Continental rejects Concorde blame

[madinmaryland]

(CNN) -- Continental Airlines has rejected the blame for causing a Concorde supersonic jet to crash near Paris leading to the deaths of 113 people.

Earlier Tuesday an official French report was published saying a metal strip that fell off a Continental DC-10 and a fuel tank design fault on Concorde caused the disaster in July 2000.

But Continental later released a statement in which the airline, based in Houston, Texas, denied any responsibility for the crash and vowed to defend itself in court.

"We strongly disagree that anything Continental did was the cause of the Concorde accident, and we are outraged that media reports have said criminal charges may be made against our company and its employees," the statement said.

snip

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/12/14/france.concorde/index.html

[GCP]

1. The piece of metal that caused the tire to blow out

and throw a 20 lb block of rubber into the fuel tank came from the Continental DC10 (I believe), which had taken off just prior to Concorde. There was a show called "Seconds to Disaster" on the Discovery Channel which went into the whole thing in depth.
A British aviation engineer was appalled at the shoddiness of the piece of metal in question. It was just cut roughly and bolted onto the engine of the Continental jet, not machined or shaped at all, bolts put in all over the place instead of being welded. He couldn't believe how they could get away with such awful workmanship. When placed against the engine of the Continental jet, it fit perfectly, like a jig-saw piece.

That was the bit that fell off and brought down Concorde.

They're guilty as hell for shoddy workmanship if nothing else. And BTW, if the Air france pilot hadn't ordered some kind of check before take-off and put them behind schedule, they would have taken off before Continental and Concordes would probably still be flying.

[MisterCompletly]

2. What if a motorist lost a hubcap on a busy freeway

And it caused a 300 car / truck pileup that killed dozens? Would you as the motorist that didn't secure the hubcap properly accept all the guilt and liability for all the forthcoming lawsuits?

[Stella_Artois]

5. If you had a legal requirement to check the hubcap before driving

If it can be proved that this part was failing before flight, and that this part was supposed to be covered as part of a maintainance schedule or pre flight walk around / check then the crew / owners are at fault.

Also, the Concorde was flawed in that debris should not be able to puncture a fuel tank. Who knows if this is a potential problem in other designs though.

This didn't kill Concorde though. 9/11 killed Concorde as much as the fundamental age of the type.

[Eugene]

3. but a blown tire should not have destroyed the plane.

In fact, insufficient shielding of the Concorde's
fuel tanks was cited as a fatal design flaw.

[Benhurst]

4. I can't believe a Houston-based company would do anything

shoddy.