As I recall, it was barely producing thrust by the time they cleared the threshold and would have continued to decrease to practically none in a matter of seconds. The "controversy", if you can call it that, was purely that the F/E broke protocol by shutting it down without an order from the Captain.

The CVR indicates that they believed they were dealing with an engine fire at first, and I'd be willing to speculate that the Captain would have been fully focused on trying to maintain control as (unknown to him) the electronics and flight surfaces began to disintegrate - so the F/E made an executive decision to shut the engine down and pull the fire handle.

So to answer the original question of "was it producing significant thrust", the answer would have to be "unlikely", and the answer to the implied question of whether the outcome would have been affected would have to be "highly unlikely".

Ex-Cargo-Clown : There's no evidence that the strip itself hit the wing - the damage was caused by fragments of tyre striking the underside of the fuel tank and the fuel itself punching a hole through it due to fluid dynamics. I'd be interested to hear how this would constitute a "cover-up" because - as has been pointed out by several people - EADS (i.e Airbus) were also assigned some blame.

Even better then, a piece of stainless steel would do exactly the same if not worse to the tyre, so why the concentrating on it being Ti rather than SS.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck......

Tyre failure also caused the loss of a Swissair aircraft in the 1960s when it exploded after retraction and caused a catastrophic failure of the wing spar.

In my mind the Concorde prosecution was not the only dubious legal action taken by an aviation authority - the CAA prosecuted Captain Glen Stewart after he messed up a missed approach at Heathrow. A year later he committed suicide.

V1 is not a go/no go speed.
It is a reference speed in a balanced field take off - an engine failure at or below V1 will mean the aircraft should be able to stop within the runway (and associated stopway).
There have been many cases where a take off has been discontinued after V1 - rightly or wrongly.

Concorde had a directional control problem as well as the engine failure.
It rotated below VR and never attained V2 - if I remember correctly.
V2 is the engine out safety speed.
Despite the FO making several low speed calls speed was traded for altitude.
A swept wing stalls at approx. AOA of 45 degrees but has an exponential increase of drag with increase of AOA.

BA had a concord that had an engine go into reverse after lift off in the mid 70s - it passed over my house, at night, around 1000ft. My house was 35NM from LHR.
I believe the EngOut procedure was maintain V2 until 500ft, maintain 500ft until V?, maintain V? until 1500ft, maintain 1500ft until V??, climb at V??.
It crossed the Bristol channel at around 3000ft.

The point being on 3 engines at max TOW, with the gear up and cool tempr it's performance was marginal when flown at the correct speed; Gear down, engine out and below V2 no chance (unless it was flown in ground effect).

BEA had a Trident hit the approach lights during TO out of Malta at night with the stick shaker going - the captain flew it on radio altimeter in ground effect until he had burnt enough fuel and was able to accelerate to a normal flying speed.

It has surprised me that I have never seen a post re the decision to take an aircraft into the air when directional control has been lost????

Another observation - why did the CAA so quickly ground BA's Concords?

Did it have anything to do with the numerous AAIB reports of bits falling off and other incidents?

Were they waiting for an excuse?

And as the post regarding the French character traits as seen by the Anglo Saxons..... there are intelligent ones with flying ability and a sense of humour - I've met two!

Read the preceding posts - it was a jerry-rigged part incorrectly fitted. I think the point is that if the part had been made of the correct material it would have been easier to fit correctly and would likely not have fallen off.

Apples and oranges - the French judicial system is automatically involved in air accidents in France in a way that it is not in the UK. I'm struggling to see the connection with the Stewart case - tragic though that was - where the CAA handled the investigation because the AAIB were fully committed to Kegworth.

I'm pretty sure it was covered in another thread many years ago, but I think the decision to get airborne had to do with being unable to stop within the remaining runway length (at the end of which was the main road into the airport), coupled with the fact that they weren't aware that they'd lost directional control - they thought they had an engine fire.

Better safe than sorry. It's pretty easy to ground a type that only has 12 airframes in service.

I don't see the BEA report suggesting anything beyond the material used not being to specifications. It is mentioned that an adjacent wear strip was impacting and distorting the strip when cowls were closed. Previous posts here on the matter seem based on the erroneous assumption that the strip should have been made of aluminum.

Blame a piece of metal, a tack, chewing gum, whatever FOD you want........the pilots chose to 'GO' and rotated with a fire, rather then pull the levers and stand on the brakes.

