Air France Concorde Crash: Causes, Trial, and Legacy

Introduction: The Crash That Ended an Era

On a Tuesday in July 2000, an Air France Concorde supersonic jet crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 113 people. In addition to the casualties, the Concorde crash left a major dent in aviation history. Unlike most airline disasters, this one resulted in the entire dismantling of the Concorde program — one of the most celebrated eras in commercial aviation. Since 1969, the Concorde had been dazzling onlookers and aviation enthusiasts alike. Its characteristic downturned nose made the aircraft instantly recognizable, and it remained the only commercial airliner ever to fly supersonically.

What went wrong on that fateful day? It took ten full years to find out, and some mystery surrounding the crash still remains. In 2010, a French court ruled that Continental Airlines was to blame for the disaster. The verdict surprised many who had followed the case. The court based its ruling on evidence that a Continental mechanic had "improperly monitored and maintained aircraft, resulting in a piece of titanium falling from a plane onto a runway at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport a few minutes before the ill-fated Concorde took off July 25, 2000" (Lauter, 2010).

The 2010 Court Ruling and Questions of Culpability

The ruling raised serious questions about culpability in airline crashes. In this case, Air France and the Charles de Gaulle Airport were completely cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. This sent an ambiguous message about who bears responsibility for runway maintenance and for any underlying structural issues that may have predisposed the Concorde to catastrophic failure. According to the court, "the roughly 16-inch piece of metal known as a wear strip punctured a tire on the Air France jet as it sped down the runway for takeoff, and that debris perforated the jet's low-lying fuel tank, causing a leak and a fire" (Lauter, 2010).

Yet the Concorde had experienced a number of mechanical and technical difficulties well before the 2000 crash. There were previous incidents of tires bursting on the aircraft in 1979, and a fire caused by fuel leakage occurred in 1993 (Lauter, 2010). These earlier incidents raise the question of whether the aircraft's known vulnerabilities should have figured more prominently in the court's assessment of liability.

As of late 2000, the precise causes of the crash were still under investigation. According to BBC News, investigators knew that the plane's tires were somehow implicated, and that "a 40cm (16in) metal strip, probably from another plane, had been found on the runway at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport" ("Concorde: What Went Wrong?" 2000). Significantly, Continental had already acknowledged that its DC-10 was the aircraft missing the piece of metal found on the runway. Investigators compared the shrapnel with the cut on the Concorde's tires to determine whether it matched — and it did.

Reconstructing the Crash: Evidence and Timeline

The central question was not simply about the tires themselves, which did not directly cause the jet to crash. Early in the investigation, it was believed that the tire failure triggered the engine fires that ultimately brought down the aircraft. The tire burst mid-flight following the initial puncture on the runway. The blowout led to a subsequent fuel tank puncture and a kerosene leak. This early assessment proved consistent with the final reconstruction of events. Black box flight data recorders were used to compile evidence throughout the investigation, providing a patchwork account of events that informed the 2010 ruling.

The Concorde took off as scheduled at 4:44 PM. Almost immediately after becoming airborne, problems arose in rapid succession. First, a tire struck the piece of Continental shrapnel on the runway and blew out instantly. The black box report indicates the presence of smoke under the left wing. At that point, it was unfortunately "too late to abort takeoff" ("Concorde: What Went Wrong?" 2000). The wing soon burst into flames and one of the engines lost power. The pilot attempted to stabilize the aircraft, but the nose had already risen too steeply, causing airframe stall — described as a "loss of control through lack of speed and lift" ("Concorde: What Went Wrong?" 2000). The Concorde crashed into a hotel just north of Paris in Gonesse. Four people on the ground were killed, along with 100 passengers and nine crew members.

References

"1969: Concorde flies for the first time." (n.d.). BBC. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/2/newsid_2514000/2514535.stm

British Airways. (n.d.). Celebrating Concorde. Retrieved from http://www.britishairways.com/travel/history-concorde/public/en_gb

"Concorde: What Went Wrong?" (2000, September 5). BBC News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/851864.stm

Lauter, D. (2010, December 7). Continental, mechanic guilty of manslaughter in Concorde crash. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/07/world/la-fg-concorde-crash-ruling-20101207

Walsh, D. (2000). Concorde — its history and tragedy. World Socialist Website. Retrieved from http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jul2000/con1-j28.shtml