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Black box reveals black and bleak moments |
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July 28, 2000
PARIS (AP) - French investigators finished decoding the second black box Thursday on the Concorde supersonic jet that crashed and killed 113 people, but it could take up to three days to complete the analysis of the fatal flight, the French Transport Ministry said. The ministry said there were 600 bits of technical information on the recovered flight data recorder that had to be analyzed and then compared with information decoded earlier from the other black box, the voice recorder. In another development, the French prosecutor's office in the Val d'Oise region opened a judicial inquiry into "involuntary homicide and involuntary injury" relating to the accident, judicial sources, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said. Such an inquiry, which can last for months, will try to determine whether charges should be pressed and against whom. Involuntary homicide in France is defined as a negligent killing punishable by up to three years in prison, or 300,000 franc (dlrs 43,000) fine. The three judges in the case have the legal right to call witnesses to determine the circumstances of the accident. Meanwhile, French authorities were preparing the Madeleine church in central Paris for a memorial service later Thursday in honor of the victims. The church, which resembles a Greek temple, is one of the most famous in Paris.
A French judicial and aeronautics expert called for a probe into the motor turbines on the ill-fated Concorde that plunged to the ground in a furnace of fire. Raymond Auffray, an engineer and aeronautics expert to Paris' Court of Appeal, told the daily "La Croix" that technical investigations should focus on turbine discs inside both engines on the left wing, including the number No. 2 engine that caught fire shortly before takeoff in the Wednesday accident. The pilot's loss of control of the aircraft points towards a ruptured "turbine disk" which he said would cause the engine to completely destruct. The risk of such a rupture in normal circumstances is low - less than one in a billion for each hour of flight, so he didn't exclude the possibility of "intruding objects" in the engine. Meanwhile, the daily "Liberation" newspaper reported Thursday that experts believed the number two motor was "without a doubt the cause of the disaster." "Le Figaro," meanwhile reported investigators were not ruling out the possibility of human error. "Liberation" cited Andre Turcat, a longtime supersonic pilot, as saying the decision of the pilot of the ill-fated Concorde to head towards Le Bourget airport 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) away instead of returning to Charles de Gaulle where it took off was "imaginable but risky." Capt. Christian Marty tried to wrestle his stricken jet down on the airport as a fiery blaze was consuming the left side of the plane, said Elisabeth Senot, the prosecutor in charge of the judicial investigation. On Wednesday, France's Transportation Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot said he hopes to authorize his country's Concordes to resume their supersonic flights in the next few days even as the world watched in horror at video footage showing the fiery death of Air France flight AF4590.
"The resumption of flights could start in the coming days," Gayssot said. "It depends on the results of the inquiry." The inquiries were focusing on one of four mighty Rolls Royce engines that power the world's fastest jetliners at twice the speed of sound on their luxury Atlantic crossings. Officials said the fire that consumed this Concorde seconds after its takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport probably started in the No. 2 engine. Video shot by the wife of a Spanish truck driver from a nearby highway captured the resulting disaster. Like some monstrous, wounded bird, the great white plane struggles to gain height as a bubbling, blazing spout of flame and black smoke bellows behind. The plane dived into a hotel killing all 100 passengers, nine crew and four people in the Hotelissimo in Gonesse, a gritty industrial suburb north of Paris. Air France said mechanics had worked on engine No. 2 just before the doomed takeoff, but government officials said it was too early to say if the repairs were linked to the cause of the accident. Ninety-six of the dead were Germans heading for the vacation of a lifetime - supersonic to New York, then a five-star cruise into the Caribbean and South America and for some, a trans-Pacific voyage to the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.
Their deaths united France and Germany in sadness. President Jacques Chirac and his wife joined grieving relatives at a religious service in a Gonesse community hall. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Germany was in shock. The crash provoked speculation about Concorde's future. When Britain and France first developed the plane three decades ago it was hailed as ahead of its time. But Concorde has never been a commercial success. Before Tuesday's crash only 13 were operated, seven by British Airways, six by Air France. Gayssot, the French minister, insisted Concorde still had an important role. "Is there any other mode of transport as modern?" he asked. British Airways resumed Concorde flights from London to New York Wednesday after the government dropped a ban imposed after the Paris crash. Worries about Concorde's safety had surfaced just before the disaster when engineers in Britain and France found tiny cracks in wings. Air France said there were no cracks in the plane that crashed. |
