New York-Bound Air France Concorde Crashes near Paris Tuesday, July 25, 2000 An Air France Concorde supersonic jet on its way to New York crashed after takeoff at the Charles-De-Gaulle airport in Paris. The planed crashed in the Paris suburb of Gonnesse with 100 on board. No information was available on the status of the passengers. A flight attendant on the ground said she saw one of the engines on fire http://www.foxnews.com/world/072500/concorde.sml

Note: wonder if this has anything to do with the story I posted yesterday about cracks in the concordes. Who knows?

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003Xv9

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 25, 2000

Answers

That is some coincidence about the cracks.

www.cnn.com

An Air France Concorde crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff, crashing into a hotel in the town of Gonesse north of Paris this afternoon, local firefighters said.

-- K. (infosurf@yahoo.com), July 25, 2000.

Concorde Crash Looked Like an Atomic Bomb

The engines suddenly fell silent.

"We hear all the planes that pass
overhead," said the 43-year-old
Gonesse resident. "Then there was
nothing. I looked up. It was
like an atomic bomb, a mushroom
cloud in the sky."

Tampa Bay Online

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), July 25, 2000.

CNN

(with photo)

Concorde crashes near Paris, killing 113

From staff and wire reports

PARIS -- An Air France Concorde en route to New York City crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff Tuesday, slamming into a hotel in the town of Gonesse and killing 113 people, French officials said.

Interior Ministry officials said all 109 aboard the chartered flight and at least four people on the ground were killed.

The crash took place shortly before 5 p.m. local time (1500 GMT / 11 a.m. EDT), after takeoff from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. "It was a sickening site, a huge fireball," eyewitness Sid Hare told CNN.

Hare said the crash occurred about two miles from the hotel where he is staying.

France's LCI television quoted eyewitnesses as saying the aircraft was not able to gain sufficient altitude before it crashed, and that police were keeping onlookers away from the site.

"The airplane was struggling to climb and obviously couldn't get altitude," Hare, a pilot for Federal Express, said via telephone from France.

He said the Concorde had reached an altitude of about 200 feet before flames started shooting out from a left-side engine.

"He (the pilot) kept raising the nose ... and the airplane stalled, the nose went straight up into the air and the airplane actually rolled over to the left and almost inverted when it went down in huge fireball when it hit (the ground)," Hare said.

France Info radio quoted another eyewitness as saying the plane's motor was on fire and that a huge cloud of black smoke went up in the air.

British Airways said Monday it had found cracks in the wings of some of its supersonic aircraft, but said there was no danger to passengers.

The Concorde, which crosses the Atlantic at 1,350 mph, has been considered among the world's safest planes. Its only major scare came in 1979, when a bad landing blew out a plane's tires. The incident led to a design modification.

The plane is popular with celebrities, world-class athletes and the rich. It flies above turbulence at nearly 60,000 feet, crossing the Atlantic in about 3 1/2 hours, less than half that of regular jetliners.

The first Concorde flew in 1969. Now, 13 of the needle-nosed supersonic jets are operated by Air France and British Airways. A round-trip Paris-New York ticket costs $9,000, roughly 25 percent more than regular first class. A London-New York round-trip runs $9,850.

Air France officials have said in the past that their current fleet is fit to fly safely until 2007.

Paris Bureau Chief Peter Humi and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

(end of article)

A Swiss correspondent says the 100 passengers were all German tourists heading to NY. She also says, quote, "holy sheet."

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), July 25, 2000.

CNN

(another photo)

Excerpt:

"On January 30 of this year, a Concorde aircraft made an emergency landing at London's Heathrow Airport -- the second such landing within a 24-hour period by one of the supersonic jets.

"A cockpit alarm had sounded, warning of a fire in the rear cargo hold, but engineers found no problem.

The previous day, one of four engines had shut down on a Concorde as it approached Heathrow."

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), July 25, 2000.

Incredible still photo taken before the crash on this page:

CNN

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), July 25, 2000.

info about the plane that crashed

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), July 25, 2000.

The Times

24-hour delay in repair to doomed jet

BY CHARLES BREMNER IN PARIS AND IAN COBAIN

Investigators searching for the cause of the Paris Concorde crash that claimed 113 lives on Wednesday night focused on a 24-hour delay in repairing the aircraft's faulty engine.

Air France engineers knew there was a problem with the supersonic airliner's near-port engine when it arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport after a flight from New York on Monday. The pilot had reported a defect in the engine's thrust-reverser, which slows a landing aircraft by changing the direction of jet propulsion.

The problem went uncorrected until shortly before Tuesday's fatal flight, however, when the pilot refused to take off until the work was carried out. The necessary part was quickly "cannibalised" from another Air France Concorde, fitted and inspected within a time-scale that one British aviation engineer described last night as "pretty tight".

