French court overturns Concorde crash conviction

Houston Chronicle - Chron.com ^ | November 29, 2012 | AP Staff

[brityank]

French court overturns Concorde crash conviction

By ASSOCIATED PRESS | November 29, 2012 | Updated: November 29, 2012 11:21am

VERSAILLES, France - A French appeals court overturned manslaughter convictions against Houston's Continental Airlines and a mechanic for the July 2000 crash of an Air France Concorde that killed 113 people, ruling Thursday that their mistakes did not make them legally responsible for the deaths.

The crash hastened the end for the already-faltering supersonic Concorde, synonymous with high-tech luxury but a commercial failure. The program, jointly operated by Air France and British Airways, was taken out of service in 2003.

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According to the original ruling, the mechanic fitted the wrong metal strip on a Continental DC-10. The piece ultimately fell off on the runway in Paris, puncturing the Concorde's tire. The burst tire sent bits of rubber into the fuel tanks, which started the fire that brought down the plane.

[brityank]

Sad outcome is - they knew there were problems, but they ignored them, until this.

[Gay State Conservative]

Although an interesting machine my understanding is (and I'm no aeronautical engineer) that the Concorde wasn't an exceptionally well designed *or* well engineered aircraft.

[brityank]

Saw all I wanted of French engineering with their Minitel system! ;^0

At least they didn’t let the Brits do the menus. lol

[musicman]

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[Aqua225]

I’ve never heard that about the Concorde. It was an impressive piece of machinery, and it would have not suffered that day had it not been for the safety bureaus basically covering up the hydraulic shock fuel tank problem.

In it’s day it was a state of the art airplane. But it burned too much fuel to be practical, probably why Boeing, LockMart, NG and McDg never built a competitor.

Now that supercomputing necessary for proper supersonic aircraft design is cheaply available, I think we will see a supersonic commercial airliner in the next 2 decades, that will be able to be operated out of most airports. But that’s only a guess on my part... I am not in the aero world.

I am in really no hurry to get to Europe at this point in my life, but a 2 hour jump from Raleigh to San Jose would be absolutely grand!

[Amberdawn]

I’m truly surprised that they overturned this.