I guess its easy in hind sight to say they should have rejected takeoff regardless of an over run. But flight crew can only make judgments with the evidance presented to them in chaotic circumstances. This can lead to errors of judgment in the heat of the moment and it is almost always imperative to follow the established procedures for those circumstances.

I wonder though, if in the flight deck you had the outside pictures of the bird and could see what every one else could see, would you have still taken off?

I could be wrong, but I havn't seen anything yet in my humble opinion to say that the flight crew had indications to say that they where "really really screwed".

Golden Rivit

The BEA crash report is a fascinating document.

Reading the timeline on pages 161/162, everything was normal at V1. The tyre burst occurred 6 seconds after V1, at which point the crew became aware that something was wrong. The captain commenced rotation before engines 1 and 2 surged, before any engine fire warnings were received, and before ATC informed him of the fire.

Pages 147-154 deal thoroughly with the left main bogie, and conclude:

"Overall, the balance of forces at the centre of the bogie would result in self-aligning moment and two loads whose resultant is increased drag, that is to say a tendency to make the aircraft yaw to the left. The level of this drag would be at most around 1000 daN, very low in relation to the thrust of the engines. The influence of possible sideslip on the trajectory is thus very low or negligible."

The photograph on page 160 appears to me to show the aircraft tracking straight down the runway for a couple of hundred metres after the fire started.

Mr Bear
Possibly.

I thought that I had read your words and understood them, although they were a little bit lacking in clarity to my mind.

Anyway, I have a firm belief that proper judicial process was applied to this hearing, according to the relevant law, and that those who bash Frogs have no real concept of the relevant law and procedures.

Other contributors can prattle on to their heart's content about their armchair views of what was behind this tragedy.

The court heard expert evidence from all sides.

Continental's lawyer, Olivier Metznel, is one of France's leading lawyers. He was involved or may still be in the the De Villepin / Clearstream case, and the Bettencourt case.

Even with his skill as an advocate, he was unable to convince the court that his client was not blameworthy. The court in other words did not buy his / Continental's version of events.

Read the transcripts.

Read the judgement.

As others have remarked, there is a degree of blame at the door of EADS, the modern term for the builder of that gracious bird. 30%.

The sale of a dozen or so premium seats by Continental will cover the fine.

Why is nobody impressed by the sense of dimension shown by the prosecution and the court in its judgement?

Because bashing the French is legitimate.

Had a French operated aircraft shed a piece of very dodgy repair work in front of an American aircraft on a runway in the US, would we be in the realm of Euro 200,00?

I think we would be in the realm of $2,000,000

And she tracked to the left (port) - your point being?

What you've got there is a track induced by a combination of the tyre burst, engine damage due to FOD and fire and an unknown amount of control linkage damage due to same.

Of course, we have the advantage of hindsight, which the pilots didn't. This wasn't just *a* worst-case scenario, this was a combination of *several* worst case scenarios in terms of damage caused and the point in the take-off roll at which the damage was initiated.

All good points. Had Concorde launched just prior to CAL and left a trail of tyres wheel parts, ?? CAL hits a large piece of tyre, skids off piste, burns and has fatalities, and the drama is @JFK?? No one need fear the slammer, and the Fines would have been much larger. Justified?? To each his own, injustice fuels many passionate dramas.

bear

Lemurian
 

I have read the CVR transcript translated into English and apparently the F/E stated "shut down engine two". I accept that this 'statement' could have easily been a question as I agree that the Captain did one second later order the engine fire procedure.

So my apologies - I have changed my mind following your post as it is by no means 'certain' that the F/E actually shut down the engine without command from The Captain.


Regards
Exeng

Mr Bear

Once again you have not been paying attention. The prosecution at Pontoise, not Paris as so many ignorant posters would have it, pleaded for a suspended jail sentence.

Now, to what lengths do I have to go to explain what that means?

Well, here goes.

If the condemned carries out the same act again, he may be tried and found guilty of an offense. He will then endure the double sanction, i.e. the first verdict, plus whatever the second verdict prescribed.

The Continental mechanic has probably many sleepless nights when he recalls what happened.

French justice was never designed to make scapegoats.

It has a duty, however, to establish the facts. Months of hearing evidence and pleadings served that end.

DozyWannabe and wings folded have clearly and logically explained why they agree with the court's verdict. This is also my opinion.

What I find unacceptable is the view that the court in reaching this verdict must be corrupt etc. Then to go even further and make racist remarks is offensive.

