Concorde crash: Continental Airlines cleared by France court
 

Cleared of criminal charges, but still has to pay AFR 1m euro civil damages.

So - who was to blame? Not many choices left, are there?

Amazing! A French court puts right a wrong by an earlier French court, and points the blame back where it should have been in the first place.

Runway pointing the wrong way was certainly a factor (or wind blowing the wrong way if you like - same thing :E )

Please don't blame the runway: he was new to the job, and hadn't been given proper training on which way to point. :E

Only goes to show that once the legal profession gets involved in something technical and complex like aviation, the court outcome is a complete lottery depending on who is adjudicating. The verdicts go backwards and forwards like a yo-yo. The only constant is the legal profession collecting huge fees on all sides at each and every stage. I'm sure that, compared to their lawyers' bill, the EUR 1m damages Continental had to pay were chicken feed.

There's a strong excuse there, for the AF.

"Aviation is complex, it's not our fault...."

Taking off the wrong way.
Overweight plane, full of German tourists with lots of luggage.
Too much fuel on board..
Dodgy bearing on one wheel set.
President Chirac in the way.
Shut down the flaming engine.
Titanium strip of metal on runway.
Longest runway under repair.
Air France.

Have I forgotten anything?

Surely the damages etc had not been paid if there was an appeal?

As you are aware, gallant and wise one, the term 'nibbled to death by ducks' is appropriate.

Would that not be 'canards', Sir? (or 'a canard'?):)

The last hole in the cheese was advancing throttles. At that point, there was no cheese left.

What about the un-commanded engine 2 shut-down by the FE?

Anyone here understand the French legal process and what happens now?

Is that the same legal process which ignored 15 witnesses, all aviation professionals, who claimed in the forst trial that the Concorde was on fire before it reached the metal part on the runway?

Who were they?

I see the BBC report has been updated (1531) and now says

"But the court said Continental still bore civil responsibility and upheld the 1m-euro payment

Separately, Air France is suing Continental for 15m euros at a commercial tribunal.
The US airline had consistently argued that the Concorde caught fire before it hit the metal strip, and that they were being used as a scapegoat to protect France's airline industry."


Bizarre!

Witnessess? - merde!
 

I believe that three of them were firemen in a fire engine and they were the closest witnesses.

As far as I can recall, they claim that the tyre let go before striking the titanium stip.

I stand to be corrected, of course.

There was a spacer missing from the left gear asembly


However, the Observer, citing John Hutchinson, a British Concorde pilot for 15 years, said the lack of a component called "spacer" in the undercarriage was a contributing factor.



When Air France mechanics had taken the undercarriage apart for a service, they reassembled it without the part, which keeps the wheels in the correct alignment. The missing spacer was found on the original part in the workshop

Without the spacer, the aircraft veered on takeoff "like a supermarket trolley with a jammed wheel," claimed the Observer. It was this, not the loss of power, which sent the jet heading to the edge of the runway, and neary into collision with an Air France 747, the same one that the picture of Concorde trailing flames on the runway was taken from.

The firemen claimed that it was the friction caused by the jammed wheel assembly that caused the tyre to burst and not the metal strip and that this caused the airacraft to veer towards the edge of the runway where the metal strip had fallen off.

If the spacer had been fitted then the Concorde would have stayed straight down the centre line and been nowhere near the metal strip.


CONCORDE SST : LATEST NEWS

Except the gash in the tyre was a match for the metal strip found on the runway.

Not really .. in France
It's not has been a lottery for at least more than 30 years ...
It's always the same people or organizations who are not guilty .. and I'll let you guess who .. :)
In french ... of course .....


From a french forum (free translation)

I predict something little less than thermonuclear when M2Dude gets to read that final paragraph. :uhoh:

It is quite plainly a wrong statement. If operated correctly, Concorde was probably the safest airliner in the skies. But it was demanding, and it did demand correct techniques, on the flight deck and in the maintenance hangar. BA gave it that.

The court has rightly pointed the finger of blame for Paris back where it belongs.

jcjeant
 

Thanks for the Canal + link.
Very interesting and refreshingly brave that they were allowed to produce the documentary.
Along similar but dissimilar lines National Geographic are producing a documentary on Papa India - the Staines disaster which claimed a similar number of victims.
The researcher for Cineflix has been in contact with me but after I sent her my manuscript which contains what I believe really happened it has gone quiet.
Similar in that their were a number of witnesses which should have been called, misinformation, amnesia and a state airline.
Dissimilar as the AAIB investigator distanced himself from the inquiry findings and Cats eyes Cunningham - the test pilot - stated that BEA operated the aircraft incorrectly - and he never knew everything.

Excerpts from the judgment
Extraits de l'arret de la cour de justice

I was passing through Reno some years ago when a friend told me Concorde would be taking off. I went to the ObDeck and fell in love. What a thing of beauty. The lines, the attitude, the NOISE.....

She was and always will be an exquisite symbol of how beauty and performance are sometimes living in the same soul.

She was betrayed, horribly, and obscenely, by political idiots and posturing simpletons. Maintenance and operations got lax, and applied to a stunning and challenging platform, the results were inevitable.

Lyman. I was right with you until your last sentence, to which I answer "not on this side of the Channel, mate!" ;)

My extreme bad, sir...

I was thinking it as I wrote, and forgot to write it.

