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sispanys ria
The runway inspection has nothing to do with this issue. A safe aircraft is supposed to be able to suffer a tyre loss without causing fuel tank perforation, fire, and loss of control. However the "issue" has two parts. The airworthiness part and the civil part. The airworthiness part as discussed above has been addressed by removing the certificate. The civil part operates under entirely different standards and is to be addressed in a french court (an eye for an eye). |
My previous post in this thread was a bit too black, but what I am trying to say is that regardless of all the good technical discussions taking place, in simple terms it is really bad aviation to have bits fall off an aeroplane and then running over them at 100+ km/h. This should just not be happening. Typically the French are trying to incriminate others to deflect attention from their own faults. |
Regardless of the cause one thing is for certain. If we are to criminalize aircraft accidents, then we are going to set airline safety back 50 years. Instead of working together with authorities during accident investigations airline personnel, if they are smart, will dummy up for fear of prosecution. It started with Value Jet and continues today.
Mistakes happen. Do you acutally think that any mechanic, pilot, or otherwise goes to work thinking "I think I will cause an accident today"? Hardly. |
BEagle,
I think you'll find that BA certainly always operated Concorde by the book! Certainty breeds complacency… iX |
If we are to criminalize aircraft accidents, then we are going to set airline safety back 50 years. |
can a anybody tell me where to find the EAD 001-09-2001 relating to the accident (the AD issued after the offical accident report)
I have looked in EASA and UK CAA sites and cannot source Thanks |
Update today: manslaughter trial to start in 2010, according to French prosecutors.
French Concorde Crash Manslaughter Trial To Begin In Feb 2010 |
Standard of care
67 tire blowouts and seven tank ruptures? Manslaughter seems rather an ambitious path. Willful negligence and lack of disclosure, purposeful wrongdoing? Continental or Air France? Air France. CAL was trying to fix something (non-standard?). Air France was trying not to.
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Well, obviously very pressing for them to sort this out, 10 feckin years :confused:
I know the wheels of justice turn slowly in France , , , , , mes franchiment :hmm: |
Quote:
"If we are to criminalize aircraft accidents, then we are going to set airline safety back 50 years." No, you must make the difference between a mistake and a fault. Maintaining the Concorde airworthiness so many years with so many precursory accidents and serious incidents is a serious fault |
Continental on trial for deadly Concorde crash
Continental on trial for deadly Concorde crash | Herald Sun
US airline Continental and two of its employees go on trial this week for the manslaughter of 113 people who died in a Concorde crash that put an end to the dream of supersonic travel. US airline Continental and two of its employees go on trial this week for the manslaughter of 113 people who died in a Concorde crash that put an end to the dream of supersonic travel. A former French civil aviation official and two senior members of the Concorde program will be tried on the same charge from Tuesday in a court near Paris, with proceedings expected to last four months. The New York-bound jet crashed in a ball of fire shortly after take-off from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on July 25, 2000, killing all 109 people on board - most of them Germans - and four hotel workers on the ground. The blazing Concorde demolished an airport hotel when it hurtled to the ground in a crash that marked the beginning of the end for the world's first -- and thus far only -- regular supersonic jet service. Air France and British Airways grounded their Concordes for 15 months after the crash and, after a brief resumption, finally put an end to supersonic commercial service in 2003. The plane, born of British and French collaboration, embarked on its maiden commercial flight in 1976. Only 20 were manufactured: six were used for development and the remaining 14 flew mainly trans-Atlantic routes at speeds of up to 2170km/h. A French accident inquiry concluded in December 2004 that the Paris disaster was partly caused by a strip of metal that fell on the runway from a Continental Airlines DC-10 plane that took off just before the supersonic jet. The Concorde, most of whose German passengers were due to board a Caribbean cruise ship in New York, ran over the super-hard titanium strip, which shredded one of its tyres, causing a blow-out and sending debris flying into an engine and a fuel tank. Continental is charged over a failure to properly maintain its aircraft, along with two US employees: John Taylor, a mechanic who allegedly fitted the non-standard strip, and airline chief of maintenance Stanley Ford. An arrest warrant was issued for Mr Taylor after he failed to show up to be questioned by investigators here, and, according to his lawyer, he will not be attending the trial in the court in Pontoise, northwest of Paris. Mr Taylor's lawyer declined to say if his client would show up in court. The former Concorde officials and French aviation boss are also accused of failing to detect and set right faults on the supersonic aircraft, brought to light during the investigation and thought to have contributed to the crash. Henri Perrier was director of the first Concorde program at Aerospatiale, now part of the EADS group, from 1978 to 1994, while Jacques Herubel was Concorde's chief engineer from 1993 to 1995. Both men are accused of ignoring warning signs from a string of incidents on Concorde planes, which during their 27 years of service suffered dozens of tyre blowouts or wheel damage that in several cases pierced the fuel tanks. Finally Claude Frantzen, director of technical services at the French civil aviation authority DGAC from 1970 to 1994, is accused of overlooking a fault on Concorde's distinctive delta-shaped wings, which held its fuel tanks. The trial will seek to pin down the share of responsibility of the US airline, the Concorde and French aviation officials. Most of the victims' families agreed not to take legal action in exchange for compensation from Air France, EADS, Continental and the Goodyear tyre manufacturer. The amount they received has not been made public, but reports said that around $US100 million ($A111.78 million) was shared out among some 700 relatives of the dead. Throughout the eight-year investigation, Continental pledged to fight any charges in the case. |
Concorde trial
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In the hands of true professionals Concorde was an extremely safe aircraft indeed. But this crash followed many French near-misses, spread over all the years of Concorde operation. Misses due to questionable airmanship or maintenance, often combinations of both. Maybe we will get the truth and not a cover up this time?
