Concorde Sabotage All But Ruled Out

G O N E S S E, France, July 27 -- ABCNEWS has learned that officials have all but have ruled out sabotage as a cause of the deadly Air France Concorde crash, after completing their analysis of the doomed jet’s flight data recorder.

Investigators are now trying to sync up the information from the flight data recorder with the cockpit voice recorder, a process that is expected to take three days.

They are concentrating on a last-minute repair ordered by the pilot and a critical engine malfunction.

Air France Flight AF4590 had been cleared for takeoff when Capt. Christian Marty demanded that an inoperative part on the plane’s number two engine be replaced.

Ground crews unsuccessfully searched for a spare part — a motor that helps adjust the positioning of the engine’ thrust reverser. Air France officials say they eventually replaced it with a part taken from another plane.

Air France has used parts from Concordes no longer in service to replace parts on the planes in service.

Officials investigating the crash say they have not yet linked the repairs to the crash, but confirm the engine that caught fire while the supersonic plane roared down the runway at Charles de Gaulle airport was the number two engine.

The French minister today confirmed that investigators have all but ruled out sabotage.

56 Seconds

Fifty-six seconds after takeoff, the pilot of the doomed jet got a message from the control tower: the engine was on fire, according to information from the cockpit voice recorder released by prosecutor Elisabeth Senot, who is in charge of the judicial investigation.

“The pilot reported a failure on the number two motor and it seems that he was no longer able to brake given that the thrust was too great,” Senot told France 2 television.

She said initial examination had shown that there was a “malfunction in engine number two during the takeoff phase” and no indication of sabotage. The pilot said that he could not stop the flight and was trying to reach the Le Bourget military airport, a smaller and more accessible airport than Charles de Gaulle.