Concorde Loses Flight Certification

Aug. 16, 2000 -- British aviation officials today formally suspended the Concorde’s certificate of airworthiness, saying a burst tire was the “primary cause” of the crash of an Air France supersonic jet last month.

British officials said the troubled jet’s right to fly would remain suspended until changes are made to prevent a similar disaster.

“Evidence is now emerging that the tire burst of itself was the primary cause of this accident,” said Civil Aviation Authority chairman Sir Malcolm Field. “What is uniquelydifferent in this case is that tire debris alone is thought to have led to this catastrophic accident.”

“It is clear to us all in the [Civil Aviation Authority] that a tire burst alone should never cause the loss of a public transport aircraft,” said Field, adding that Concorde has experienced 70 tire incidents since 1976.

The CAA would not say how long it would be before the plane could fly again, but a top French official says the aircraft will have to undergo significant changes if they are expected to take wing again.

Both French and British investigators have recommended that the airworthiness certificate of Concorde jets be suspended.

With all Concordes now grounded and with investigators concerned about a fatal design flaw, this may mean the end of the supersonic Concorde, reports ABCNEWS aviation correspondent Lisa Stark. An empty flight, to be flown from New York to London later today, to join others in the hangar, may be the last touchdown the troubled jet makes.

British Airways Wants Jet to Fly Again

British Airways, which had already halted flights on its sevenConcordes on Tuesday in anticipation of the official grounding,immediately said it would seek urgent meetings with the authorityand the plane’s manufacturers in an attempt to get the supersonicjet flying again.

The airline said it had canceled Concorde flights until earlySeptember, but could resume them on 24 hours’ notice once clearancewas given.

“We will only resume Concorde operations when we and theairworthiness authorities are completely satisfied that allnecessary safety measures have been taken in light of the latestinformation,” said Mike Street, BA’s director of customer servicesand operations.

France’s aviation authority, the General Direction for Civil Aviation, has yet to announce an official suspension, though thatis largely academic. Air France stopped its Concorde service after the July 25 crash, which killed 113 people.

French investigators believe the tire blowout started the chain of events that set the doomed Air France Concorde on fire, causing it to plunge into a small hotel shortly after takeoff. A 16-inch piece of metal on the runway likely gashed a tire, sending high-velocity debris into the fuel tanks, triggering the fire, they say.

For a tire burst to be the main cause of an accident was “quite unique...an unprecedented event,” said Mike Bell, the CAA’s head of aircraft design.

Field would not speculate on how long this would take, but added: “We would wish Concorde to fly again.”

Concorde Bye Bye?

French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot told the Paris daily Liberation that problems with the landing gear, tires and fuel tanks will have to be rectified before the supersonic jets are again granted certificates of airworthiness.

The newspaper used the headline “Concorde bye bye” for the story on its French-language Web site.

But Gayssot added that that the withdrawal of the certification did not necessarily mean the supersonic jet was grounded for good.

“Anyone who says it’s the end for supersonic flights has got it wrong. Traveling fast is going to be increasingly in demand. Concorde still has seven or eight years before it... but it has to be overhauled,” Gayssot said. “The manufacturers will have to put things right.”

There have been three incidents of tire bursts compromising fuel tanks on Concordes. The jets recovered safely in the first two, and a 1979 incident, when one of the tires of a British Airways Concorde burst on landing, led to a design modification.

That number of incidents per flights is very high. The Concorde has had only 80,000 flights, total. There are some 20,000 flights total among all passenger planes in the United States every day.

“Until something can be done, either an improvement in the tire quality or some other change that can allow both British Air and Air France to turn to the population and say, ‘We have fixed the problem,’ or at least made one order of magnitude less likely to ever occur again, then unfortunately, the only rational thing to do is keep the airplane on the ground,” ABCNEWS Aviation Analyst John Nance said of British Airways’ decision.

ABCNEWS' Linda Albin and Lisa Stark, ABCNEWS Radio and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.