Any airport can't do an inspection of a runway after every aircraft uses it It is logistically impossible to inspect every runway after every landing and departure.

Here lies the difference between the UK and France! the runways at CDG were/are still? inspected just three times a day! Whereas at Heathrow they are continuously inspected for debris and always were before a Concorde take-off!Yes it was a bad repair that caused the accident but the BEA being true to form are brushing other important contributory facts under the carpet. As is their strange habit!!!1. The rwy was not inspected.2. Concorde's left undercarriage was missing a spacer due to Air France's negligent maintenance. This caused the a/c to behave like a shopping trolley veering to the left almost onto the grass. So where was the aforementioned recalcitrant metal strip "actually" lying?3. Concorde was at least one tonne overweight due to extra baggage and unburnt fuel.4. The wind changed and the captain elected to take-off overweight with a 6kt tail wind!!!!!!!!!5. By doing this the mtow was actually 6 tonnes over!!!!! The crew never recalculated the new t/o distance.6. The CofG was 2% further to the rear than operationally allowed.7. Less fuel was burnt on the taxi run than expected also contributing to the overweight sittuation.8. Because Concorde was drifting to the left on the take off run it was in danger of colliding with an Air France 747 carrying the president. The captain was therefore forced to rotate too early and was never able to build up enough speed to maintain flight. He never achieved V2.9. One of the engines was surging having ingested one of the rwy boundary lights thrown up by the nosewheel!! That's how close Concorde was to coming off the rwy altogether!!!Taking all these factors into consideration the captain could have just about saved the a/c with a struggle but adding the metal strip to the equation doomed the flight. Short of prosecuting every airline/manufacturer and I mean "every" for any bits that fall off an a/c on take-off or landing I can't see the French decision would hold any water in an English court!vololiberista

Here lies the difference between the UK and France! the runways at CDG were/are still? inspected just three times a day! Whereas at Heathrow they are continuously inspected for debris and always were before a Concorde take-off!Yes it was a bad repair that caused the accident but the BEA being true to form are brushing other important contributory facts under the carpet. As is their strange habit!!!1. The rwy was not inspected.2. Concorde's left undercarriage was missing a spacer due to Air France's negligent maintenance. This caused the a/c to behave like a shopping trolley veering to the left almost onto the grass. So where was the aforementioned recalcitrant metal strip "actually" lying?3. Concorde was at least one tonne overweight due to extra baggage and unburnt fuel.4. The wind changed and the captain elected to take-off overweight with a 6kt tail wind!!!!!!!!!5. By doing this the mtow was actually 6 tonnes over!!!!! The crew never recalculated the new t/o distance.6. The CofG was 2% further to the rear than operationally allowed.7. Less fuel was burnt on the taxi run than expected also contributing to the overweight sittuation.8. Because Concorde was drifting to the left on the take off run it was in danger of colliding with an Air France 747 carrying the president. The captain was therefore forced to rotate too early and was never able to build up enough speed to maintain flight. He never achieved V2.9. One of the engines was surging having ingested one of the rwy boundary lights thrown up by the nosewheel!! That's how close Concorde was to coming off the rwy altogether!!!Taking all these factors into consideration the captain could have just about saved the a/c with a struggle but adding the metal strip to the equation doomed the flight. Short of prosecuting every airline/manufacturer and I mean "every" for any bits that fall off an a/c on take-off or landing I can't see the French decision would hold any water in an English court!vololiberista

Do we know all of these for a fact? Can we see a source?

Do we know all of these for a fact? Can we see a source?

Read the accident report!!vololiberista

Concorde's left undercarriage was missing a spacer due to Air France's negligent maintenance. This caused the a/c to behave like a shopping trolley veering to the left almost onto the grass.

What the report says:

The spacer on the left main landing gear bogie had not been re-installed during replacement of the bogie on 17 and 18 July 2000. This omission did not contribute to the accident.

