Wednesday, July 21, 2004 · Last updated 11:47 a.m. PT

Runway debris cited in Concorde crash

By PIERRE-ANTOINE SOUCHARD
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

PARIS -- The crash of an Air France Concorde in 2000 was caused in part by the extreme hardness of debris that punctured the plane's tire, a French investigation has found, judicial officials said Wednesday.

A stray strip of metal from another airliner that pierced the supersonic plane's tire on a Paris runway contained titanium, making it unusually hard, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

The sleek-nosed jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Paris' Charles de Gaulle on July 25, 2000, diving into a small hotel. The crash killed the 109 people on the aircraft - mostly Germans - and four people at the hotel.

Experts laid out their conclusions to an investigating judge, state prosecutors and lawyers for victims' families at an informal meeting Tuesday in the northern Paris suburb of Pontoise, officials said.

"The strip that should have been in stainless steel turned out to be made of titanium, a stronger alloy that made the plane's tire burst and set off a chain reaction that led to the Concorde crash," said Jerome Boursican, a lawyer for a pilots' union that is a civil party to the legal case over the crash.



In January 2002, a 400-page government report confirmed the long-held theory that a piece of debris from a Continental Airlines plane was a factor in the accident.

The report by France's Accident Investigation Bureau said the crash could not have been foreseen but faulted sloppy operations by Air France and Houston-based Continental.

A call to Continental was not immediately returned Wednesday.

According to the report, a Continental DC-10 shed a piece of metal known as a wear strip onto a runway that the Concorde later used for takeoff. The strip caused a Concorde tire to burst, sending rubber debris into the fuel tanks and sparking a fuel leak and fire that brought the plane down.

The government report alleged the strip was not properly installed. A judicial official on Wednesday said the titanium strip was a replacement part on the Continental plane.

The experts' report is expected to be formally provided to an investigating judge in September, which could lead to the first criminal charges in the case, the officials said.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=France%20Concorde