Sometimes shit happens

The crash of the Air France Concorde in Paris eight years ago has become news again.

It seems that the French courts have decided to launch a case against Continental Airlines, two of their employees, two people concerned with Concorde development and one other person who worked for the French licensing body.

Just to remind ourselves – the Air France charter flight departed Charles de Galle on July 25, 2000 at 2:42 pm with 100 passengers and 9 crew. During the take off roll and at a speed of around 180 knots (200+ mph) the aircraft ran over a strip of titanium that had dropped off a Continental Airlines DC10 that had departed minutes before.

One of the 4 tyres on the left side main undercarriage was destroyed and a large (4½ kilo) lump of rubber flew up and impacted against the underside of the wing. The pressure created by this impact caused one of the fuel tanks immediately above the point of impact to explode leaving a sizable hole through which fuel escaped.

The escaping fuel then ignited and a raging fire developed under the wing right in front of the No 1 and 2 engine intakes. This led to a significant loss of power from these engines.

The pilot knew that something had gone catastrophically wrong but could not know precisely what. He was also aware that he was at a point where the take off could not be aborted and took the aircraft into the air hoping to keep it flying long enough for him to reach nearby Le Bourget Airport.

To do this he needed to raise the undercarriage but damage from the initial tyre burst and the subsequent fire precluded this. The aircraft, powered only by engines 3 and 4 on the right side and already well below the speed needed to maintain height and overcome the drag created by the extended undercarriage, was doomed.

Seconds later it fell onto a hotel at Gonesse, a short distance from Charles de Galle airport. There were no survivors and 4 people on the ground were also killed.

Rumours abounded at the time. The aircraft was over weight. The Centre of Gravity was displaced leaving the aircraft ‘nose high’. The aircraft took off with a tail wind rather than into the wind.

The subsequent BEA investigation proved all of this to be false. Up to the point where the aircraft ran over the metal strip lying in its path, everything was completely normal; nothing that the flight crew had done was out of the ordinary.

Enter the ambulance chasers.

What is the point of pursuing this through the courts? What can they possibly hope to achieve? This was an accident – something that could not have possibly been foreseen just like the explosive decompression of the early Comet airliners – like the DC10 that suffered an uncontained centre engine explosion that took out all the hydraulics to the rudder and elevators. The list is long.

To the French judiciary – forget it. Don’t go there.

Bits fall off aeroplanes all the time. That the bit fell off a Continental aircraft which lead to this sad accident is happenstance. To go after the 5 named people could well be construed as vengeance.

Just leave it alone.