Also, the graphs show minimal/no yaw prior to the loss of thrust. It did nearly veer onto the grass, but that was due to the loss of thrust on both left-hand side engines—according to the report.There are a few other things you said I can find no mention of.

Read the accident report!!vololiberista

Can you reference the sections dealing with all your 9 points?

What the report says:Also, the graphs show minimal/no yaw prior to the loss of thrust. It did nearly veer onto the grass, but that was due to the loss of thrust on both left-hand side engines—according to the report.There are a few other things you said I can find no mention of.

Simply cutting-&-pasting almost an entire newspaper article proves nothing - except perhaps that you believe everything your read in the newspapers! It does infringe the newspaper's copyright and is also a breach of AVSIM's rules.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/may/13/davidrose.focusI ask again, can you provide reference to the accident report for the nine points you made? You yourself said "Read the accident report!!" in justification earler

"The links are to press publications. They must be correct because we all know how reliable and accurate the press is in its reporting."Ha!, About the same as any Government or investigative board,which have one agenda,protecting corporations and keeping asses in the seats,and seats in the air. As far as the articles,you have to read between the lines. My past career in airline maintenance and dealing with the FAA,and company's over 25 plus years, has exposed me to the inherent corruption in our system.If you want to believe that these entity's can be trusted go right ahead.

If a driver is negligent and some one dies as a result he's likely to face criminal charges.If a doctor is negligent and some one dies as a result he's likely to face criminal charges.If a mechanic is negligent and and some one dies as a result he's likely to face criminal charges.

Generally, according to US and international law, those cases are considered to be negligent homicide. A similar case anyhow, I'd remember was the long lasting case of Aeroperu Flight 603. While the Concorde crash had been attributed to material negligence, the Aeroperu crash was caused by the engineer placing a masking tape on the static port, shortly before cleaning, in which he didn't remove when the flight pushed back.

Simply cutting-&-pasting almost an entire newspaper article proves nothing - except perhaps that you believe everything your read in the newspapers! It does infringe the newspaper's copyright and is also a breach of AVSIM's rules.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/may/13/davidrose.focusI ask again, can you provide reference to the accident report for the nine points you made? You yourself said "Read the accident report!!" in justification earler

first of all I didn't reprint "all" the article! And as for "read the accident report" I'm sure you are aware of what is commonly known as the internet upon which one can perform a search. Do so!!I have on 4 occasions flown supernumery on Concorde and used the full simulator. I am in complete agreement with the aforesaid extract. Whilst the tyre burst "was" caused by the metal strip which was not correctly fitted, its precise position on the runway has not been properly determined. Ask from which engine did it fall? (I can't remember) but if it were no.1 that would be close to rwy edge.Despite your rant there is in the UK especially within the aviation community a lot of concern and disagreement regarding the BEA reports. Look at the full picture and not the narrow one!vololiberista

mgh, on 07 December 2010 - 11:50 PM, said:If a driver is negligent and some one dies as a result he's likely to face criminal charges.If a doctor is negligent and some one dies as a result he's likely to face criminal charges.If a mechanic is negligent and and some one dies as a result he's likely to face criminal charges.

Generally, according to US and international law, those cases are considered to be negligent homicide. A similar case anyhow, I'd remember was the long lasting case of Aeroperu Flight 603. While the Concorde crash had been attributed to material negligence, the Aeroperu crash was caused by the engineer placing a masking tape on the static port, shortly before cleaning, in which he didn't remove when the flight pushed back.

The problem here is that under English law there is the problem of precedent. Meaning that in future any airline or manufacturer "could" theoretically be prosecuted for any piece of metal found on the rwy. That said pieces would constitute a risk of involountary manslaughter, for example.vololiberista

The problem here is that under English law there is the problem of precedent. Meaning that in future any airline or manufacturer "could" theoretically be prosecuted for any piece of metal found on the rwy. That said pieces would constitute a risk of involountary manslaughter, for example.vololiberista

The problem with that piece of metal from the Continental aircraft was it was found to be mounted to the aircraft contrary to FAA Regulation and the manufactures recommendation. This is why France pursued criminal charges.If another piece of metal fell off another aircraft in the future but that piece of metal was found to be compliant to FAA Regulation and the manufacturers recommendations then that is not a prosecutable incident. That would call for an investigation and recomendations to prevent it from happening again.

first of all I didn't reprint "all" the article!

