Continental Airlines is being tried in a French court to determine if they were responsible for the crash of Air France flight 4590 in 2000. Five people have been charged with manslaughter in connection with the accident.
To me this looks like the French authorities are trying to find a scapegoat. Apparently, a strip of titanium fell off an engine enclosure from a Continental DC10 that took off minutes before the ill-fated Concorde departure. The nosewheel tire of the Concorde struck the piece of metal at 200MPH which blew out the tire sending chunks of rubber into the wing fuel tank. The resulting fire brought the SST down in the French countryside within two minutes of the beginning of its takeoff roll from CDG .
While it seems easy to hold Continental Airlines' maintenance liable for the alleged oversight that allowed the piece of metal to be on the runway in the first place, there seems to be much more to the story and plenty of blame to go around.
I just happened to be driving home this afternoon when I heard a BBC interview of a retired senior British Airways Concorde captain. He was saying the Concorde has an automatic system that shuts off refueling when the tanks are 85% full, leaving an air pocket, presumably to allow for fuel expansion when the aircraft sits on the ramp for awhile in a hot climate. That makes sense.
The retired captain went on to stay that for some unknown reason, the crew of Air France 4590 decided to override that feature and fill the tanks to the brim that day. Maybe they were departing soon and figured the extra fuel would be burned off not long into the flight. Maybe the weather at the destination, KJFK. was forecast to be bad and they wanted holding fuel. Who knows?
Air is compressible and liquids are not. Because the fuel tanks were full there was not a cushion of air in the fuel tanks of AF4590. When the ~10 pound chunk of rubber from the disintegrating tire struck the bottom of the Concorde's wing, a hydraulic pressure wave was produced that continued from the point of impact to the seams of the tank which burst and spilled fuel onto the electrical systems. The resulting spark caused the fatal fire. It was determined that the tire fragments never penetrated the underside of the wing.
So IF the Continental DC-10 had not shed a part on the runway, and IF CDG airport made sure its runways were debris-free, and IF the crew of AF4590 had not overriden the refueling policy and filled the tanks up, then maybe there would be nothing to talk about here.
Like most aviation accidents, this one was a result of many seemingly unrelated minor factors. To hold Continental Airlines solely responsible is irresponsible in itself.
The sad result of this accident besides the lives lost was the hastening of the end of service for the Concorde. In my opinion, it was one of the most beautiful aircraft ever designed and it served well. In today's environment, capacity and economy rather than speed is the design objective and it makes for some really boring aircraft. We may never see the likes of the Concorde again.
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