Bear with regard to your point that if a similiar incident had have happened at "@JFK No need fear the slammer" (sic). Well aviation is international and that means you have to accept different outcomes in different countries. Eg if I murdered someone in the UK I would get a life sentence yet if I did the same thing in Texas then I could well be executed. I understand and accept that and would not then keep on making the point that UK legal system is better than the USA system.

So in conclussion I hope that we can have a civilised debate and refain from boasting about how things would have been done differently and better in our own country.
Regards
Nick
ps Bear I know that you stated that any fine in the USA would have been greater. Even taking that into account I still stand by my conclussion.

Nick

Duly noted, and I regret that my comment "To each his own" may have implied a boast, or other less than helpful conclusion. I try not to make such judgments as I appear to have garnered some animosity here!!

Thanks for your kind response, I'll be more careful

bear

Mr Thomas,

I am absolutley certain that wherever such a tragic event occurs, local law is applied as a matter of course.

One cannot blame the French for having been too hasty, nor not diligent enough.

The length of the hearing speaks for itself.

But sad francophobes sat in front of their keyboards knew the truth well before evidence was adduced.. The outcome for them was no surprise, apparently. They had decided that it was a French stitch up.

The remark of a poster on this forum quoting Continental's lawyer, Maitre Olivier Metznel as saying what he said about the process, should be read in the context of what he has said about the same legal process when it came up with an outcome which suited his client.

Wings folded please call me Nick.

I agree wholeheartly with all your points in your last post.

I should have made it clear in my last post that my plea not to boast, was in reference to legal systems. I think differences of view concerning technical matters is interesting; as long as they are not used to question the verdict of the court or to back up racist claims.

Bear I feel no animosity towards you. I do though find the racist remarks of some posters repugnant. If that is construed as animosity: so be it.

Regards
Nick

Why shouldn't the verdict of the court be questioned?

I assume that the possibility of appeal is open to those convicted, which suggests that even the legal system does not believe its abilities to reach a fair and correct verdict should not be questioned.

Are there any links? Was testimony of these presumably unimpeachable witnesses entered into the record? If true and not inaccurate hearsay, this is shocking news to me.

The only way out of that one would be to fiddle faddle with the positioning of the piece of metal on the runway.

Nick,

Since we are now familiar.

I, perhaps like you, am not wise enough to know exactly what happened on that fatefull day in July some years ago.

Many posters here and on previous threads appear to have the absolute knowledge about the whole topic.

They were not in the crew. They were, of course, not even on board.

It seems to me that a tragic incident put an end to a glorious episode of aviation.

Lives were lost, in the airframe and on the ground.

I have lost close relatives in less dramatic circumstances. We probably all have.

Loss of life is not, or should not be an issue of nationality, nor of national pride.

Hi,

Correct indeed ...
To notice that Vr is rotation speed.
The Concorde rotated before Vr (it's also in BEA report)
Why?
Cause the plane was departing from the runway
(hence the broken bulbs) and the B-747 with the french president Chirac aboard was near or on the trajectory (also hence the report of fire by the pilot(s) of this B-747)
So .. in fact the pilot(s) was not able to cope with the departing from runway before any destruction of moving surfaces

Oh please read the transcripts of the trial.

jcjeant,
Your laziness in not bothering to read the report or the minutes of the trial but still have an opinion astounds me.
You certainly don't know what I'm taking about and I wonder whether you have an idea on what you are talking about.
And Chirac has never been anywhere near that accident and his aircraft was in no way involved.
May be the Spiegel got it wrong as much as Fox and the Murdoch network.
I have a feeling I am going to suggest you do what has been told to two of your ilk.
The most astounding fact is after some 150 posts, some of a really high calibre from PBL, DozyWannabe, Wings and quite a few others, the themes go round and round... ad nauseam...which is exactly how I feel : nauseated by the stench of blinkered asses .

I'm still disturbed by these facts.

If you can't control the aircraft with an engine failure, then you might want to consider that there is a serious failure, and you may not get airborne for very long. Even after V1 it's better to stick it somewhere than take off into the unknown.

Remember the 748 at STN years ago, landing back on.

This is pilot error, pure and simple, not CO's fault.

Hi,

I read the minutes of the trial here:
mars 2010 Procès du crash du CONCORDE
Do you have a better source ?

Ex Cargo Clown
 

According to the BEA report, the captain had started to rotate early because the crew clearly perceived that there was something wrong with the aircraft, but before any engine surge or fire warning was received.

It was well after V1. There was going to be no chance of stopping before the aerodrome boundary and the main road beyond.

Given the choice between lifting a rattling aircraft into the air, or aborting the takeoff for a guaranteed high-speed crash at the boundary in a fully-loaded, fully-fuelled aircraft, which would you have done?