Someone else must have thought you did - the cut-&-paste has now been deleted.

And as for "read the accident report" I'm sure you are aware of what is commonly known as the internet upon which one can perform a search. Do so!!

I've re-read it and it doesn't support most of your points which is why I asked you to provide cross-references to them in the official report. It time for you to put up or shut up ion those claims.

I have on 4 occasions flown supernumery on Concorde and used the full simulator. I am in complete agreement with the aforesaid extract.

Few, if any ,aircraft accident investigators have that experience, so obviously they were completeIy unqualified to have carried out the investigation. It would have been much better done by you and the three retired Concorde aircrew mentioned in the article without any access to official evidence, data, records etc.

I think the point that is trying to be made is that it would appear a little "narrow-minded" of the BEA to attribute the only cause of the crash to the titanium strip.I fully agree that the mechanic in no way should have been fitting "ad-hoc" parts to an aircraft and in that Continental should be held responsible.........BUTthe US authorities had concerns in 1981 re blow outs on Concorde, causing excessive damage - which could perhaps be attributed to a design fault and Boeing.......and even in the same memo the practices of Air France and its employees both on the ground and in the air - was questioned[/url]http://www.ntsb.gov/...A81_150_152.pdfAdd in to the mix the what if's and maybe's such as the aircraft being over its MTOW (a fact accepted in the report).........the possibilty of the spacer being missing (the photos of the tyre marked runway, however you consider it, do show that the aircraft was just short of coming off the edge of the runway) that seem to surround the story, and to my mind, the cause of this crash had more than one facet/cause and was maybe a hideous combination of lax practice/procedure, and a little complacency.It just doesn't sit right with me for this decision, made by a French authority with French interests, to effectively exonerate all of the French factors at all.Regards

It's a pretty much unquestioned principle of accident investigation (and the organisational psychology that underpins much of it for that matter) that all accidents have more than one cause. When you read in the media that "pilot error was to blame", for instance, there's a whole host of issues underlying that. Was the pilot properly trained / experienced? Why didn't the pilot not flying challenge the error effectively or promptly? Were there issues of fatigue, complacency or poor motivation? Were the aircraft systems deficient in not providing a clear early warning or preventing / mitigating the unsafe act? And so on. For instance, the recent NTSB investigation of the Colgan Dash-8 crash in Buffalo last year didn't just focus on the pilot's clearly wrong attempt to recover from an incipient stall (raising, not lowering, the nose) - it also examined the relative experience of the captain and first officer, the clarity of the Dash-8's ASI and the effectiveness of its anti-ice systems, training on wing and tailplane stalls. and Colgan's scheduling policies and their effects on pilot fatigue (although the NTSB pulled their punches on this last issue IMHO).So in this case, blaming the Concorde crash solely on of one mechanic using the wrong part for a temporary repair just doesn't stack up. As others have said, there were many other causal / contributory factors. And in fairness to the BEA their report (which is here) recognises that. It identifies three causes, only one of which relates to the strip of metal; and lists 4 pages of recommendations which include suspending Concorde's airworthiness certificate and only mention Continental once. But accident investigation and criminal prosecution are two different things. An accident investigation looks at everything that happened and asks: what went wrong? A criminal case OTOH concentrates on the actions of one defendant and asks: did they break the law? It's not much of a defence to say that other things went wrong too, or other people broke the law as well. So convicting Continental doesn't mean they were solely and directly responsible for the crash: it only means that one of their employees did something wrong that contributed to a tragic accident. Unforunately it also means that aircrew and ground crew might be less likely to report mistakes, or to cover them up, for fear of being prosecuted. And that doesn't help safety in the long run.