Metal Part Maybe Came From Continental Jet

Sept. 4 -- French investigators today said a stray metal piece that gashed a tire of a supersonic Concorde in July — causing a fire in the fuel tank and dooming the flight — apparently came from a Continental Airlines DC-10.

The Continental jet took off from the same runway just minutes before the Concorde, which caught fire and crashed into a hotel, killing 113 people, said France’s Accident and Inquiry Office.

The plane, inspected on Saturday in Houston, had a missing part “which appeared to be identical to the metal piece found on the runway after the July 25, accident,” read a statement from the office, known by the French acronym, BEA.

Part Missing Near Plane’s Door

The BEA’s preliminary report on the accident, made public Thursday, showed a picture of a bent metal piece 16 inches long, similar to a part later found to be missing from a space between a fan and a door on the right-wing engine of the Continental DC-10.

The BEA statement described the found metal piece as part of a hood on a thrust reverser.

It was not immediately confirmed that the two pieces are the same. But Jane’s aviation security editor Chris Yates said that two types of parts could be confused with each other.

BEA spokeswoman Helene Bastianelli said that it was “probably” the same part.

Incidents of debris falling off aircrafts, said Yates, while not common, do happen with an alarming regularity. “That’s the whole purpose of runway inspections,” he said.

French investigators earlier said a routine inspection of the runway from which the Concorde took off had been delayed. Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of the Air Accident Investigation Bureau (BEA), told a news conference Friday that there was a fire drill on the runway and theinspection was postponed due to personnel shortages.

However, it is unclear if the routine inspection, which was scheduled for 3 p.m., would have altered the chain of events on July 25, since the Continental flight took off mere minutes before the Concorde.