Concorde trailed debris to impact site

The plane was on fire at takeoff and broke up on its brief flight. Pilots had trouble with two engines and landing gear.

©New York Times

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 28, 2000

PARIS -- The pilots of the Concorde that crashed Tuesday had problems with both engines on the plane's left side and could not retract the landing gear, investigators said Thursday.

The flight recorders make clear that the Air France plane was too far down the runway to abort the flight when air controllers told the pilot they could see flames at the back of the plane.

The pilots responded that the No. 2 engine had stalled, and shortly after takeoff they reported that they could not store the landing gear.

But the flight recorders also show that the No. 1 engine had failed briefly as well during takeoff. And one minute into the flight, it failed again just before the plane rolled to the left and crashed into a small hotel on the outskirts of Paris.

Investigators said the plane was in the process of breaking up throughout its brief flight as debris was found along its path. They also noted that scraps of tire had been found on the runway.

But many questions remained about what might have triggered the crash: whether it was related to objects like parts of tires or wheels being sucked into an engine, last-minute repairs made to engine No. 2 before Flight 4590 took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport or some other reason.

The investigators from the BEA, a French government agency that investigates crashes, said their inquiry was still in its preliminary stages and far from determining what had caused the supersonic jet to crash, killing 113 people.

"It won't be until all the facts and elements have been assembled and synthesized that a complete analysis of the circumstances and causes of the accident can be known," an agency statement said.

Some experts said Thursday that it was unlikely the repairs to the No. 2 engine's thrust reversers had anything to do with the kind of fire that seemed to engulf the left side of the plane as the plane's captain, Christian Marty, tried desperately to cut short the flight and land at a smaller nearby airport, Le Bourget. The repair job, the experts said, would have had to have been badly botched, causing a rupture in a fuel line for instance, to create the kind of engine collapse that occurred.

Others speculated that it was more likely that something was sucked into the engine on takeoff. The finding that pieces of tire were on the runway gave this theory more weight Thursday. Brian Trubshaw, a former chief test pilot for the British team that developed the Concorde, said that Thursday's findings suggested that either a tire or a wheel sucked into the engine might have been the cause of the failure of engine No. 2.

"When I hear today's facts, it could well be that this was the thing that started the sequence of events," Trubshaw said. "But you really can't be sure until all the facts are in."

Aviation writer and former pilot Germain Chambost told France's LCI television, "We can surmise that a tire or several tires on the landing gear exploded, that the debris from the tires got into the air duct of one of the engines,"

While investigators studied the clues, relatives of the victims and Air France employees gathered for a memorial service at La Madeleine church in Paris. Flight attendants and pilots in uniform formed a kind of honor guard as the mourners, often clutching hands and holding on to each other, climbed the church's front steps. During the service, 113 candles were placed on the altar.

In Gonesse, a Paris suburb, firefighters finished the grim job of collecting the bodies of the 100 passengers, nine crew members and four hotel employees who were killed in the fireball created by the crash.

French officials said they still had not made any decisions about when to put Air France's remaining Concordes back in service. The sleek, needle-nosed jets are a favorite of celebrities and corporate executives who pay as much as $11,000 for a round-trip trans-Atlantic flight at 1,300 mph.

But Air France announced that it would pay about $20,000 to relatives of the victims for their "immediate material needs." The airline also said it would pay for the victims' funerals and any psychological counseling the relatives needed.

The BEA said that a preliminary report on the crash would not be ready until the end of August.

Prosecutor Xavier Salvat said he had opened a judicial inquiry into possible "involuntary homicide and involuntary injury" relating to the accident. The inquiry, which officials called a formality, will try to determine whether charges should be pressed. It does not mean there is a suspicion of foul play or wrongdoing.

Until Tuesday, the Concorde, sometimes criticized for being too noisy and costly, had never crashed.

But according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the Concorde has had a history of small problems with its wheels and tires.

The plane's engines may have been damaged by debris from its own tires on three previous occasions; in a fourth incident, a tire blown on takeoff caused fuel and hydraulic leaks. But on all four of those occasions, damage was minor. Modifications were made to the wheels after the incidents.

Jet engines are highly susceptible to damage to the blades inside the engine that suck air into the combustion chamber, or other internal parts. Each engine creates a vortex in front of it, a little like the swirl that appears in a full bathtub when the drain plug is pulled out, that can suck loose objects into the engine; birds or debris on the runway are most often the problem.

In June 1979, for instance, an Air France Concorde taking off from Dulles International Airport near Washington suffered fuel and hydraulic line leaks because of debris from blown tires.

The next month an Air France Concorde was taking off from Dulles when, according to the FAA, the blades that suck air into the engine stopped pulling in air smoothly due to some damage from a foreign object.

On Sept. 16, 1980, a British Airways Concorde landing at Dulles blew a tire and "pieces of tire damaged engine and airframe," according to an FAA database.

On Feb. 19, 1981, an Air France Concorde blew a tire on takeoff from Dulles. The aircraft landed safely at Kennedy International Airport with one engine shut down "due to vibration," caused by part of the tire entering the engine, the FAA said.

-- Information from the Washington Post and Associated Press was used in this report.

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