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I would suggest this is more about compensation.This is one time when all the holes lined up in the swiss cheese.A tragic loss of life and the end of an era.
J |
Let's have another one, get DGAC on trial for allowing the continuing use of English/French at CDG & elsewhere...now there's a real accident waiting to happen (again).
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I'd suggest it's more about French face-saving. Maybe we'll hear some details of the arguments in due course, but it seems a strange. IIRC the story is that a bit fell of a CO aircraft, wasn't cleared off the runway before the Concorde began its takeoff roll, and then caused the fatal puncture to the fuel tank. But bits do fall of aircraft now and again, and if the finger of blame points anywhere here (and we don't just say it was a tragic lining up of holes) then wouldn't the airport be first in line for not clearing the runway?
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I'd suggest it's more about French face-saving. |
All will be revealed due to the magic combination of vested political interests and very well paid corporate lawyers.
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......Not to mention MULTIPLE eye-witness acounts (some of them French firemen!!) stating that the L/H gear area had flames eminaing long before the aircraft reached the titanium strip. . all of these accounts were dismissed out of hand by the BEA. (Oh, and ask the BEA who found out that the bogie spacerwas missing... it was a British engineer assisting at the crash site).
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If this thread is going to turn into the usual french bashing, then it is a horrible waste of pprune's bandwidth.
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This is NOT French bashing, in fact there is pressure in France to finally get the truth out about this tragic accident. There has seems to have been a deliberate and orchestrated hiding of facts from the very begining. Please read and learn and don't be so patronising sir. Honest debate is what PPrune forums are all about.
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I read down this thread from top to bottom and was waiting for something like this If this thread is going to turn into the usual french bashing, then it is a horrible waste of pprune's bandwidth. to rear its head.
Why is it a waste of bandwidth? If people have opinions surely this is the place to voice them. It has been acknowledged from the start that there were operational and maintenance related deficiencies in the way the SSC was operated by AF, and more recently there has been a lot of talk, speculation if you prefer, about the standards of airmanship in AF after a spate of incidents. Fingers have been pointed at Continental stating that they were to blame for the tragedy. Can you blame the people there for wanting to clear their name? By the way, as I recall, the Captain (Christian Marty if my memory is correct) was one of AF's most experienced and well regarded captains, so it will be interesting to see what comes out in this enquiry. |
Gobonastick. I'm not sure f you understand anything about this dreadful tragedy, but the French Judiciary are blaming Continental Airllnes for the bulk of the accident. Most relevantly learned people here are of the opinion that the explosive destruction of the tyre was more due to a comnination of being grossly overweight, the front wheels on the L/H U/C skewing badly from true (due to the missing spacer) and running over a very rough (awaiting repair) initial runway surface, NOT the strip on the runway.. Oh, and also the fuel tanks were under pressure, due to illegal placement of fuel inlet valves to over-ride, ('hiding' fuel in the fuel transfer galleries from the fuel gauging system/fuel weight computation). So when the tyre destruction occured (not a blow out in the normal sense) we have a terrible set of ingredients. This overweight aircraft veered hard along the L/H side of the runway, took out a taxi llight which in turn seriously damaged an engine. It then took off on 3 1/2 engines, way below V2 and in flames. A good, thrust producing engine was then shut down leaving 2 1/2 engines. RAF studies show that the only hope of extinguishing such a fuel fed fire is enough IAS to cause the flames to become detached from the source. The Bogie Beam alignment circuit on the L/H gear had been damaged, preventing raising of the gear. The aircraft desperately needed to climb and accelerate to survive; it could do neither, and tragically came down on the hotel at Gonez.
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Can somebody clarify why a charge of involuntary manslaughter has been applied in this case. I've seen this before in European aviation accidents but don't understand why it is applied in some cases and not others. What criteria must be satisfied that result in charges being laid against individuals.
