indeed. at least someone gets the nucleus of the point i was 'subtly' making to see if anyone picked it up..

[sarcasm mode/on] is the spacer an MEL item [sarcasm mode /off]

to which point is an aircraft released for service with a component missing?

is that acceptable in terms of the certificating authority or under the design approval to which the aircraft was certificated ?

how does it stand with an aircraft taking off outside of its take off weight in terms of the certification data.

either way was the aircraft outside of the design approval under which it was certificated ?

it should never have been released for service for public transport operation and should not have been rolling for take off in public transport operation (or even for experimental purposes).

arguing about the coulda/woulda/shoulda is like a discussion of why a drunk driver ran off the road. he should not have been behind the wheel.

the aircraft should not have been on the runway for a commercial operation. As both B fraser points out along with tonytales (welcome to first post land) the operational situation was less than lax and we find ourselves, yet again, looking at wreckage of an aircraft where regulations and SOP's were treated contemptibly, such regulations and SOP's that have been designed to prevent the situation occurring and in many cases implemented to prevent the repeat of a past accident.

As I recall, the BA airframes had an extra piece of equipment fitted to the main gear bogies to deflect debris in the event of a tyre failure. They also used a different brand and model of tyre. This is not to say that these differences would necessarily have had an effect on the outcome, but that the differences were quite substantial.


Not particularly. The gear as a whole had to cope with higher levels of stress and wear compared to subsonic airliners of similar vintage (as you say) - but it is the question of the vintage that is key. A lot has been learned about systems safety in airliner design since the mid-late '60s, but Concorde was designed and certified before these lessons were adopted.

Tyre vulnerabilities aside, the fact that the tyre failed is only a relatively small piece of the puzzle as a whole. The tyre failure itself was triggered in a somewhat unusual way - FOD from a piece of debris substantially larger than what would usually be encountered, causing the tyre to disintegrate in much larger sections than would normally be the case. The size of these fragments caused much more substantial damage to the parts of the airframe they struck than would normally be expected from a tyre burst, including rupture of the fuel tank skin and in all likelihood severing of electrical cabling which is generally agreed to be the ignition source of the leaking fuel.

Any one of these factors alone would not place the aircraft in immediate danger, but this particular combination of factors did.

Any airliner that stores fuel in the wings (read : practically all of them) is going to be vulnerable if the lightweight outer skin is damaged - for another example see B732 KT-28M at Manchester in 1985 . In that case the skin was holed when a combustor can was ejected from the P&W JT8D engine - a model known to be susceptible to that particular failure mode but was not considered unsafe because of it.


Outside of recommended parameters, but not to the extent of being unsafe.

A little strong, perhaps. The omission was definitely careless bordering on negligent, but ultimately the majority agree that said omission had negligible effect on the outcome.

Which had been done safely many thousands of times before.

No-one has ever argued that AF were beyond reproach regarding this incident - maintenance SNAFUs on the part of both AF and CO combined with tragic results. (@stuckgear - would you say that's a reasonable and fair assessment?)

Thus far the thread has been relatively free of "partisan" bickering, and long may it continue.

A welcome decision as far as I'm concerned (because I believe criminal law and aviation accident investigation don't mix), but that decision does not alter the previously accepted sequence of events or the mistakes that led to them.

DozyWanabee
Some being drunk drive their car many time with no problems
Luck factor at play
Some drive their car who is overweight with no problems
Luck factor at play
Luck factor at play
That's confirm the nickname of Air France (Air Chance)
I guess you are the same about other public transport .. as the train .. the bus .. underground .. etc.
Or do you consider that it is only for air transport that accident investigation and criminal law don't mix
How determine who must pay reparation to the victims or relatives?
Do you know another system ?

I don't understand what point you're trying to make here. I haven't seen anyone on this thread either state or imply that AF didn't have some 'splainin' to do regarding these factors.

