That Concorde crash

[MOD]

Who was to blame for the Air-France Concorde crash has still not been decided.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120308-con ... les-gaulle

James Kirk's vid still moves me enormously. The music, of course, is mainly responsible ....



Apparently over 10 million hits for this video ..

(It has been reposted).

ibw

[Bovril]

i thought i read it was poor maintenance by airfrance

[Checkflaps]

Not sure that's what the French BEA report said though!

In reality it was a series of errors from adding more baggage, adding more fuel, downwind take off, knackered runway surface, bad decisions in the cockpit and the other well known ones of the metal strip and the missing spacer and the AF policy on the tyres (different from BA's).

All in all, luck for the AC ran out that day. It was only a stroke of luck that they didn't plow in to the AF Jumbo off to the side of the runway with the French President on board. That apparently is one of the reasons why they were airborne too soon and never gained enough airspeed for controlled flight. Yes, the airframe would have probably burnt up / broken apart or become totally unstable due to CoG issues before Le Bourget even if they had the airspeed but we will never really know.

If you beleive some of the reports (discounted by the BEA), the tyre burst and the aircraft was on fire before the metal strip location and with an early call from the ATC, they could have stopped on the runway.

I think it is fair to say that we will never really knwo the full truth of the crash - same issues as the Concordski accident.

G

[Ducati Boy]

One things for sure, the real culprits, presumably French won't be convicted. Thought the absence of an additional modification adding armour, which British Concordes had fitted and French did not, was also a cause.??