This forum is usually full of praise for the AAIB's analysis but not when it stands in the way of having a pop at the French. Please follow the critical path. All that stuff about grubby French a/c and other misdeeds may be true but they have nothing to do with the crash.
AAIB dissented from the BEA conclusions about what started the fire on BTSC and even the tank-rupture, declaring that there was no physical evidence to say that this exotic and unprecedented pressure wave in the tank should have been responsible, as opposed to the idea that a lump of rubber had gone through the wing, as it had at Dulles in June 1979. And yet, BEA chose the exotic over the thing that had already happened.
Equally improbable was the idea of ignition being caused by a flame front from the reheat moving forward against an airflow of 90m/s (in the rest of the physical universe it can't move forward against more than 6 m/s), which was the official BEA view. Much more probable, said AAIB, was the idea that the electrical cables in the wheel bay had been shorted by wheel debris and those sparks lit the escaping fuel. These wires also shorted at Dulles but, fortunately, did not ignite the streaming fuel.
The NTSB called the 79 incident "potentially catastrophic" at the time, but the Anglo-French (it always took two, remember, where Conc was concerned) post-incident analysis concluded that a recurrence was so improbable as to be not worth guarding against, although tyres were strengthened because of continual blow-outs. In the opinion of the AAIB investigators of BTSC what happened was a recurrence of 79 with the sparks igniting the fuel -- a simple, common sense and much more plausible explanation. IMO, if the BEA and the French establishment were trying to protect anyone from criticism in its investigation of Gonesse it was the aeronautical establishment, not AF.
The issue of an alleged failure by the authorities to act correctly after the 79 incident has not escaped the attentive French prosecutors, however, and the responsible officials from 30 years ago have also been indicted.
Enough French-bashing. IMO the fact that the exploding tyre caught a French Conc instead of a British one is just bad luck and AF, whatever its sins, is not in the frame, any more than all the other bits of supposed evidence which prove the Englishman's innate superiority over the Frenchman.
Last edited by Frangible; 5th Feb 2010 at 11:11.