I find the comparisons you're making above a touch inaccurate and more than a little unnecessarily emotive. F-BTSC was approximately 1t overweight at threshold - Concorde takeoffs with reheat will burn well over that surprisingly quickly. Combined with the fuel lost through the leak the upshot was that despite this and the other factors the crew had slight but positive climb established at a shade under half the runway's length - well under the distance normally used. Even though it made no ultimate difference to the outcome such performance is remarkable and demonstrates not only that the aircraft could exceed SOP parameters due to exceptional design, but also that those parameters were deliberately very conservative.

Of course! Criminal proceedings should only enter the mix if there is evidence of criminal activity. If a bus/train/lorry driver crashes but they have done no wrong in a criminal sense then they should not be prosecuted - if they were, say, over the prescribed alcohol limit then you prosecute them for that - not for the crash itself.

Civil law.

From memory, there was indeed a cable (?) fitted to the water deflectors on BA fleet, aimed to retain parts of a broken deflector to fly their own way (to a fuel tank, for example).
IIRC that followed incident involving tyres => broken deflectors on BA fleet, and was related to an optionnal A/D.
I can't remember anything else (but I didn't check for it).
Incident statistics tend to show that neither brand of tyres was immune. In that way, I would not have qualified as "quite substantial" the differences between the fleets, but that's a matter of semantics, nothing more. :)


Hi jcjeant,

Dozy just wrote that "No-one has ever argued that AF were beyond reproach".
Would you please consider avoiding to take any chance to drag this thread towards "partisan" (or "partisan"-looking) bickering?
I agree that thus far it has been relatively free of that, and hope too that i may continue as that for long :)
Thanks!

Certification of Concorde concerned Aerospatiale which had been solved in EADS since the 9 (to confirm) july 2000. In his General Documentation published at that date you find NOT A SINGLE WORD ABOUT CONCORDE :: EADS no more wanted to listen about Concorde (ALL THE OTHER activities and aircrafts and helicopters were described) .

This general document was mandatory to come on the market to allow potential financiers to evaluate the risks tooken by the new Company... Domlnlque Strauss-Kahn prepared EADS.

After the crash effectively EADS has been responsible for Concorde!!!!!

As I understood it, EADS's remit regarding Concorde extended only to parts supply at that point. The remaining airworthy airframes were owned and maintained exclusively by BA and AF.

When there are people dying .. it is very rare that a judge decides that the case be tried before a civil court
Most often (and for obvious reasons.: duress of penalties .. etc) the case will be tried in criminal court
If the parties suspected of crime are innocent they risk nothing either in civil or criminal court
If the parties are guilty penalties will be stronger when tried before a criminal court than civil court
Penalties for crime are also part of moral reparation for the victims or relatives

Incorrect. The aircraft was over its structural weight limit, but, more importantly, it was well over RTOW. Quite why the crew didn't review the RTOW I can only put down to Gallic regulatory indifference....

There are 3 European airlines with whom I will not fly. 2 because of their behaviour of their management and 1 because of safety concerns as it has had too many accidents in recent years for my taste.....

Quote:

"BTSC was overweight......substantially" My statement, (LYMAN)


"Outside of recommended parameters, but not to the extent of being unsafe."
.....Statement by DOZY WANNABE


Please know i noticed DOZY'S error... But decided not to respond; we have a history, and sometimes responses unleash pages of argument.


BEagle.....

I am not adept at research and post editing. Would you consider posting the reference that concluded BTSC was effectively six tons over legal MTOW?

Many thanks.

here you go lyman..
CONCORDE ACCIDENT : ACCIDENT REPORTS

aircraft data: CONCORDE SST : Accident Report

and here: F-BTSC Preliminary Report

scroll down to 6.5..

The Operating Manual provides the maximum structural weights:

RTOW & MTOW
 

In the interests of accuracy, the final accident report section 1.6.6 states that the "maximum performance" weight calculated for the conditions of the day was 186.7 tonnes; maximum structural taxi weight 186.88 tonnes and the maximum structural take-off weight 185.07 tonnes.The actual TOW was estimated at being between 186.25 tonnes and 185.76 tonnes depending on how passenger weights were calculated.

So the aircraft was between 1,180 and 700 kg over the structural MTOW (0.4~ 0.6%) but under the RTOW for the day. It was never six tonnes over the legal limit.

