Rumors, Lies, Innuendo, Fear, Uncertainty, and Despair

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau

For those of you who’ve never seen “The Pink Panther” films and don’t recognize immediately the name of the incompetent Inspector Clouseau, think Frank Drebbin, of “The Naked Gun” series.

The French resurrected Clouseau to oversee their investigation of the Paris crash of the supersonic Concorde. Concorde crashed on takeoff on July 25, 2000 killing all 109 on board and 4 on the ground. The crash marked the beginning of the end for Concorde, a joint venture between Britain and France. Although Concorde continued to operate until October 2003, the Paris crash, the high cost of operation, and the 30-year-old design of Concorde forced Air France and British Airways to terminate supersonic passenger service.

Aerospatiale Concorde

After almost 10 years, the French finally are taking the Concorde case to court and trying to stick Continental Airlines and Aerospatiale, Concorde’s builder, with the blame.

Air France Flight 4590 Struggles into the Air

Inspector Clouseau’s version of events is fairly simple: Concorde was rolling down the runway on its way to another routine takeoff when it passed over a metal “wear strip” that had fallen off a Continental Airlines DC-10. The wear strip cut one of Concorde’s tires, causing it to disintegrate. A large chunk of the tire penetrated the bottom of Concorde’s left wing, puncturing the fuel tank. The fuel leaked into the hot exhaust stream of the engines and ignited. The plane, on fire as it left the ground, was never able to generate sufficient power to remain flying and crashed a few miles from the airport.

Continental Airlines, Inc. and two of its maintenance employees are on trial for manslaughter. Three French citizens, two of them former employees of Aerospatiale and one an employee at the French civil aviation authority also have been charged with manslaughter. No Air France employees have been charged with any crimes though negligence on the part of Air France employees was a major contributor to the accident.

The End of Concorde

Between 1979 and 1981 four Air France Concordes suffered blown tires; in two of these incidents, the fuel tanks ruptured but there was no fire. The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) warned Air France and Aerospatiale that any one of these four incidents was “potentially catastrophic.” No action was taken to remedy the safety defects in Concorde.

As is typical in aviation accidents there were multiple ‘enabling factors’ that contributed to the 2000 Concorde crash. Although a metal strip had dropped off a Continental DC-10, it did not contribute to the Concorde crash. It proved to be a combination of other circumstances that led to Concorde’s demise:

1. Concorde was on fire 8 seconds before it reached the point on the runway where the rub strip had fallen off the Continental DC-10. There are no less than 22 witnesses who will testify to this including three members of the airport fire department who happened to be watching the plane take off. One has to presume that even French firemen recognize a fire when they see one.
2. The left landing gear ‘bogey’ (a central beam in the gear assembly) had been serviced several days prior to the crash by Air France personnel. French investigators determined that the maintenance personnel failed to install a required spacer in the bogey. According to the Clouseaus, this missing spacer was ‘not a factor.’ (Other witness will testify that this missing spacer probably induced a wobble in the landing gear sufficient to cause the tire to shred).
3. Concorde was at least six (metric) tonnes overweight for the conditions at the time of takeoff.
4. Concorde was taking off down wind. Although the tailwind was light (approx 6 kts), this amount had to be doubled then added to Concorde’s normal takeoff speed which already was set to be over 200 MPH.
5. Concorde’s maximum authorized aft center of gravity (CG) was 54.0%. The accident aircraft’s CG was as much as 54.6%. While this sounds like a small deviation beyond normal limits, test pilots in the 1970’s had determined than any CG greater than 54% on takeoff was likely to cause a ‘pitch up’ of the nose on takeoff, rendering the aircraft uncontrollable. Pitch up occurred with the accident aircraft.
6. Under a special treaty specifically governing Concorde accidents, British authorities were supposed to be given access to the crash scene and all evidence surrounding the crash. The French denied this access. US NTSB investigators, also entitled access to crash data because the aircraft’s destination was the US were, likewise, frozen out by the French.
7. Without explanation, the French almost immediately resurfaced the runway from which Concorde took off, thus denying independent observers the opportunity to examine skid and scrape marks left by the aircraft. Photographs of Concorde’s skid marks clearly show that the aircraft was headed off the runway and into the grass when the pilot elected to raise the nose and attempt a takeoff.

Concorde was a beautiful, if fatally flawed, aircraft. It’s too bad the French are working hard to blame the innocent while the guilty go free. Actually, the real shame is that the French are determined to assign blame rather than reach a probable cause that is as close to the truth as possible. Honest, unvarnished, conclusions are the real objective of an aviation accident investigation: let’s determine what went wrong so that it never happens again.

[Author's note: I once landed immediately behind Concorde at Boston's Logan Airport. (It had diverted from JFK because of fuel problems). The sight of that gorgeous airplane settling to the ground ahead of me, displaying its characteristic nose-high attitude is something I will always remember].