In particular:

No, I emphatically do not. It was you who did, not me. Read your own posts.

Thanks DW
 

Will take your word on the takeoff decision. Too bad the winds were not enough for ATC to switch runways. Could have been an entirely different story altogether.

I'm guessing it had a purpose of some sort. Haven't really heard of the alternative theories other than this spacer seemed significant to many familiar with the case.

wings folded

You definitely say that I believe "there should have been no Trial". I said no such thing.

Your conclusion as to what I "Think" is incorrect.

bearfoil

Hi,

When you read all the experts reports (at the trial) it's appears that this part was rigged incorrectly and was to fall one day or another made of the good or bad material.
The holes in the receiving body and in the part were not manufactured with the state of art .... (spacing .. number of .. etc)
(it was no one of the spare parts and so was manufactured on situ )
Also the mechanic added some bonding product (and it's appears to be not a practise in the maintenance book)

Yes .. it is a know problem with this engine .. and this wear strip was to be replaced many time .. cause .. it's a wear strip
Also looong discussion during the trial about the problem ...

"I've never seen a reason given for why it might have been on fire before hitting the strip. Is there one?"
Yes ,"Pencil Whipping" the tire pressures on the line check,Along with wobbly wheel from missing spacer.
Also someone mentioned," the Concord had no design defects, How does that jibe with this,Continental is the ideal scapegoat. Besides the offense, in French eyes, of being foreign, a small titanium strip fallen from a Continental plane taking off before the Concorde was found on the runway. This, French investigators -- often loyal former employees of Air France -- conveniently concluded, slashed the Concord's tire and caused the accident. Case closed, with victims' families already paid generous financial settlements and sworn to silence.

That overlooks a few awkward things pointed out by Continental's lawyers and a dogged investigative reporter for a French TV channel. Like the plane being overloaded with baggage. Like a wheel spacer that, due to an Air France maintenance error, was missing from the left main gear, leaving it skewed. (Air France itself, whose careless maintenance was noted even by French investigators, is bumptiously suing Continental in the trial. Malicious gossips wonder why it's not a defendant instead.) Like testimony by a number of reliable eyewitnesses, including airport firemen and the veteran captain of Jacques Chirac's taxiing plane, that the Concorde caught fire several hundred yards before it could have struck the titanium strip.

But the most damning argument against Concorde is its record of near disasters. "French civil aviation authorities should have stopped Concorde service years ago," argues Olivier Metzner, Continental's lead lawyer. "They wanted to protect the image of France it projected." If the Paris disaster was Concord's first and only fatal crash, facts emerging in the current trial make clear that many passengers are lucky to be alive today: from 1976 to 2000 they unwittingly survived no fewer than 57 tire-related incidents. Thirty-two blowouts damaged the aircraft's structure, engines, or hydraulics, and six resulted in penetration of one or more fuel tanks.

The worst, uncannily like the Paris crash, occurred in Washington on June 14, 1979. Air France Flight 054 to Paris blew two tires on its left main gear on takeoff from Dulles airport, hurling rubber and wheel rim debris at the left wing and engines. After a frantic passenger practically forced a crew member to look through his window at a 12-square-foot hole in the wing, the flight crew barely managed a landing at Dulles with Jet A-1 fuel spewing from a dozen holes in fuel tanks, engine damage, severed electrical cables, and loss of two out of three hydraulic systems.

The near-catastrophes continued. James B. King, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, wrote to his French counterpart on November 9, 1981, expressing his "serious concern" about "the repetitive nature of these incidents." Besides the tire problems, Concord's occasionally lost parts of their elevators and rudders in flight. In 1998 the Federal Aviation Agency, noting "an unsafe condition" might exist on the Olympus engines that could result in shutdown or fire, ordered special inspections. As the resulting study warned presciently, "A major technical event would probably end Concorde operation."

Please explain your post number 139 which says inter alia:

http://www.1001crash.com/index-page-...crash-164.html

Re loss of directional control on the runway - view image of soot trail on the runway.

There have been several take off abandons after V1 - some successful and others not.

The pilot handling should have realised that it wasn't a simple failure as he couldn't keep the aircraft on the runway.

An engine out, gear down and rotating way b4 Vr there was very little chance of continued flight.