The aircraft was given clearance for take-off but, 56 seconds later, just as Flight AF4590 was about to become airborne, the control tower warned Christian Marty, the pilot, that his aircraft was ablaze. He signalled that the problem was in engine number two  the one hastily repaired  but at 180mph the aircraft was travelling too fast to abort take-off.

M Marty, 54, a veteran pilot and keen sportsman who once windsurfed across the Atlantic, was being hailed as a hero on Wednesday by the people of the small town of Gonesse, who believe he made a desperate attempt to steer his stricken aircraft away from their homes.

Two minutes after take-off, Flight AF4590 crashed into a cornfield next to a small hotel in the town, killing all 100 passengers and nine crew, as well as four people on the ground.

All but four of the passengers were wealthy Germans flying to New York to join a luxury cruise ship bound for Ecuador. Three victims were children. Their relatives laid wreaths at the charred site of the crash on Wednesday evening.

At a prayer service at a chapel in Hanover, the Chancellor, Gerhard Schrvder, said: "Today Germany is shaken, Germany is stunned." Reinhard Klimmt, the German Transport Minister, speaking at the crash scene, said: "Technology can fail. And in this case, it failed horribly."

President Chirac of France, who attended a religious ceremony near the crash site, said: "Everything will be done to determine the causes of the accident." The Pope sent a message to French bishops offering his prayers for the victims.

Tony Blair wrote to Herr Schrvder and M Chirac "to convey our shock and heart-felt sympathies".

Three inspectors from the Air Accident Investigation Branch were in Paris on Wednesday night helping their French counterparts to search for the cause of the crash. A team from Rolls-Royce, main manufacturer of the four engines, were also at the scene.

Investigators were concentrating on the theory that the aircraft suffered a catastrophic engine failure. They have all but ruled out any link between the crash and the microscopic cracks discovered on the aging British and French Concorde fleets, and which led British Airways to ground one of its aircraft 36 hours earlier.

The French Transport Ministry said the plane's two black boxes, damaged in the crash, had been found. All data held by the devices is expected to be recovered by later on Thursday.

Air France said the repair to engine number two was delayed because the spare part had not been immediately available. "This is a repair considered to be benign," an official said. A two-man team carried out the repair under the supervision of a third engineer after M Marty insisted the work be carried out, he said.

Deputy public prosecutor Elisabeth Senot, in charge of the judicial investigation, said transcripts of the cockpit voice recorder revealed that the pilot knew there was a problem with engine number two as he started to take off. "Control tower gave permission for take-off at time zero, and at 56 seconds the control tower signalled to the plane that it was on fire at the rear," she said.

"The pilot reported a failure on the number two motor and it seems that he was no longer able to brake given that the thrust was too great. After that it seems the flames became extremely large because (the fire) was once again signalled by the control tower, and the crew replied that they were no longer in a position to stop."

Mme Senot said initial examination had also shown that there was a "malfunction in engine number two during the take-off phase" but revealed no signs of sabotage.

Air France said the Concorde left its gate more than an hour behind schedule after technicians replaced the defective engine part. The company confirmed in a statement that the problem was detected when the jet returned from New York on Monday.

The statement said a replacement part was not immediately available but, under specifications approved by the manufacturer, the aircraft could still have flown.

Air France said the captain of the flight was notified of the problem, but insisted that the necessary repairs be performed before he took off. It appears M Marty believed his aircraft was too full to attempt a landing with a thrust-reverser fault, especially as the runways at John F Kennedy airport in New York were expected to be wet on his arrival.

"The spare part was immediately taken from a reserve Concorde. The repair was completed in 30 minutes," Air France said, adding that a delay in transferring passengers' luggage had also pushed back the take-off time.

"As soon as the part was replaced and all bags were loaded, the captain decided to take off," the company said.

One British Airways engineer, who did not wish to be named, said: "A 30-minute replacement is pretty tight but possible. Fitting it is not so much the problem, but the risk is that you might save time on the inspection afterwards. We simply do not know the details, but it would have had to be fast work."

Air France spokesman Francois Brousse had said that had the crew had any doubts over whether there was a problem, the plane would not have taken off. He stressed that it was too soon to say if there was a link between the disaster and the last-minute repair.

Air France would compensate the victims' families, he added. The accident will cost insurers will cost insurers at least #90 million, according to insurance industry experts.

The Transport Ministry in Paris said Air France may be allowed to resume Concorde flights within the next few days unless initial results from an investigation into the crash indicate further safety problems.

Jean-Claude Gayssot, the French Transport Minister, on Wednesday night insisted that the quality of the repair operation was not in doubt. "The ground maintenance is carried out by supremely qualified personnel," he said.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), July 26, 2000.