Continental Airlines and five individuals have been named as
defendants in a French lawsuit which seeks to determine the cause
of the Air France Concorde accident ten years ago that killed 113
people and spelled the beginning of the end of the SST's flying
days. They face charges of involuntary manslaughter.
The aircraft crashed moments after takeoff when a tire ruptured
during the takeoff roll, causing debris to puncture a fuel tank on
the airplane which resulted in a catastrophic fire. The plane
crashed into a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
Continental is party to the suit because a piece of debris on
the runway which is suspected of contributing to the blowout is
alleged to have fallen from a Continental DC-10 which departed just
ahead of the Concorde. The French Bureau d'Enquêtes et
d'Analyses (BEA) said the strip caused a tire under the left wing
to blow, and the resulting debris punctured the fuel tank. But
Continental's lawyers told the Associated Press that the fire
started several seconds before the airplane ran over the strip of
titanium.
CNN reports two the individuals named in the suit were
Continental employees responsible for installing the strip on the
DC-10, the other three are French officials responsible for the
original certification of the SST. The suit contends that French
officials knew of design flaws, including a lack of protection for
the fuel tanks, which if addressed could have prevented the
accident.
The aircraft did resume flights in 2001 after a re-design of the
fuel tanks and tires. But the economics of maintaining the airplane
and downturn in air travel in the post 9/11 era caused British
Airways and Air France to stop flying Concorde altogether in
2003.
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