Thanks Clive,

I remember that coming out of a discussion some time ago. Am I correct in surmising that while a shade outside the MTOW numbers it was not significantly unsafe to do so?

It was never six tonnes over the legal limit
On the same page of the french final report I read :
Math:
185.76 - 180.30 = ?

if its 1kg outside of the structural weight as defined by the certificating authority, as defined by the type certificate approval, it is outside of certification. period.

No-one's arguing against that - it was outside (albeit marginally) the MTOW numbers, an oversight for which AF should be (and IIRC were) censured. This does not alter the fact that it was within RTOW and therefore not materially unsafe - borne out by the fact that they achieved positive climb well short of the usual takeoff distance.

Neither does it alter the fact that the damage to the airframe which eventually brought it down was caused by the tyre explosion which was in turn caused by the presence of the strip on the runway. I'm still at a loss trying to understand the intent of these posts.

5.46 tonnes, which even with rounding up is less than 6 tonnes :D

But if we are being picky, we should include:

statements which are not on the same page. :rolleyes: Also the actual tail wind at brake release was between 3 and 4 kts. But I grant you that the tailwind prediction may have led to the early rotation.

That's mean , legal matter that this aircraft was no authorized to take off
If the rules were respected (or I ask .. why make rules ?) .. never this aircraft had take off .. never tire will meet any FOD (metat strip or even a buldozer) on the runway
From memory it was also a problem (papers) with the medical certificate of the captain
If a bridge is broken (and it's warnings and barriers) and a car falls in the hole .. of course the hole is the reason why the car falls and driver killed
But in first place .. the driver had not respected the warning (the rule)
Many legal matters were not respected this day and allowed the fatal meeting with the metal strip ..

No, departure clearance from the tower is final in a legal sense IIRC
.
As I said before, Concorde was a thirsty jet - if the weight error had been picked up they may have waited at the threshold for the excess fuel to burn off - a matter of a few minutes at most, and it wasn't a busy day.

From the report:

A procedural oversight certainly, but not one that impacted safe operation of the flight.


Not really a valid analogy. If the procedural errors had been caught at an earlier stage it would have been unlikely to result in the cancellation of the flight - indeed it would have more than likely departed at a similar time and in the same manner as it did on the day.

A bridge too far, mon ami. Going back to our earlier discussion, the reason why I believe criminal law to be unsuited to blanket application with aviation accidents is that it is too blunt an instrument for that purpose.

[The tragic debacle following the G-AWNO "Penta Hotel" incident is but one factor in why I believe this so strongly...]

There's no question that mistakes were made by AF that day - but those mistakes had no material influence on the sequence of events, by which I mean that even if they had been corrected prior to pushback, the contact with the titanium strip and subsequent events would still have resulted in the same outcome. Similarly, if the damage caused by the tyre burst had been less catastrophic and they'd been able to make it to Le Bourget it would not alter the fact that the tyre burst was precipitated by the shoddy repair that left the strip on the runway.

This applies to other incidents too - for example if, in 1977, PA1736 had successfully cleared the Los Rodeos runway before Capt. van Zanten of KLM4805 began his take-off roll it would not have absolved Capt. van Zanten of taking off without clearance.

In summary, one cannot apply breaches of protocol selectively - every single one must be accounted for and hopefully remedied.

186.7 might have been the RTOW for the planned conditions, but emphatically not for the actual conditions.... Given the tailwind component, the crew should have recalculated RTOW and taken the reciprocal runway, rather than giving a Gallic shrug of the shoulders, announcing <<Top!>> and risking it.....

The aircraft was outside both structural MTOW and the more limiting RTOW at the brakes-off point of the take-off roll. Such cavalier attitudes to scheduled performance requirements do not inspire much confidence in the operations of the airline in question.

@BEagle - no-one is disputing that errors, some of which were significant, were made by AF (and the F-BTSC crew) on the day. As a contributor I have a deep and abiding respect for, could you explain the reasoning behind continued stress on this already accepted point?

