Concorde Data Recorder Checked; No Sabotage
G O N E S S E, France, July 27, 2000 -- ABCNEWS has learned that officials 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 — a thrust reverser — on engine two be replaced.
Ground crews unsuccessfully searched for a spare part. And Air France officials say they eventually replaced it with a part taken from another Concorde.
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 ruled out sabotage.
56 Seconds
Then, 56 seconds into takeoff, the pilot 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.
“It is during this looping maneuver that the aircraft crashed on the hotel in Gonesse,” Senot told France 2.
The crash killed all 109 on board and four on the ground. Eyewitnesses say the plane appeared to be turning around — both DeGaulle and a nearby airport had been cleared for an emergency landing — when the plane went down and exploded. .
A Look at the Engine
Because the Concorde’s two engines on each wing are so close together, one is susceptible to damage from the other, veteran pilots say.
Air France said the damaged thrust reverser was discovered when the plane returned to Paris from New York on July 24. Marty, the pilot, ordered it repaired before he would take off — even though such a malfunction falls within the manufacturer’s technical tolerances, according to the airline.
Thrust reversers help planes to stop when landing. (See story, below.)
ABCNEWS has learned that several years ago, Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directives pointed out problems with Concorde engines that could conceivably lead to engine failure. Meanwhile, French aviation experts have extracted all the data from the jet’s two black boxes.
But a spokesman could not say how soon any conclusions could be drawn.
“We must now confirm point by point the veracity and clarity of the data,” Didier Bonnel, of the DGAC’s accident inquiry section, told Reuters.
“We also have to check the history of the plane itself,” he said. “We can leave no stone unturned.”
Grim Scene
Terrified witnesses below watched the Concorde’s distinctive needle nose point downward. The plane dive-bombed into a small hotel in Gonesse. Its 100 tons of fuel exploded in a fiery column with a mushroom of black smoke.
Dramatic video footage showed the crippled supersonic plane’slast seconds Tuesday, flying over a road with bright orange flamesenveloping the left side of the fuselage. Thick black smoke trailedfar behind. In the grainy, shaky 15-second video, shot by the wife of aSpanish truck driver who happened to be driving by with her husband, the flames appear tohave engulfed the rear end of the jet by the time it leaves thecamera frame.
Less than a mile from the well-guarded crash site, some 200 grieving family and friends packed into a local communitycenter in Gonesse, usually used for concerts and theater performances, for an ecumenical service was led by Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and Protestant clergy. French President Jacques Chirac attended the emotional service and then met privately withthe mourners.
Concordes Grounded
For now, Air France has grounded its Concordes. But French Transportation Minister Jean Claude Gayssot said he hoped data from the plane’s two black boxes would be analyzed by this evening and flights would be permitted to resume.
British Airways, which owns seven Concordes, canceled its two remaining Concorde flights scheduled to fly out of London Tuesday evening. Those flights resumed Wednesday. But only 49 of the 78 people booked for the first flight out of London chose to travel on the plane.
British Airways ran a series of checks on all of the engines on all of its Concordes and found no problems, BA spokesman Peter Middleton said.
“They’re absolutely clean as a whistle. That’s why we’re extremely confident about flying today,” he said.
Not Linked to Cracks
Air France says the plane that crashed underwent a routine maintenance check just last week and had an extensive check at the end of April.
The crash did not appear to be linked to cracks found recently in both British Airways and Air France Concordes (see related stories). Air France said this particular plane, in service since 1980, did not have reported fissures.
“I don’t think we can connect those dots at all,” said ABCNEWS aviation expert John Nance. “I think that’s probably a one in a billion chance [that] there’s any connection at all.”
ABCNEWS.com’s Sue Masterman in Vienna, Merlin Koene in Hamburg, Lisa Sylvester at JFK airport, Amy Collins, Willow Lawson, Ephrat Livni, Rose Palazzolo, Geraldine Sealey, Julia Campbell and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.