CONTINENTAL AIRLINES and five men went on trial yesterday for their alleged role in an Air France Concorde crash outside Paris 10 years ago that killed 113 people and hastened the end of supersonic passenger travel.
The Concorde, carrying mostly German tourists bound for a Caribbean holiday cruise, was taking off in Paris in July 2000 when an engine caught fire, causing the aircraft to crash into a hotel in the town of Gonesse, northeast of the capital.
A French investigation found that a small strip of metal from a Continental aircraft, that had taken off before the Concorde, had punctured its tyres, sending debris into the aircraft’s fuel tanks and setting off the fire that caused the crash.
The strip had been improperly attached to its aircraft and was made of titanium, an unauthorised replacement material, the investigation found, according to court documents. “The truth is what the investigators said happened,” Fernand Garnault, a lawyer for Air France, said last week.
Continental has always denied responsibility for the crash, however. At the trial, which is taking place in Pontoise in northern Paris, lawyers for the US carrier will suggest that the Concorde caught fire before its tyre was torn by the metal strip from a Continental aircraft.
“It’s clear that the Concorde caught fire before meeting it, so it wasn’t due to the wear strip,” Olivier Metzner, Continental’s lawyer, said last week. “Since 1980, we have known that the Concorde has problems with its wheels. It was the fault of Air France maintenance.”
For the crash to occur, “it must be that this plane had weaknesses and that these weaknesses were known for 20 years”, said Roland Rappaport, a lawyer representing the pilot’s family and the French pilots’ union. The metal strip “was certainly not sufficient to provoke this accident”.
Air France, which is a civil plaintiff in the case, has three witnesses to testify that the fire was caused when the Concorde ran over the piece of metal, its lawyer Mr Garnault said.
Five men are also charged with involuntary manslaughter along with Continental, among them the mechanic who affixed the strip and a manager who oversaw the unit at Continental.
In addition, two men who worked on the Concorde programme and a former French civil aviation official are accused of failing to address the possibility that the Concorde’s wheels could explode following five incidents in 1979 and two in 1993. All five deny responsibility for the deaths and injuries.
The first day of hearings was taken up mostly with procedural matters relating to the complex trial, which is expected to continue until the end of May. If found responsible, Continental faces a €375,000 fine, while the five individuals face five years’ imprisonment each and a €75,000 fine, court officials said.
Heralding a new age of supersonic passenger travel, Concorde was jointly developed by France and the UK and put in service in 1976. The aircraft reached a cruising speed of 1,350 miles/hour (2,175km/h), or twice the speed of sound, at a height of 60,000ft (18,000m). The distinctive droop-nosed aircraft was grounded for 16 months following the Paris crash, returning to service as air travel demand was in decline following the September 11th terrorist attacks.
As maintenance costs soared and passenger demand never recovered, the programme faltered and the airlines retired their 12 ageing jets.
The last commercial flight was in October 2003.