Well .. not all points were stressed by the BEA
The BEA in the recommendations also don't stress about some irregularities attributable to Air France
It makes recommendations about baggage .. tire .. means for recording data .. administrative documents .. and also a note on maintenance
Nothing about the fact of downwind take off .. weight unfulfilled .. etc.
It's very interesting to read some of the answers (in court) of the chief of the BEA (At those day Mr Louis Arslanian)
Unfortunately all those "minutes" are in french and I have not find a english translation so far
http://procesconcorde.fenvac.org/?m=20100202

Seems pretty clearly covered to me (and I found these paragraphs in under 30 seconds with the "Find" function)...

In the eyes of at least one august body, the accepted myth has undergone game change.

This was a complex and data filled conclusion, this original theory, that Continental was exclusively responsible, criminally for BTSC's demise.

The balance has been lost, the equilibrium disturbed, so a new look at the available data is well worth a chat.

Who would instead claim there is nothing new to assess, traditional importances to be re-evaluated, and conclusions to rock?

No stronger proof against truth, save an unwillingness to encounter discomfort in its pursuit....

Comfort the afflicted.....but afflict the comfortable...

Sheesh

An inaccurate surmise. Based on the evidence presented, one French judge determined that despite the acknowledged errors on AF's part (some of which were serious, though none of which had any significant effect on the accident sequence), the maintenance error on the CO DC-10 *did* directly contribute to the accident sequence and as such the judge determined that CO were guilty of negligence.

This thread was initiated because that judicial decision was overturned by a different judge* - nothing more than that. The conclusions and report of the investigation (neither of which apportioned responsibility) still stand.

[* - A feature of the judicial process is that different judges can and will draw different conclusions when presented with the same or similar evidence depending on their interpretation of legal statute.]

Yes .. this is in the chapter "Established facts"
My remark was about the chapter "Recommendations"
This is a lax of the pilots concerning weight .. wind .. etc ..
Note that the lax of AF pilots is another time noted in the BEA final report of the AF447
But again .. in the recommendations .. nothing clearly said about the "AF culture" (or lax) who seems to be in many AF accidents a common factor

@jcj:

In "Recommendations":

With all due respect, I recommend you take some time to read the document you claim is missing information before making those claims public, because it can do nothing but harm your argument if your supposition is incorrect.

I don't feel harmed ... I'm armoured ... reason that I dare post on forums ... :8

"Dare" has nothing to do with it (because anyone can post here) - the fact is that you have made several claims regarding the BEA report which are demonstrably untrue.

Taking this on a whimsical tangent, if this discussion were being held in a court of law you'd be risking a perjury charge. Why do so when all it takes to verify the content of the report is to read it?

irrelevant.

coulda/woulda/shoulda...

the incident occured to *that* aircraft at *that* time, under *those* specific circumstances.


what's your agenda here DW?

Dozy,
The rhetoric of a Court is not the same than a web forum rhetoric. Here we try to "think " together in a team work and brainstorming method. In the world village we need to write the progression of elaborating a more acurate doctrine.

DozyWannabe, do you actually understand the mandatory requirements of aircraft scheduled performance?

Do you understand the effect of OAT and W/V on RTOW?

A commercial air transport aircraft such as Concorde may not commence the take-off run if ATOW > MTOW or RTOW, whichever is the lesser.

However, at no point in the 14 seconds between receiving take-off clearance and commencing the take-off roll did any of the crew comment on the need to review their take-off performance figures.

the TC (type Certificate)

my bold and underline.

are you getting the point yet, as you dont seem to understand the very basics.. as "[you are] still at a loss trying to understand the intent of these posts. "

Outside the limitations as set forth by the TC, invalidates the TC and the Airwothiness Cert.. the aircraft may still be capable of performing if it is 1kg over weight, that is irrelevent, it invalidates the TC and subsequently the Airworthiness Cert.; Same if it has parts missing that are part of the design as approved.

