Continental (Airlines) blamed for Concorde crash

[bin.dare]

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=593205

A shard of metal which fell from a Continental jet and a weakness in Concorde's design caused the Paris crash in July 2000 which killed 113 and ended the career of the Franco-British supersonic plane, a French prosecutor said yesterday.

Although the provisional findings of the criminal investigation closely followed those of the official accident report three years ago, they could open the way to legal action against Continental Airlines officials and ground staff. Paris-based staff of the American company have to give evidence to an investigating judge in February. Senior executives of Continental in the US, including the CEO, Gordon Bethune, have been asked to attend a similar hearing in March. Lawyers for the families of victims said they would push for Continental officials to be placed under formal investigation, one step short of a charge, but prosecution officials said that this was not yet envisaged.

...

Whether it would be possible to bring such charges against Continental employees or bosses is unclear. The criminal, or judicial investigation, has confirmed the earlier French accident bureau findings that a chain reaction of blunders and weaknesses led the chartered, US-bound Concorde to burst into flames soon after take-off from Charles de Gaulle. The aircraft hit a hotel at Gonesse, three miles from the airport.

After a four-year investigation, including a near-complete reassembly of the fragmented aircraft, the investigating judges said the "immediate cause" of the accident was a burst tyre, caused by a piece of titanium dropped on the runway by the Continental jumbo jet in front of the Concorde. The debris from the tyre penetrated a wing, causing a fire in a petrol tank, which led the supersonic aircraft to lose power, fail to gain sufficient height on take off and then crash.

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