Re DaveReidUK post:
The misfitting of fuel line spacers at an Air France maintenance facility seems to be a problem, re the axle spacer on the Concorde. If commercial pressures actually do over-ride safety, then something is drastically wrong. How did it pass inspection? I spent over fifty years in maintenance and quality control both working and managing. Mistakes like this are your worst nightmare. You set procedures like detailed sign-offs for each step and back it with quality control procedures so they do not occur.
Once in my career, a plane I worked on, actually an Avianca Super Connie, crashed, You cannot understand how low I and the other techs who had worked on it felt until we learned that it was not maintenance related accident. It still left a lesson engraved on me that I carried for the rest of my career.
Still do not understand why an engine trailing a huge fuel plume would be kept operating and reverse used after touchdown?