I'm with Donnlass, the cause of the high drag configuration was as a result of rotating early as the aircraft left the side of the runway due to the drag of the mis aligned gear.. This low speed could have been flown out of with the power available but when the FE shut down number 2, which had been affected by the fuel tank surge, before obtaining any confirmation from another crew member, the fate was sealed. As always an accident only results when lots of small factors line up and allow an undesired outcome to prevail.

The other effect of the FE shutting down no.2 when it was still producing power was to disable the 'green' hysdraulic system (driven from engines 1 & 2; no.1 had already failed). With no 'green' system, the u/c could not be retracted adding greatly to the drag.

The shutting down of no.2 was probably the single worst thing the crew did (would you shut down a power-producing engine with one already out, past V1, and the aeroplane nor yet airbourn but committed?).

That's if you don't count the downwind t/o, overweight, and overfull fuel tanks (so no air gap to be compressed if the tank gets clouted by, say, a bit of burst tyre). That's why the tank ruptured (from inside, by a hydraulic overpressure).

SSD : I always wondered why he did this. Surely in the Sim emergency situations training one learns particular scenarii and engine fire must have been one of them .
So why , in the real emergency situation, the brain would do something different , and potentially fatal, as you explained here?
Was the Concorde training or drills different that any other 3-crew Type in this situation ?
I doubt it , but do not know.
Has this happenend before on other types ? ( old FEs here may know )
I'd love to understand .

The 2 cases that I can recall where the FEs did similar actions , were the China 747SP over Pacific, and the Aeromexico DC10 over France , but both were following high vibrations, not fire.

For those interested in this subject
THE CONCORDE SERIES OF LECTURES
A Companion Guide by Pete Finlay makes interesting reading.

Where can they be obtained, dalek?

A Beautiful Noise
 

To Lyman:

I used to live in South London, directly under the flightpath. Every now and then a Concorde would come over. The noise could be heard even if you were in your house with the TV on - it would only be at a few thousand feet by then.

In winter it was even better, with the powerful light stabbing into the darkness.

As far as I know, no-one ever complained about the noise; we all just looked up and stared in wonder at this beautiful thing in the air.

I actually built some of the components used, so I suppose I had a sort of proprietorial connection, along with thousands of other people, and it still saddens me to this day that she is no longer around.

I once worked as a butler for a family who lived in the New Forest near Southampton.

One rainy day, the Concorde flew nearby and I experienced a mild sonic boom. I happened to be standing in the kitchen at the time, preparing tea. The shock wave traveled through the thatch roof of the cottage and struck a lone rose I had placed in a vase a few day's prior. All the flower petals gently fluttered to the ground.

It was a surreal, "Rosebud..."-type moment.

@ UPP

I used to live near Epsom and for years when home on leave I would be out in the garden watching for Concorde flying overhead around 1700H. Beautiful to watch.

I was driving around the perimeter road one night and thought something had fallen of the car, unknown vibration etc, could not figure out what it was until I saw Concorde rotating all lit up. A stunning, stunning view.

It is shocking that BA did everything right and yet she was grounded without much, seemingly, in the way of protest. Really was the service losing money etc or did other factors (??) come into play?

Not an expert on that subject. All I know is that, as stated above, on this side of the Channel we all did our bit as best as we were able, with PRIDE in the fact that it was Concorde we were working on. Go to any engineering company in the land that worked on her, and you'll get the same answer.

So it didn't happen at that level.

Once BAe withdrew as the manufacturer, that meant Concorde was automatically grounded forever. And the grandstanding from the bearded one, saying that his firm would take over was nauseating, since he knew full well that without a manufacturer future flights were impossible.

Could she have been kept flying? Yes, if she still had a manufacturer. Given the way tech marches forward these days there could even have been a Concorde II developed entirely inside computers, and then eventually realized. But the manufacturer wanted out - even destroying jigs to make sure there couldn't be a reprieve - and there's only ever one reason why a company with shareholders wants to stop doing something; MONEY.

Perhaps someone else can tell you that side of it, I certainly can't.

I'm sure the answer will be to be with recession, not enough people wanting to pay premium to fly like that, etc. To me that's b******s. Every day there are more millionaires in the world than there were the day before, and more money in the world than there was the day before.

But I think that the only way this could be done again is if a seriously rich individual (and there's plenty of people with more money that a small country these days) said 'I love aviation, I love technology, there will be lots of spin-offs to make money from along the way - think NASA -, and then said 'F**k it, lets do this'. It would take the drive and determination of someone like Bill Gates.

Believe me, the engineering companies up and down the land would jump straight to orbit with delight. Not so much for the money, but the idea that they can once again be involved in working out how to make something as special and beautiful as Concorde.

What a thrill it would be to be able to look into the sky when one flies overhead and tell all around you 'we did that'.

You guys must be so proud, my awe has not lessened with time.

Concorde defies description. A technological marvel, or a work of timeless and artistic sculpture?

To be treated so badly by Air France and the politicians. I cannot believe there is insufficient interest in recommission.

Her roar is for the ages.....

best....

Beardy wanted two things; for the public to believe he was twarted by BA from keeping Concorde flying, and for the fleet to go into retirement with his airline logo on the side rather than BA's. He succeeded in the first, but thankfully failed in the second.

But what a marketing guy! To this day on our Concorde tours almost everyone who has no industry knowledge truly think he could have saved it 'if they'd have let him'.

What a star he is! He didn't have to spend a cent, yet he's gone down in history among the great unwashed as the man who could have kept Concorde flying if it wasn't for nasty old BA thwarting him!

Rutan. Is there another way to see it?