Accident 'impossible to predict'

Arslanian said lessons had been learned from the accident

PARIS, France (CNN) -- The French air accident investigation branch released its final report into the 2000 Concorde crash on Wednesday. Paul-Louis Arslanian, General Manager of the Bureau Enquetes Accidents (BEA), spoke to CNN about the report and its findings:

In this report there is no new element which may be a surprise, or change from what we already said.

We were never hiding anything which has appeared now. Naturally we recommended an audit of the Concorde structure, the Concorde maintenance at Air France, we recommended that the supervision be increased, etc.

We also have nine new recommendations, which have a more general scope than Concorde itself.

RESOURCES In-depth: Concorde  A supersonic return   RESOURCES BEA site: The report in full  (in French)   MORE STORIES Report backs crash theory

My people, and many others, worked for a few days without knowing there was asbestos in the wreckage and this is something I prefer not to be faced with again.

In fact there was some asbestos in the structure of the aircraft, namely what is around the engines.

We were informed eventually that there was an asbestos risk because there was some asbestos in the wreckage. I do not know (the extent of) risk.

Anyhow, we took immediate measures in order not to put our people in danger. Now they are under medical supervision and it will may last until they retire.

My feeling … after one year and a half of work on this accident, is that this accident was not possible to predict.

Other things could have been corrected, but not what was the cause of the accident.

This type of accident is very, very difficult to imagine, and even by a very strict follow-up of every incident even by a lot of theoretical studies, nobody would have imagined this accident to happen.

The problem of debris on runways and at airports in general is something very difficult to fight against.

We have recommended, between other things, that consideration be given to the possibility of having something automatic, to identify that debris has fallen on the runway.

The report says a tire burst after hitting a stray metal strip on the runway

The recorders, and especially the flight recorder, on the Concorde of Air France was recording engine data only every four seconds.

Each engine was recorded every one second, so you need to have four seconds to have the full scope of the four engines. This led us to additional work to understand what happened in detail.

We recommended that this be improved so that every second we have the four engines and not only one engine.

However, this tragedy has something terrible in it. The moment the tyre was on the strip, and the tyre exploded, it was finished. Everything they did was trying, but they were doomed.

We studied every possible way out of the tragedy, and there was none. Everything was done the moment they passed over this metallic strip.

Now the report is published I am happy it is over for us and I'm happy for the families also. Now they have the answer, I hope, to every question they may ask.

I hope we will never again, at least on the Concorde, have a tragedy.

I feel that this tragedy will bring a better knowledge on fire and on the structure of the fuel tanks.

Also, this tragedy, as every accident, is a reminder to all of us that safety is an everyday fight -- you cannot relax because yesterday there was no accident. You have to fight every day, every minute, for safety.

I will never say any plane is 100 percent safe, but what I would say is that today, the Concorde is again an ordinary, extraordinary aircraft.

The plane is one of the safest ways of transportation and all of us in the aviation industry are fighting for safety.

We need to help of the public, because from time to time safety or security means delays and means the passenger is less comfortable, but this is the price we have to pay, all of us, to fly safely.