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Change Your Life! |
Tragic and fatal nosedive of 'concord' |
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July 27, 2000
GONESSE, France (AP) - The Air France supersonic Concorde plane that crashed and killed 113 people during takeoff had been delayed for last-minute maintenance on one of its engines, Air France said Wednesday. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot radioed he had engine trouble and sought in vain to make an emergency landing. In a statement, Air France said it had taken a replacement part from a backup Concorde to repair one of the doomed plane's engines shortly before the crash a day earlier. French forensic experts examined the charred bodies of the victims, mainly German tourists, to determine their identities, as relatives arrived in Paris. In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the nation was in shock. Pope John Paul II sent condolences. French leaders and Air France officials were deeply upset by the crash. President Jacques Chirac was to attend an ecumenical ceremony later Wednesday in the town where the plane went down. He said "everything" would be done to determine the causes of the accident. German Transport Minister Reinhard Klimmt as well as about 50 psychologists were on hand to make contact with the families of the victims who were kept far from the media.
French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot ordered the indefinite suspension of all Air France Concorde flights, as investigators combed the blackened remains of AF flight 4590. Air France said the plane had received last minute maintenance on one of the engines shortly before its fatal flight Tuesday afternoon. In a statement, the company said the "engine reverse thruster" of engine 2 of the plane was inoperative on its return from New York on July 24. Such thrusters slow the plane upon landing. Although the required piece was unavailable, flight 4590 was cleared for departure because of a technical level of tolerance allowed by the manufacturer, Air France said. However, the pilot, taking into account that the plane was full, ordered the replacement of the inoperative part, which was taken from a backup Concorde and installed, the Air France statement said. The repair took 30 minutes. After late bags were loaded and the engine was repaired, the captain made the decision to depart, Air France said. Prosecutor Elisabeth Senot, who is in charge of the judicial investigation, said the control tower alerted the pilot that the back of the plane was on fire 56 seconds after takeoff. The pilot replied that he had engine trouble, at which point the flames were rapidly growing, France 2 televsion quoted Senot as saying.
The pilot said he could not stop the flight and was trying to reach Le Bourget airport nearby. "It is during this looping maneuver that the aircraft crashed on the hotel in Gonesse," France 2 quoted Senot as saying. The Air France statement made no indication as to whether the last-minute repair may or may not have led to the catastrophe. In Gonesse, the site of the crash, villagers said they believe the unidentified pilot was making one last heroic attempt to veer the Concorde away from a populated area. Gayssot, the French transportation minister, said he wanted more checks, with special emphasis on the two recovered flight recorders. "I cannot exclude the possibility of asking for a new certification of the Concorde engines," Gayssot said. However, he said the future of the supersonic jet was "not in question." At least one of the engines of flight AF4590 caught fire during takeoff Tuesday and smashed into a hotel moments later. As the jet struggled to gain height, witnesses saw a plume of flame trailing some 60 meters (yards) behind the plane. All Concorde flights were grounded Wednesday to give Air France time to check its remaining supersonic jets, and French media began speculating on whether this marked the end of the swooping "white bird." After grounding its Concordes on Tuesday, British Airways decided to resume its flights from London and New York on Wednesday after completing safety checks. "The Concorde without a doubt died yesterday. It had just turned 31. For France, it's a day of mourning. The myth of a beautiful white bird will remain," the daily Le Figaro wrote. Until Tuesday's crash, the Concorde had a perfect safety record during 31 years of service since it was developed by Britain and France in the 1960s.
