Before You Start Calling Them "French Fries" Again...
A French court has ruled that the 2000 Concorde crash in Paris was primarily the fault of Houston-based Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL), despite the fact that accoring to the AFP there was a long-standing design issue with the Concorde that resulted in numerous dangerous situations:
The first recorded instance of the fault being noticed was in a 1979 memo that warned of the sort of wing-penetration accident that occurred in 2000, according to the report.
"Technical solutions to reinforce the wing's lower surface on the aircraft ... were researched in 1979. The work was never carried out until 2001, after the accident," it said.
The Concorde suffered 67 tyre blowouts or wheel damage during its years of service. In 24 of those cases, the plane suffered impacts and in seven instances "the fuel tanks were pierced with one or several holes," the experts consulted in the report said.
The judge in the case ruled that this was "not a construction defect." The real problem according to the court was a piece of an aircraft that fell off a Continental Airlines jet moments before the Concorde took off. The AFP story states:
...he concluded that the 2000 accident would not have occurred without the presence of the 44-centimetre (17-inch) titanium strip that had fallen off a Continental DC-10 using the same runway five minutes earlier, it said.The object had a "direct causal role" in the accident, his report said.
Possible ramifications for the airline include: "a criminal lawsuit for manslaughter and possibly millions of euros (dollars) in damages."
Posted by Ethan Glading @ 12/14/04 01:32 PM | Houston Miscellany | Print | Comments (0)
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