It is always better to crash in control than not, better still don't crash at all.

blind pew:

The soot trail indicates the path both before and after the aircraft got into the air - it would have been entirely reasonable for the Captain to assume that the loss of directional stability on the ground was due to the tyre burst and elect to get airborne. Once in the air the crew got an indication of an engine fire, which - they believed - was their primary problem right up until the end. If it had been just a burst tyre and an engine fire, they would have had ample time and thrust to make it to Le Bourget, which was again indicated by the CVR as their intended course of action. Unfortunately it is unlikely they were ever aware of the full scale of their predicament.

Golden Rivit:

I have not the words. Let's start with the fact that the court found EADS (part French, remember...) partially responsible and work forward from there.

Two things greatly concern me about this bizarre decision.

Firstly, I believe the aircraft "collected" a bit of airfield lighting and grass due to going "off piste", I'm pretty sure Concorde had enought rudder/NWS authority to cope with assymetric thrust, so that was probably the spacer = AF fault

Secondly, I'm no Concorde pilot, but I do know Delta wings don't stall, they just run out of lift so to speak, so I would love to know why you would allow speed to decay so quickly whilst climbing to 200ft. I'd be happy with a V/S of 1 per hour if needs be to maintain speed. And if they saw the speed get to the point whereas you were going to plummet to the ground, trade off altitude for speed and stick it in a field. A controlled crash is better than an uncontrolled one. = AF fault.

exeng:
Rubbish. You're just citing numerous article from the gutter press and some posters with an agenda and I'm surprised that you did not read the report... because it's French, right ?
This is first the French original text :
"A 14 h 43 min 24,8 s, l.OMN annonce « coupe le moteur 2 ». Dans la même seconde, le
commandant de bord appelle la procédure feu réacteur. Moins de deux secondes plus tard, on entend un bruit que l'analyse spectrale et l'examen des sélecteurs HP ont montré être dû à la manette de puissance amenée en butée ralenti"
...and the English explanation text : "The exceptional environment described above quite naturally led the FE to ask to shut down the engine. This was immediately confirmed by the Captain’s calling for the engine fire procedure. This engine had in fact practically been at idle power for several seconds and the fire alarm was sounding. The engine was therefore shut down following the “engine fire” procedure after having run for twelve seconds at low power. It is important to note that the Concorde Flight Manual requires an immediate reaction by the crew in case of a red alarm"

blind pew :please read the official definition of V1 before you make a fool of yourself :
"2.1.2. Decision Speed: V1
JAR 25.107 Subpart B FAR 25.107 Subpart B
V1 is the maximum speed at which the crew can decide to reject the takeoff,
and is ensured to stop the aircraft within the limits of the runway."

Rubbish. There was a thrust asymetry, therefore some directional control problems the crew coped rather well with until the destruction of the elevons (?) on the left side.

It's because you're not a pilot who has dicussed all sorts of possible occurences : here the exploded tyre was reducing his acceleration and causing him all sorts of directional problems ; plus at that speed, braking on a reduced number of brakes wasn't probably the best idea ; he's way past V1 so a greater acceleration should be possible airborne.
That's what the report stated in different terms than mine :"In
this exceptional and unknown environment, the decision to take off as soon as possible appears to have become compelling. The rate of the rotation also appears to confirm that the pilot was conscious of taking off at a speed below VR."

If that is what amounts to humour in your country, it's in a far direr state than I thought : prejudice, racism, xenophobia, arrogance...
Yes, go get laid, too !

See here:

Annexe 12

There wasn't any significant deviation from centreline until after the tyre burst. Added to which the aircraft had flown several times with the spacer missing and no significant issues were reported.

Have a look at that track and imagine what would have happened if he'd stayed on the ground (bearing in mind that at lift off he was near enough on 200 knots).

wings folded

Yes, Thanks. I stated my opinion about the "Standard" of Proof not being met as an opinion, for what it may be worth. From that, you concluded that I believed that because of that opinion, I also believed there should have been no trial. This is not the case. A misunderstanding?? My original post had to do with post Trial findings, not the pre Trial "Foundation". Sorry.....

bear

Assymetric thrust and a tyre burst shouldn't bring give a track like that.

This looks like gross mishandling and then panic setting in resulting in a premature rotation and we know the rest.

Any SSC pilots want to comment on how easy she was to control in asymmetric conditions?

I'm not having it that the tyre burst caused this as you would actually create more drag on the port side, where the engine has failed.

bravo Lemurian
 

and I have to say again,

If some people here could just stick to Rumours and News
the tread would be much easier to read

without all their insinuations and "mad dog barking" too
:}

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?