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.

Foreign Object Debris

The BEA’s preliminary report on the accident, made public Thursday, showed a picture of a bent metal piece nearly 17 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.

But 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.

A Continental spokeswoman noted that “it has notbeen determined definitively” that the missing part on itsaircraft was the piece found on the runway.

Small parts falling off aircrafts are often not noticed. “Parts do not routinely fall off of airplanes,” said John Nance, ABC aviation expert. “The big piece of a KLM jet that landed on a California beach last week was most unusual.”

But often, when parts as small as a 17-inch metal strip do fall off of an aircraft, alarms do not go off in the cockpit, and they are not noticed.

Small pieces of junk found on the runway are so common, they even have a name: FOD, or foreign object debris. They can range from a mechanic’s wrench to a suitcase.