PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Concorde crash: Continental Airlines cleared by France court
Old 12th Dec 2012, 01:09
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Lyman
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
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Hi AZR, and thankyou for your well reasoned posts.

Here..

"Conclusion, part 2: As I wrote earlier that, if a BA aircraft had rolled on the strip, it would also crashed too (even with the equation better operated=able to stay airborne longer, there is no equivalent to Le Bourget near Heathrow, I believe?)."

I am not so sure....at all.

You neglect one important thing. With an intact and complete undercarriage, the BA Concorde would most likely not have adventured into the weeds, wiped out a light, and caused a long tail wind driven roll to urge the Captain to rotate immediately. Captain may have rejected the TO, though that is a stretch. Had he done so, he would have decelerated straight ahead, on tarmac, with likely an overrun. Off runway, and directionally challenged, the French Captain had to launch, or face disintegration on dirt. Because he was lacking a standoff spacer.


With an intact axle, at #2 tyre rupture, the forward truck would have maintained separation of tyres 1 and 2, allowing a smooth recovery of track. On BTSC, the #2 wheel migrated left the full 16 centimeters, towards the wheel of #1. Without the spacer, the ruptured tyre would certainly drift on the axle, nothing stopping it. This would have completely altered the carriage geometry, creating an intense out of balance condition, and enormous side loads on the tyres, pulling the a/c to the left.

I say the BA Concorde survives, though perhaps not without fatalities, had there been a similar fire.
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