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Originally Posted by M2dude
But this crash followed many French near-misses, spread over all the years of Concorde operation. Misses due to questionable airmanship or maintenance, often combinations of both.
All of these incidents could have led to exactly the same result. There was a major issue with the aircraft, voluntary ignored for decades by operators, civil aviations, crews and manufacturer. The tire incidents rate and related repetitive extensive damages have nothing to do with airmanship or maintenance (even if it played a significant role in 2000), it's above all a major design issue and blatant lacks of responsibilities from all involved parties (certainly not only French). I think this is pretty clear: http://www.bea-fr.org/docspa/2000/f-...appendix5p.pdf |
Oh dear, I do love armchair critics!! The REASON that BA had more incidents than AF was because BA both operated more A/C (7 as opposed to 5) and flew infinitely greater hours. Before you make statements like this you need to be in posession of a few facts. OK, everyone accepts that the original high pressure tyre design was far too volatile shall we say, but any damage done was relatively minor. No British aircraft ever had an A4 section of the lower wing blown out. And get your facts right before you make such statements about something you clearly know nothing about; many modifications were carried out to reduce/minimise tyre blow out incidents. And as people have been trying to explain to people like you, the BEA report was terribly tainted, with half-truths and ignored evidence. We an all post hyperlinks.
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The REASON that BA had more incidents than AF was because BA both operated more A/C (7 as opposed to 5) and flew infinitely greater hours. but any damage done was relatively minor 1981 Impacts on wing, Tank 5 penetrated, Hydraulics, Elevon, Engines 1/2/3 1985 Impacts on fuselage, damage to brake, Tank 5 penetrated, Engines 1 and 2, Deflector+I67 1988 Loss of wheel bolts, Impacts on wing, Tank 7 damaged 1993 Impacts on wing, Tank 8 penetrated, Green hydraulics, Engine 3, Deflector 1993 Impacts on wing, Deflector, Tank 1 penetrated And get your facts right before you make such statements about something you clearly know nothing about By the way the issue with the missing spacer wasn't on the takeoff phases but during the landings preceding the accident... |
Oh dear here we go again, so let me state that I have got no new information as to what caused the sad Concorde crash, but I might be able to help as to what happened in the past.
1] BA in the early years of operation did have a number of tyre problems with Concorde, but these were caused by FOD mainly on the departure stands.Concorde had very hard and high pressure tyres and so any FOD which was run over during push back or taxi usually penetrated the tyre and caused a deflation [slow or otherwise] of that tyre, but it now caused the other tyre on that axle to be overloaded, which usually caused it to shed its tread during the take off run. This detached tread usually damage the hydraulic pipes on the landing gear, sometimes damaged the wing, but nearly always was accompaanied by high vibration, surging engines [Usually both on that side]as the two engines ate the remains of the tyre. The vibration could be so bad that it was difficult to see the engine instruements. Once the tyre debrie had passed through the engine the vibration would stop and the engines operated normally, the only give away that they had run down was the yaw of the aircraft. Damage to the wing was normally done by the fibre glass/ metal water deflector in front of the tyres being ripped off [by the departing tread] and hitting the wing. To over come this certain mods were introduced 1] Flat tyre detection system was introduced 2] Protection guards positioned over exposed hydraulic pipes on the the landing gear 3] Stronger tyres and hubs were introduced 4] Metal reinforcing wires were fitted into the water deflector to prevent it from detaching itself and so hitting the wing All BA Concordes had all these Mods incorporated Also BA introduced a vigorous inspection of the push back area prior to departure If my memory serves me correctly by the 1990s only one company made the tyres for Concorde, which only used NEW tyres and not remoulds or retreads. IIRC that company was Kleber One thing about Concorde was that it had 3 hydraulic systems two normal and one emergency backup. These system were kept rigidly apart except at the flying controls power control jacks. Now Concorde had no mechanical back up to it's flying controls and so if all hyds was lost then there would be no way of controlling the aircraft, which as it was a delta wing would then pitch very nose up and possibly turn over. If you look at the picture of the aircraft taking off you can see that the flames are playing over the port inner elevon PFCU and I suggest would not take long to melt the hydraulic pipes of all three system so causing a complete hyd loss and so complete loss of control of the aircraft If my theory is correct the result might have been the same no matter what the crew did or how many engines were running. Just to finish up with the missing spacer apparently was missing for the previous 3 round trips of Paris to New York and those crews did not mention having any problems with the aircraft. Anyway a sad accident, as they all are. Brit312 |
"Just seems a remarkable coincidence to me that a clear cut in the tyre matched the shape of the metal strip which fell off the CO jet."
