Burst tire precipitated Concorde crash, says report

PARIS -- Air accident investigators have confirmed in a preliminary report published Thursday that a burst tyre set off the chain of events that caused an Air France Concorde to crash, killing 113 people.

The report by the French Air Accident Investigation Bureau (BEA) said it could not rule out the possibility of a similar crash if circumstances were to be repeated.

The report said: "The July 25 accident shows that the destruction of a tyre, an event that we cannot say will not recur, had catastrophic consequences in a short period of time, preventing the crew from rectifying the situation."

The 88-page report by French air accident investigators at the Bureau Enquetes-Accidents is an initial assessment of technical issues surrounding the crash of the Air France plane and will not look to attribute blame.

Before the report was published, a BEA spokeswoman said: "This report will draw together the facts as we know them so far. The full report will take up to a year to publish.

"A transcript of the pilot's last words will be released as part of the report."

British authorities have been co-operating with French officials and a spokesperson for the UK Air Accident Investigations Branch said he expected the report to be an assessment of the investigation so far.

Initial inquiries have pinpointed a tyre blow-out as being at the heart of the July 25 accident, with a piece of scrap metal lying on the runway believed to have set off the tragic chain of events.

It is thought that fragments of the tyre ruptured fuel tanks in the left wing which then ignited.

Investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder at the site soon after the crash and have been painstakingly reconstructing the plane's left wing.

Earlier this month British and French air safety officials grounded Concordes until concerns about tyre blow-outs are addressed.

Derek Blackall, from the UK's Civil Aviation Authority, said Concordes had suffered 70 previous tyre bursts since entering service in 1976, seven of them rupturing fuel tanks in the wings.

The crash shortly after take-off from Paris' Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, which killed 109 people on board and four on the ground, was the first fatal accident involving the supersonic craft.

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BEA
UK Air Accident Investigations Branch
Civil Aviation Authority
Air France
British Airways
BEA
Civil Aviation Authority

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