TEN YEARS after the Concorde crash that signalled the end of commercial supersonic air travel, a French court has found Continental Airlines and one of its mechanics guilty of involuntary manslaughter for their role in the disaster.
The airline was yesterday fined €200,000 and ordered, along with aerospace group EADS, to split 70-30 any damages payable to families of the 113 crash victims, while welder John Taylor was given a 15-month suspended prison sentence. Both Continental and its employee said they would appeal the verdict.
The Air France Concorde, carrying mostly German tourists bound for a Caribbean cruise, was taking off from Paris on July 25th, 2000, when an engine caught fire. Trailing a plume of flames, it crashed into a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport.
All 109 passengers and crew and four people on the ground died. In its verdict, the court in Pontoise, north of Paris, blamed maintenance practices for the fact that a small piece of metal dropped off a Continental aircraft that took off just before the Concorde.
This piece of titanium, which the court found was incorrectly manufactured and affixed, shredded one of the Concorde’s tyres, sending debris into the aircraft’s wing fuel tank and setting off a fire that led to loss of control of the aircraft.
The crash hastened the demise of Concorde and its two operators, Air France and British Airways, took the aircraft out of service in 2003.
Continental has always denied that the titanium strip triggered the disaster by puncturing Concorde’s tyres. Its lawyer, Olivier Metzner, insisted during the trial that the supersonic jet had already been on fire for 700 metres of runway.
A supervisor at Continental, Stanley Ford, was acquitted by the Pontoise court, having been accused of approving Mr Taylor’s work without checking it. Three French aviation officials were also acquitted, including Henri Perrier (81), the former head of the Concorde programme.
Mr Perrier, who directed the Concorde division at Aérospatiale, now part of EADS, from 1978 to 1994, had been accused of ignoring warning signs from a series of incidents on Concorde aircraft before the Paris crash.
The court said EADS had some civil liability in the disaster, however, and ordered it to pay 30 per cent of the damages imposed by the criminal court.
During their 27 years of service, the Concorde jets suffered dozens of tyre blowouts or wheel damage that in several cases pierced the fuel tanks.
Responding to the judgment, Mr Metzner said the US airline would appeal the “absurd” verdict and criticised a ruling that “only protects French interests”. “Justice in France must be handed down in the name of the French people,” Mr Metzner said. “This morning it was handed down in the name of French patriotism.”
He maintained throughout the four-month trial hearings earlier this year that Concorde operator Air France’s maintenance was negligent and the aircraft should never have been allowed to fly.
Air France, which is believed to have paid out €100 million in compensation to victims’ families, said it was delighted with the verdict and may now seek to reclaim some of that money from the US airline.
Heralding a new age of supersonic passenger travel, Concorde was jointly developed by France and the UK and put into service in 1976. The aircraft reached a cruising speed of 2,175km/h (1,350mph), or twice the speed of sound, at 18,000 metres (60,000ft).
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.