Before you continue with your dumb conclusions, why don't you go and do a bit of background reading. You'll then be armed with all the facts so blatantly ignored by our French Cousins. The fire started no where near the titanium strip. It's not disputed that the tyre ran over it (eventually), but what is clear is that the aircaft should have been in the air long before it ever reached it. Why it wasn't is well understood by most (non-BEA) and has already been alluded to above. |
Still 14 tire incidents after 1990 including 4 involving deflectors on BA's aircraft... 24 years of clearly identified and documented incidents. The FAA clearly expressed its concerned following the 1979 incident without appropriate action from the CAA, AAIB/BEA or manufacturer...
Before you continue with your dumb conclusions, why don't you go and do a bit of background reading. You'll then be armed with all the facts so blatantly ignored by our French Cousins. |
so what are you trying to say... That Concorde is/was the only aircraft flying that had some identified weakness and should have been grounded.
The risk was understood, and mitigated as far as possible. As many have said previously, 737's, MD11's still fly around despite having well publicised faults and there are plenty other issues less well publicised. The facts show why Concorde crashed on that day and had it been operated and maintained as per the manuals it would have had an immeasurably better chance of surviving. |
Very good points Brit312, but remember that bearing migration if the spacer was ommited would almost certainly be progressive, not sudden. Remamber that this take off was grossly over weight, with a CG well aft of the MAXIMUM allowable 54%, over an initially VERY rough surface not being used by any other traffic. (The runway, 26L was damaged at it's extremity and no other aircraft were using full length). The aft CG alone would have radically reduced the effectiveness of the nose wheel steering. (Oh, and the takeoff was into wind too). It takes very little imagination to picture the trauma that the L/H gear was experiencding. Your points regarding fire damage possibly seem valid, although PFCU pipes were titanium, if I remember rightly,but the FDR showed that the aircraft just ran out of flying speed when it came down. The whole point here is to try and get all of the facts out, not just those that suit AF!!
But over all, a good post with accurate information. |
It's funny to start your sentence with dumb conclusions and to end it with the same |
The risk was understood, and mitigated as far as possible. As many have said previously, 737's, MD11's still fly around despite having well publicised faults and there are plenty other issues less well publicised. |
I was wondering who produced the loadsheet for this flight. Was it completed by a dispatcher or by the crew ?
Who signed for it ? If it was a dispatcher, is he one of the 5 people on trial too? |
737 and MD11 might have some faults, you can't compare the amount of hours flown by concordes with other aircrafts. Concorde had a tire incidents rate 300.000 times higher than on A330. Not only the tire incidents couldn't be reduced to a reasonable level, but the main issue with the fuel tanks being regularly perforated was not mitigated. This has little to do with one specific operator or one specific country... |
M2dude,
Yes you are correct about the the runway but I thought the aircraft was taking off with a tail wind which in itself was not unusual but not at MTOW I have to say. As I remember it the the aircraft was 1000 kgs estimated over weight which I know sounds a lot, but at the rate Concorde used fuel during the takeoff [ 100,000 kgs/hr/ac] that excess would have been not considered too much of a performance problem. You are correct though that one of the problems with a 54% take off was light nosewheel steering control,and yes especially if the runway was bumpy but when runway directional control became a problem wasn't the aircraft approaching V1 when rudder would have been the principal control. Concorde was extremely sensitive to high nose up attitudes because of the extremely rapid increase in drag so any un intended increase in attitude would cause a rapid loss of airspeed. Without hydraulic all the automatic high incidence protection devices were useless and there was nothing they could do to stop it increasing, even more power would not have helped You have to wonder why if the aircraft was indeed heavy and they were faced with a tail wind for takeoff , why they did not opt for a different runway, but I am sure if they were alive today they would be asking themselves the same questions. Brit312 |
SFLY
By the way the issue with the missing spacer wasn't on the takeoff phases but during the landings preceding the accident... http://www.bea-fr.org/docspa/2000/f-...-sc000725a.pdf |
Up until the Paris disaster Concorde never hurt a soul If you would have fully read the final report (and be "knowledgeable") you should know why my numbers aren't coming from google. |
BRIT 312 sir; I think that you will find that the 'estmated' 1 Tonne overweight does not take into account 19 suitcases not on the loadsheet, placed in the aft hold. We can only 'guestimate', but these were good folk going on a world cruise, these cases are unlikely to be very light.
Also remember that it has not been satisfactorilly explaind why there was large amounts of right rudder applied early on the T/O roll, with no heading change. What you have to realise about the 'bumpy' runway is that the rougness was at the extreme end; ie the beginning of the T/O roll, and that was where the damage was done. Remember, the early part of the T/O requires NWS as well as rudder for full control. By the time the A/C was travelling fast enough for the rudder to become effective, the A/C was already well over to the right, because of the U/C problems. Your point about flying at the backside of the drag curve is of course correct, however there is no evidence that there was a detected loss of B, G or Y fluid. As I said before,did not have sufficient IAS, and the A/C needed to climb and accelerate, but because of reported factors it could do neither, once engine 2 was shut down there was absolutely no chance of survival. |
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