French Concorde crash

[infrequentflyer789]

Originally Posted by chrisN

I don't understand why a different question is not appropriate for the Mechanic: “Was it foreseeable that using titanium instead of stainless steel could cause a tyre burst?

The material of the repair has been latched on by the media, IMO incorrectly, probably because it's easy to report & understand. The repair was also badly executed, and not by the book, in a number of other ways. This is likely far more significant, but talking about incorrectly drilled rivet holes is too complicated for todays media. As Bear has just said - it's the craftsmanship, not the metal.

The series of questions (as I understand it, and I'm not a lawyer and if I was, not a French one) would be:

1. Did the mechanic (or the company) knowlingly act outside of safety rules / laws (mens rea)
2. Did he, or should he, have known that this action could cause someone harm
3. Was this action an essential cause (sine qua non) of a death

It's the second of these that the tire burst question is part of, and might be broken down into:

• Was it forseeable that the bodged repair would fall off ?
• Was it forseeable that it would do so on the runway (at t/o thrust) ?
• Was it forseeable that this strip on a runway could damage an aircraft (esp. tires) ?
• Was it forseeable that a damaged aircraft tire could seriously hurt someone (even if its "only" the next mechanic who inspects it) ?

[ I think it's also possible that (2) becomes irrelevant if you knowingly breach a rule designed to ensure safety in (1) - it might be held that this automatically implies that you should have known that your action could cause harm ]

I think it's notable that in media statements (I haven't read the transcripts, my French would make that a somewhat slow job) Continental's lawyers have never raised defending (1) or (2), only (3). Possibly because they judged that they simply had no reasonable defence to (1)&(2). It appears they based their defence on eyewitness evidence (with no physical eveidence) of the Concorde already being on fire, and that the massive fuel leak did not contribute to the fatal nature of that fire - i.e. "it would have crashed and burnt without the tire burst".