Always in the interest of accuracy, the actual wind was not blowing at 8kt as announced by the TWR, but much less (Reference: Meteo Data, IIRC quoted in the final report, I think the word was "negligible" or something like that).
The crew might have been aware of that, "simply" by looking at the windsock.;)
Or it could have been they didn't care ("cavalier attitude")?
But then, why an early and slow rotation, which seemed aimed to bring relief to the U/C, being close/a little over the limit?:rolleyes:

Seems some of the last posts on this page are more and more about being "against" a certain member, whom I think makes valuable contributions. I therefore regret that, much. :hmm: Would it not be more useful to discuss the matter at hand without using a tone aimed (IMO) to harm? :=

i've posted nothing that i wouldn't say to dozy face to face in a pub, over mutually shared bag of pork scratchings.

I've stayed out of this rehash....

In the end I have a relatively simple question.

At what point does a demonstrated lack of professionalism in a complex operating environment override any other relevant components of the accident.

AF maintenance was demonstrably unprofessional.

AF operations was demonstrably unprofessional.

AF PIC was demonstrably unprofessional.

AF flight engineer was demonstrably unprofessional.

You can argue that in reviewing this event in totality that AF demonstrated such a complete lack of professionalism in every aspect of it's operations that an accident of this type was unavoidable at some point regardless of the specific triggering event.

When you further recognize that specific sworn testimony from the fire fighters on hand does raise a level of doubt regarding the root cause and actual moment the fire started. Given that these individuals are specifically trained in observation and were in place specifically in case of this type of event I am amazed how easily there observations are dismissed by some.

In the end AF seems to have developed such significant cultural issues that its actual standard of performance much more closely resembles that of a 3rd world flag carrier then that of a "1st world" nation...

SLF

"At what point does a demonstrated lack of professionalism in a complex operating environment override any other relevant components of the accident."

Generally, after the fact, and often not even then.

People who work in association with eachother (vendor, regulator) develop a camaraderie that often trumps duty, and integrity. It doesn't take much in a "complex operating environment".

Why did EASA relax inspections on the TRENT 700 prior to QF32? How did Thales remain on the 330? "Judgment calls" occasionally lay on the lax side of decisionmaking. Unfortunately, in many accidents, the fact that "regulation" is seen as "interpretive" results in the need to polish turds...after the fact

You ask the important question, Sedona.

"At what point does a demonstrated lack of professionalism in a complex operating environment override any other relevant components of the accident."
Never as the reason for the accident was the DC10 strip on the runway,see the posts of AlphaZuluRomeo and DozyWannabe who both clearly explain how without that piece of metal the accident wouldn't have happened.
That doesn't mean that a "demonstrated lack of professionalism" if proved shouldn't be addressed.
The difference of opinion highlighted in many of the previous post is in my view caused by trying to prove that "a demonstrated lack of professionalism" trumps the DC10 strip on the runway.

Again,

We have sworn testimony from a professional firefighting crew specifically trained to deal with potential issues specific to the Concorde...after all that's why they were there:) who state (and this is multiple individuals) that the fire appeared to start prior to the estimated point of impact with the titanium strip.

Given both the training and specific reason they were present they meet the criteria for expert witnesses. This casts a measure of doubt on the debris being the actual cause of the fire.

Now lets go beyond that and look at other variables. While the asymmetrical engine thrust undoubtedly caused a significant portion of the drift the missing spacer has significant potential to add to that drift...potentially causing the impact with lighting etc...

While computer projections project that regardless of flight crew actions the wing/control elements would have burned through...we do not know if proper action by the FE would have allowed continued flight until that point and what the margin of error for the projection is. Regardless of it being 1% or .0000001% the FE's actions are what doomed the plane at that moment. The actual crash occurred when/where it did because of his inappropriate conduct.

The reality is that no one truly objective can say with certainty that the titanium strip caused the fire or that if the flight engineer acted correctly the plane had zero chance for a controlled crash landing that would have allowed for some survivors.

Was Continental Responsible For the Concorde Crash? « Heritage Concorde

I note in the photo of the skid marks leading to the frangible RW light fixture a pronounced linear oscillation by number three tyre..... (the shimmy)

At two hundred mph, that might have been snubbed by the missing thrust washer/spacer? Its production of drag could not have helped the attempt to regain the centerline?

From "Heritage Concorde"

"By the day of the accident the shear bush had moved a full seven inches out of alignment to the point where the two washers were almost touching."