French Concorde crash
 

The French court will hand down its verdict on Monday 6th Dec in a 10-year-old case brought to decide what caused the crash of an Air France Concorde in 2000, which killed 113 people and hastened the end of luxury supersonic travel.

Sadly, no. It's not the court that can "decide" what happened.

What caused the crash is already well known, even if some contributary factors can be argued (the Swiss cheese arguments, etc.).

The current court case is ridiculous, an unfortunate consequence of the French legal system, and of course a rich dog's dinner for the lawyers for the parties involved.

Their "verdict" will be futile... even more so since the aircraft is no longer flying.

Nevertheless, thanks for opening a separate thread on the subject!

We have an interesting 'technical' thread going on the Tech Log forum, and this may prevent it being polluted by an endless rehash of the crash story.

CJ

Well I wonder if they will come to the conclusion that you don't fly an overweight burning wreck through the air, or it will be pilot buddy apologists, wringing their hands about all the 'factors' involved to muddle the clear facts....

Well, who smelted the Titanium?!?

bear

Any proper review of the aircraft's history prior to the crash would have shown that it did not meet the relevant expectations upon which affirmative airworthiness decisions are made.

Will the DGAC bear the brunt?

Je crois que...

non...

The Americain cour de justice is not much better, at least when it comes to civil suits.

Hi,

I read .....

Source ...
Concorde : le verdict : Les dossiers noirs du transport aérien

The verdict will certainly be published in due time here:
mars 2010 Procès du crash du CONCORDE

Saskatoon,
So far, there ARE still thee Frenchmen "on the list", Henri Perrier, Jacques Hérubel and Claude Frantzen (yes, DGAC !).

Lunacy. Or consipracy?

Court Ruling
 

More from the BBC here:

BBC News - Continental 'responsible' for Concorde crash in 2000

There was a very interesting reconstruction and reporter investigation conducted by National Geographic Channel. They interviewed many people, including French technical staff who were eye witnesses. What came out was far from conclusive that it was caused by 'that single piece of metal' puncturing the wing. These guys claimed to have seen other things, but were not listened too. Where's Michael Moore when you need him? I'm not trying to trivialise the issue, but the program did raise some question which, in the aftermath, do not appear to have been answered. It may not have been such a simple stright forward matter. I stand to be corrected in the final report.

France will never blame a French and certainly never Air France for not complying with the maintenance procedures! Shame on them!
Remember Toronto or the South Atlantic? It's never their fault. I know what company I decide not to choose when I fly...

Why not rename the thread "American Concorde crash" to reflect the "responsibilty"? :yuk:

Supersonic passenger decade - Flight International 1986
 

A January 25, 1986 Flight International article - Supersonic passenger decade - can be found at these links:

air france | concorde | 1986 | 0214 | Flight Archive
air france | concorde | 1986 | 0215 | Flight Archive
airbus | concorde | 1986 | 0216 | Flight Archive
air france | concorde | 1986 | 0217 | Flight Archive
air france | concorde | 1986 | 0218 | Flight Archive
air france | 1986 | 0219 | Flight Archive

The FAA type certification of the Concorde issued April 23, 1974, can be found at this link:

Special Conditions; Societe Nationale Industrielle Aerospatiale/British

It's going to be a good Christmas for the Tort lawyers.

- and a bad one for Continental.

It seems beyond belief to me that an airline is not fined ten times that amount for perpetrating such an appallingly gash and illegal "repair" to an aircraft even if it hurt no one. $200.000 for that would be getting off scot-free.

As they caused the deaths of over 100 people and destroyed hundreds of millions in property through that criminal negligence then the fine is a bloody insult to the victims and their families. There should be three or four more zeros on the end of it.

And why is Air France not on the block too, their negligence led directly to the crash too?

A whitewash and utter disgrace.

The aircraft was overweight, C of G outside the aft limit, taking off downwind, a 10 inch spacer missing from the main undercarriage and eyewitnesses reported that it was already on fire before it hit the titanium. There is more, but not un Grenouille to blame.

chauvinism: exaggerated or aggressive patriotism
The legendary Nicolas Chauvin was a Frenchman. What else did we expect?

A Paris court has said Continental Airlines was "criminally responsible" for the crash of a Concorde supersonic jet 10 years ago, and fined it 200,000 euros (£170,000).

It has also been ordered to pay 1m euros to the jet's operator Air France.

A Continental mechanic, John Taylor, was given a 15-month suspended prison sentence over the crash.

Continental has said it will appeal, saying the verdict "only protects French interests".

Source:

BBC News - Continental 'responsible' for Concorde crash in 2000

Continentals response is what you'd expect from them, pretty low class IMO

Verdict is exactly the whitewash I (and many others) predicted. Continental and John Taylor (mechanic)....total garbage IMO.

