Report sheds new light on Concorde crash

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A full runway inspection was cancelled just hours before the crash of an Air France Concorde at Gonesse, France, in which 113 people died, French air accident officials have revealed.

A metal strip on the runway is suspected of causing a blowout in one of the supersonic jet’s tyres which led to the tragedy, investigators told a Paris press conference.

The exploding tyre set off a chain of events which led to the aircraft ploughing into a nearby hotel on July 25.

"There was a firemen's drill and the runway inspection was postponed," Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of the Air Accident Investigation Bureau (BEA), told a Paris news conference.

He said airport employees at the Charles De Gaulle airport normally inspected the runway three times a day.

But he cautioned against drawing hasty conclusions, saying: "We need to understand what was done during the fire drill."

The news conference followed the release on Thursday of a preliminary report into the accident, which included a transcript of the final radio exchange between the stricken jet’s crew and the control tower.

It includes the chilling final words of Concorde captain Christian Marty with the supersonic plane just seconds away from ploughing into a hotel two minutes after take-off.

"Too late," he said, before adding: "No time, no."

The control tower had warned moments earlier: "Concorde zero ... 4590, You have flames. You have flames behind you."

The radio exchange between the flight crew and the control tower was revealed in the preliminary report from the air accident investigators.

The crew's final words appear to suggest that they were attempting to complete an emergency landing at a nearby airport.

According to a transcript the final words from the plane's crew were: "We are trying Le Bourget."

Investigators believe that heavy chunks of rubber from a burst tyre damaged the fuel tanks located in the Concorde's wings, though the report contains no definitive conclusions as to the cause of the accident.

The investigators said they 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 76-page account of the events surrounding the first-ever Concorde crash verified expert speculation that the burst tyre was the first link in a chain of events that led to a fuel tank being ruptured and a catastrophic fire.

It also confirmed that a 43 cm (17-inch) metal strip, probably from another airplane, had been found on the runway of Charles de Gaulle airport.

The crew of the Concorde was first alerted to trouble just as the aircraft lifted off the runway.

During the final exchanges between the crew of the doomed Concorde and the control tower, an air traffic controller is heard warning the crew of the fire trailing the Concorde and giving the all-clear for an emergency landing.

"The crew had neither the means to be aware of the nature of the fire nor to fight it," the report said.

Contained in the BEA report were photographs of a section of tyre with a 32 cm (13-inch) gash and the metal strip thought to have caused the tear.

The strip was bent at one end and, according to investigators, apparently part of another plane.

The BEA has not fully pieced together the chain of events that caused two engines to fail and included an apparent problem with the landing gear.

After the tyre was gashed, a fire appeared under the left wing, the report said, followed by problems on engines one and two.

Arslanian said more than 80 staff were working on the investigation which was far from finished.

He said the focus of the investigation would now turn to, “what happened between the burst of the tyre and the crash; what caused the loss of thrust in the engines.”

The team had not determined whether the same fate would have met another Concorde or another aircraft, he said.

The final report is not due out for at least a year and a French judicial investigation is also in progress.

Both France and Britain -- the only countries with supersonic fleets -- last month withdrew the Concorde's airworthiness certification while the investigation proceeds.

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.

Aviation analysts said on Friday that the BEA's preliminary report was likely to mean Concorde would not be approved to fly again at least until the final report and possibly forever.

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