Solari,
The red flags started to go up when they began to lay down timelines for a "return to service" of these a/c
prior to any comprehensive understanding of the accident, any concrete determination of what would need to be modified on these 25 year old aircraft, or how they would go about engineering those alterations.
The timeline for mods had obviously been determined by BA & AF's need to get their supersonic flagships back in the air in order to
restore their profit schedules. The economic incentives to push modifications and get these a/c back into service, before the losses sustained while they're grounded preclude their viability in the fleet, are all too clear.
So here we are today--the timeline
hasn't changed--and I can't help but find that a wee bit unsettling. Now, that doesn't mean that anything deliberately untoward is going on--but it isn't doing too much to allay my cynicism about what their priorities lie.
Whether or not the Civil Aviation Authority signs off on the modifications and reinstates Concorde's certificate of airworthiness is something, as yet, to be seen.
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