Titanium strip and design fault blamed for Concorde crash

Airline Industry Information, Dec 15, 2004

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2004 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

A metal strip that fell off a Continental Airlines jet and a fuel tank design fault caused the Concorde crash on 25 July 2000, an official report has said.

The air disaster near Paris, France killed 113 people.

There exists a direct link between the Air France Concorde hitting a titanium alloy strip that had fallen off a Continental Airlines DC-10 a few minutes earlier and one of the jet's tyres bursting, said the public prosecutor.

The prosecutor alleged that Continental had not respected the rules governing metal fixtures used in building aircraft. The replacement titanium alloy strip fitted to the DC-10, which had not been authorised by the US civil aviation authorities, was harder than the aluminium normally used for that purpose and played a major role in cutting the Concorde's tyre, reported the French daily newspaper Le Parisienne.

Top Continental Airlines executive Gordon Bethune and other officials have been summoned by French prosecutors for questioning.

The report also points to a "serious fault" in the design of the Concorde, whose fuel tanks did not have enough protection from debris in the case of a burst tyre.

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