Ninety-six of the passengers were from Germany, 13 from the town of Moenchengladbach on the border with the Netherlands. There were two Danes, one Austrian and one American. All those aboard perished, along with four people on the ground. Twelve people were rushed out of Hotelissimo, the hotel that was hit. One was seriously injured, police said early Wednesday. A neighboring hotel was damaged. But the toll on the ground could have been much worse: 45 Polish tourists who were staying at Hotelissimo had left earlier to go sightseeing. They returned after the crash to find an inferno where their hotel once stood. French firefighters were still searching Wednesday to see if there were anymore victims on the ground. The victims on the ground included two Polish hotel employees, the Polish Consulate in Paris confirmed. The nationality of the other two victims was not immediately known, police said. The Concorde's passengers were headed for New York where they planned to board a German cruise liner for a luxury voyage through the Caribbean. The crash did not appear to be linked to a problem of cracks which was announced this week in both British Airways and Air France Concordes. "There were no hairline cracks in this Concorde, but the accident could have resulted from fire in the engine on take-off," a statement by Air France said. The plane was powered by Rolls Royce Olympus 593 engines. The passengers included 97 adults and three youngsters under 18. Air France spokesman Francois Brousse said at an airport news conference that Air France would compensate the victim's families. The first Concorde plane flew in 1969. Twelve of the jetliners are still operated by Air France and British Airways. The plane that crashed had been in service since 1980 and had flown 12,000 hours. It had its last mandatory regulatory checkup July 21. The plane was full of fuel on takeoff for the Atlantic run. The passengers were supposed to be enjoying champagne over the ocean at twice the speed of sound. The Concorde, which crosses the Atlantic at 1,350 mph (2,187 kph), has been considered among the world's safest planes. Its only major scare came in 1979, when a bad landing blew out a plane's tires. The incident led to a design modification. The plane is popular with celebrities, world-class athletes and the rich. It flies above turbulence at nearly 60,000 feet (20,000 meters), crossing the Atlantic in about 3{ hours, less than half that of regular jetliners. The Concorde crash that claimed the lives of 96 Germans en route to a dream cruise in the Caribbean left Germany in shock Wednesday, and nowhere more so than this small city that was home to 13 of the victims. "He and his wife are dead," Michael Muehlenbroich, a police spokesman in the western city of Moenchengladbach, said somberly as he paged through the morning newspaper and the pictures of some of the locals who died in Tuesday's inferno. "He and his wife are dead," he repeated, pointing at another photo. "He and his wife are dead. It's terrible." The crash outside Paris of the New York-bound supersonic jet, which had been chartered by a German cruise ship company, dominated all the German media. "At the start of a dream vacation, 96 Germans burned to death in Concorde," the B.Z. tabloid headlined its front page. "Germany is in mourning." Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and most of his government ministers attended a hastily arranged ecumenical service at the Christus Pavilion on the grounds of the world's fair in Hanover, where the Cabinet was holding its last regular meeting before summer break. The Foreign Ministry identified the victims booked for the cruise ship tour as 49 men, 47 women and three children. All were from Germany except for two Danes and an Austrian. The list was broken down by states, but a spokeswoman Wednesday said no further identifying information would be released. Air France said nine crew members and a retired Air France employee - an American - on board also were killed. In Moenchengladbach, a quiet bedroom community of 270,000 in Germany's industrial heartland, residents knew who among their town's leading lights had booked the pricey flight and cruise. "These people are the upper-class people of Moenchengladbach," Muehlenbroich said. "They're known to everybody in town." According to the local Rheinische Post, the couples were long-time friends and had traveled together before, booking through a local travel agent. This time, however, the group split up. Thirteen took the Concorde charter to New York - a roughly 3,000 mark (dlrs 1,500 surcharge) - where they were to board the luxury liner MS Deutschland to start a 16-day cruise. Three other couples and the travel agent booked cheaper regular flights - not learning until they reached New York about the fate of the rest of their group. Among the victims identified by the newspaper were Kurt Kahle, 51, the head of private business school, his 37-year-old wife and their 8 year old child; Harald Ruch, 45, owner of building cleaning company and security service, and his 46-year-old wife; and Werner Tellmann, 69, a furniture-store owner, and his wife, Margarete, 66. "I myself bought furniture from him," Muehlenbroich said. |
