misses due to questionable airmanship or maintenance, often combinations of both.
Actually BA suffered a higher number of serious tires incidents than AF... (BA: 5 previous occurrences of fuel tank perforations due to tire incidents and associated engines damages. AF: 1 previous occurrence).
All of these incidents could have led to exactly the same result. There was a major issue with the aircraft, voluntary ignored for decades by operators, civil aviations, crews and manufacturer. The tire incidents rate and related repetitive extensive damages have nothing to do with airmanship or maintenance (even if it played a significant role in 2000), it's above all a major design issue and blatant lacks of responsibilities from all involved parties (certainly not only French).
I think this is pretty clear:
http://www.bea-fr.org/docspa/2000/f-...appendix5p.pdf