Families near Concorde agreement

Concorde has been grounded since the crash which killed 113 people

BERLIN, Germany -- Relatives of those killed in the Air France Concorde crash are close to agreement with the airline over compensation payments.

A total of 113 people were killed when the supersonic aircraft crashed into a hotel less than two minutes after leaving Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on July 25 last year.

A lawyer for some of the German victims of the accident said the negotiations now concern who is entitled to payment and the amount.

"So far, we have reached with Air France a general agreement on the structure of a compensation model," Ronald Schmid, a member of the legal team that says it represents 95 percent of victims' relatives, said in a statement.

"We are now waiting for concrete offers for the individual relatives, which will vary according to the degree of relationship and closeness to the victim."

He said he would not comment on the level of compensation before offers were made to all the relatives -- expected by the end of March 2001.

Investigators believe the crash could have been caused when a stray piece of metal punctured a tyre before take off.

They say the strip fell onto the runway from another plane just minutes before the doomed Concorde took off from the same runway.

Concordes were immediately grounded after the crash, but engineers said last month that the plane could soon be airborne again following a series of “very positive” runway safety tests.

Air France and British Airways, the only companies that own Concordes, hope to recover the planes' commercial flight permit in the coming months, and next plan to test a British Airways model.

BA have started fitting bullet-proof liners to the fuel tanks of its Concordes in an effort to strengthen the underside of the aircraft and prevent a similar accident.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Air France
British Airways
French Air Accident Investigation Bureau
UK Civil Aviation Authority

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