I would absolutely love it if the FAA and US Government ban french registered aircraft from their airspace.

You can come out with "Mickey Mouse" verdicts like this, that completely ignore the facts.

I'm no Americophile, but this decision is just ridiculous.

Entirely predictable, but ultimately someone is to blame for everything that goes wrong other than a Tsunami, and even then it's their own fault or the authorities for allow them to live near water!!

Bits fall off aircraft and CDG is amongst the worse in terms of ramp and taxiways for rubbish, i have seen dogs running around for 5 hours with no one doing anything about, i have very nearly taxied over suitcases shed from speeding baggage trucks, even if a whole flap section fell off an aircraft 50% of the pilots would be unaware because they use French & English in equal measure, so half the time you don't have a clue whats going on!!

Even if you report something the best you'll get is "I call you back"

The holes lined up
 

This ludicrous verdict certainly raises questions about French jurisprudence and, sadly, the ability of the relevant French aviation authorities to conduct apolitical, fact based, aircrash investigations.

This smells worse than a piece of camembert cheese.

A French operated, French owned, French crewed, French designed and built (partially) aircraft crashes on departure from a French airport.

I am therefore at a loss to understand why anyone might think that the French could in any way be at fault. They never are.

I am not making light of this tragedy but it does once again prove the utter contempt with which the Gallic nation treat the rest of the world.

Titanium turtle
 

This is an outrageous decision. Just show a material link with an event and you can be made responsible. I am guilty because I did slam the door and my scarred neighbor upstairs dropped the pot of hot tea onto her cat, scalding it…

Who to blame if it were a turtle crossing the runway that made the tire burst?

And now, of course, legal appeal …

They did, however, in this instance, turn over the correct CVR and flight recorder to the courts. There is some progress.

This reminds me of the use of the coutroom argument "because of" or "if not for" used to find blame enough to claim damages.

However, in aviation one does not begin to prove negligence until considerations of design mitigation are examined such as "in spite of" which presume many of these so called minor incidents occurring over the life of the fleet and actions taken to mitigate their effects since it is impossible to eliminate all such intiating events.

Courtroom arguments have no measurable effect on aviation safety processes since their objectives are not the same.

So Sad
 

Whose runway was it?
Who is responsible to clear it?
Who said Ok to take off?

Why blame the Mechanic & Airline for an Indirect cause.

Wise words.

Sadly though, the litigators do not accept this. They believe they are crusaders for a safer world by fighting negligence wherever they find it (sadly often finding it in legal precedence with little or no use of inconvenient facts).

Valvanuz,

You would be surprised how people can make others responsible. I live in South Korea and just last year they passed a law that said if a driver honks at a pedestrian, then causing the pedestrian to jump in fright and hence get hit by a car, it is the fault of the person who honked. Stupid@!

They aren't French.

They may leave trash all over the airport, have bizarre taxi signs - if any, confusing taxiways, collapsing terminals, "security" whereby the arriving transit passengers from an un-named but suspect continent (hey - I did learn my PC lesson!!) and airline are allowed to mingle with passengers and crew ALREADY cleared through (in other words - anything including a howitzer could be passed on), Captains are addressed as Mister if you are not French, the protest strike du jour, and the rubber gets removed from the runways once a decade only if required.

BUT>>>>>

Try to call ground before your entire aircraft and your trailing kerosene exhaust has cleared the inboard runway. THEN you will encounter some real Gallic ire.

re: Honking in South Korea



much the same as if you hit a Cow in India, and it used to be if a sheep wanted to commit suicide on the Isle of Skye and chose to jump in front of your car, that was your fault as well (although I think this law was changed in the 70's/80's)

We all know the BEA is a complete joke along with most of the French Court system. They ignore almost every law that doesn't suit them in the EU and we all just stand by and let them get a way with it.

I don't buy ANY French products and the closet I ever come to its corrupt shores is when I fly across it on my way to Madrid!

1st post from SLF here. I'm not a journalist.

Neptunus Rex:

But it took off and flew.

1. Would it have continued to do so in this state had there been no fire?
2. If the aircraft had only lost 25% of its thrust, would it have continued to fly?
3. Would the airframe damage from the fire have knocked it down anyway, even were it within weight, CG, etc.?

I've never seen a reason given for why it might have been on fire before hitting the strip. Is there one?

I am not expert on legal matters, but for those - unfortunately many - contributors who seem to have no clue at all, some observations.

