Concorde crash trial opens
A four-month trial over the Air France Concorde crash 10 years ago will begin today.
The French investigators’ finding that an abandoned scrap of metal on the runway at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris caused the supersonic jet to crash in a ball of flames shortly after take-off, killing a total of 113 people, will be scrutinised and debated at the long-awaited hearing.
Prosecutors say the passenger jet would not have crashed in July 2000 if a Continental Airlines DC-10 had not dropped a piece of titanium on the runway minutes before the Concorde took off.
But Continental lawyer Olivier Metzner says the American airline is simply a convenient scapegoat and will argue that a fire broke out on the Concorde eight seconds before it reached the titanium strip.
The case marks the only crash of a Concorde, an accident that brought heartache and humiliation to a nation proud of its aviation marvel, a jet that could fly across the Atlantic in half the time of other airliners.
The trial is expected to last four months as the court in Pontoise, north of Paris, tries to pin down who should be held criminally responsible for the crash, which killed 109 people on the plane, mostly German tourists, and four people on the ground.
Both aviation and judicial investigators have said the metal strip on the runway was the primary cause of the accident and Continental Airlines, based in Houston, Texas, and two of its US employees are on trial for manslaughter.
Three former French officials also face the same charge. Judicial investigators said they had long failed to fix the Concorde’s vulnerable spots.
Money is not a major issue, since the victims’ families accepted settlements long ago, neither is the plane’s airworthiness.
The jet was retired by both Air France and British Airways in 2003. Concordes are now on display in museums, relics from a time when supersonic flight seemed like the future of air travel.
Aviation officials will nonetheless watch the trial closely.
