Monday morning in Blighty
Quotes from Saint-Ex:
"To their great credit, BA had the aircraft back in service shortly afterwards..."
Just in case that causes any reader to infer that the Habsheim accident a/c was operated by, or owned by, BA: it was neither.
I think we did ground our A320s for about 24 hours. The AF accident took place on a Sunday afternoon...
"...they [BA] had a highly respected and very critical flight safety department."
Yes, although I don't think there were any A320-qualified people specifically on it at that stage. We had only been operating our a/c down at Gatwick for a couple of months, and all of us aircrew and our fleet management were ex-BCAL.
"I did the translation of the initial report..."
Which report was that?