It was observed at a meeting of the RAeS Law Group earlier this year, reported in Flight International, on the criminalisation of aviation accidents, that the French legal system does not have the mechanism of the English legal system, the inquest, to determine what went on in an accident. So in France, for the state to determine what indeed went on, there must be a criminal trial. First point: it's a shame for all that they don't have inquests. I am sure many French people agree.

Second: why do you need an inquest? Amongst other things (and "gaining closure", being a US import and to me unwelcome, is not one of them), it is to help figure out who should ultimately pay. For there is am ancient general principle of compensating victims of mishaps and this should not only follow rules but also be seen to be "fair", adjudicating amongst competing claims.

Third: this isn't a "bonanza for tort lawyers". The airline (that is, the airline's insurance company) has already paid to settle most or all tort claims, as is by now the rule in commercial aviation. The cost is reported to be in the realm of €100 million, relatively low for such accidents (Concorde did not carry so many passengers).

Fourth: the ruling is Continental 70%, EADS 30%, everyone else (Air France, DGAC, Paris Airports Authority, etc) 0%. That means that the insurance company will be negotiating with those parties to recover the relevant proportion of its costs. Since there is now a legal ruling which will act as precedent, there is little point in disputing it in court. (I guess the discussion would be something like Continental pays €70m, EADS €30m.)

Fifth, what is this ruling based on?

The ruling is based on the obvious physical ABC of the accident occurrence.

The report said: titanium strip fell off Continental onto the runway; Concorde ran over strip; strip sliced into tire and caused tire burst of unprecedented form and strength; large tire fragment hit tank; impact shock wave caused tank to explode from within; resulting hole allowed fuel to stream out in large quantity; fuel was ignited (not completely sure how, but probably by reheat); fire engulfed critical wing structure and contributed to critical performance degradation of two engines; Concorde cannot accelerate after TO on two engines alone (BTW, there is no evidence that Concorde was overweight at TO) and went down.

That's what the court found also. People have said "missing spacer". Our work on that said: not relevant. People have said "overweight at dispatch". Yes, but not at TO, as far as anyone can tell. People have said "airport should have swept runway better". Yes, but that wasn't a direct contributing cause in the intuitive sense of the above sequence of physical events. It would be like blaming the police for Fred's broken jaw in a street fight because they weren't there at the time. Thousands of years of legal tradition says the person responsible for the broken jaw is the person who threw the punch. So here: the court said that the entity responsible for the burst tire is the entity that left the titanium strip on the runway; and, further, as I understand it, the person who mounted that titanium instead of an aluminium part; as well as, to some degree, the people responsible for the aircraft design, even though (and others here will agree with me here) the airplane was a triumph of aeronautical technology. Other people (Continental) said the plane was on fire before it encountered the strip. The report, as well as all of the people I know who know about Concorde, indeed, physical common sense given the undisputed evidence of what happened, have no explanation at all of how that could possibly have been the case. The only evidence is circumstantial - eye witness testimony from witnesses who were far away from the scene. There is no physical explanation of the accident which coheres with that testimony at all, after ten years of thinking about it. So, reasonably, that testimony was (I take it) rejected.

Now, that all seems to me, given the system, appropriate, fair, and straightforward. What is not appropriate, in the minds of many including myself, is that it seems to need a criminal trial, rather than an inquest, to serve this necessary legal function of apportioning the enormous costs of compensation.

PBL

To come up with a verdict of 'criminally responsible' rather than 'civil liability' (even if that were justifiable) is verging on the unbelievable.

Are we to read from this that a criminally responsible mechanic deliberately set out to sabotage one of his own employer's aircraft in such a way that the damage would deliberately cause catastrophic damage to another company's aircraft. Utter, utter nonsense from the Paris court.

Mind you, that 1.3 Bn Court ruling in favour of Air France will get the French Govt nicely off the next bail-out / banned EU subsidiary for the national carrier.

er

Do the French have that departed a view of "Criminal" Responsibility? Here, it requires a very complete proof of Intent to do Harm.

I was only half kidding when I posted that the "Smelterer" would be found Liable.

Good Grief. How can this culture keep a straight face?? And I say that coming from America, for goodness' sake.

bear

So should we ignore the fact that in the previous 24 years of Concorde flights prior to July 2000 there were 65 burst tyre incidents of which 6 events led to the perforation of fuel tanks? Even if you dispute these numbers surely even one previous fuel tank breach would be one too many?

The fact that an inquest as we know it here in the UK was not available to the French authorities does not justify a criminal trial nor the apportioning of criminal guilt in this way.

Serious question.
 

Does anyone recall where a French court proceeding involving aviation where guilt was found to be a French company, French national or member of the French government when there were non-French defendants available?

mssrs Montgolfier??

Didn't they light off a milking barn, whilst heating the envelope? I think some Americans were in attendance, whose glances upset the brother with the match?