It was July 25, 2000. Concorde, the world’s fastest passenger plane (except for the failed Soviet Tu-144 equivalent), was preparing to take off from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris (CDG). The Air France aircraft was on a charter flight (flight number 4590) to John F. Kennedy Port in New York (JFK). Nothing foreshadowed that it would end with the only disaster in the Concorde’s history and would eventually become one of the reasons for the complete grounding of the aviation legend.
The captain gave the order to take off. After a few seconds, a fire broke out
The flight that day was fully booked. 100 passengers boarded, there were also 9 crew members – two pilots, a flight engineer and six flight attendants and stewardesses. The cargo hold was also full, causing the Concorde to be overloaded by about a ton. The crew was unaware of this and decided to taxi to runway 26 at de Gaulle Airport. The Air France flight was second in line to take off after the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 of the now defunct American Continental Airlines, which was also heading to New York (Newark airport).
At 16:42, the pilot gave the take-off order and fired the Concord’s four powerful engines, starting the acceleration. After a dozen or so seconds, the plane was already speeding up to 300 km / h. It was then that it ran over a metal piece lying on the runway. As it turned out later, it was a 43.5 cm long and about 3 cm wide titanium strip that fell off the nacelle of the engine taking off just before McDonnell Douglas’s Concord.
At such a high speed, hitting a piece of metal ended up cutting the front tire of the left landing gear. A piece of the tire weighing 4.5 kg broke off the wheel and shot at a speed of about 500 km/h straight into the fuel tank. As investigators later determined, this element did not pierce the tank, but it caused a shock wave inside it, which led to unsealing and fuel leakage. Then all it took was a spark from a faulty electrical system to start a serious fire at the tip of the Concorde’s wing.
They couldn’t abort the launch. The Concorde took to the air, burning
Normally, in such a situation, the best course of action is to abort the launch, stop the machine and extinguish the fire. The problem is that Concorde just before the fire broke out crossed the so-called. decision speed (V1). It is calculated on the basis of a specific machine, its weight and runway length. Before crossing V1, pilots still have a guarantee that the plane will brake before the end of the runway. In the case of Air France flight 4590, there was no choice but to continue the take-off run and hope that, despite the fire, it would be possible to return to the airport immediately and make a safe landing.
The fire, however, quickly disturbed the operation of engines 1 and 2 on the left side. A decrease in their power was detected on the runway, and after a while the flight engineer, at the captain’s order, turned off the second engine, because it caught fire. Part of the nominal thrust of the first engine was regained for some time, but the aircraft, engulfed in fire, accelerated too slowly. To make matters worse – due to a blown tire – it began to deviate from the center line of the runway and the captain was afraid that the machine would fall off the asphalt part of the runway and onto the grass. However, the pilots did everything in their power to get out of the predicament unscathed.
The overloaded machine eventually became airborne before the end of the runway, but accelerated to too slow a speed. The asymmetry in thrust on the left (engulfed by fire) and right (undamaged) sides of the plane, in turn, caused it to roll significantly. When the pitch of the machine exceeded 100 degrees, the pilots had to reduce the thrust of the working engines No. 3 and 4, which inevitably further reduced the thrust. The tower then informed them of the presence of flames behind the plane’s engines, and the witnesses saw a burning Concorde several dozen meters above their heads.
The emergency airfield was in sight. They managed to say two sentences
There was no question of turning around and landing at the CDG port. However, the pilots were still trying to control the Concorde, hoping that they would be able to reach Paris’ Le Bourget (LBG) airport, which used to be the main port of the French capital (and in 2000 it served mainly the traffic of private planes). They had successfully taken off due west, and would only be able to land on runway 25 at Le Bourget with a minor correction in direction. The LBG port is also extremely close to de Gaulle airport. The ends of both runways are only 7 km apart in a straight line.
Heavily damaged, however, the plane was unable to accelerate or get higher into the air. He soon began to lose altitude. It landed on the hotel, right next to the airport from which it took off. As a result of the disaster, all people on board died – 100 passengers (96 Germans, two Danes, an Austrian and an American) and a 9-person French crew. The machine also killed four people in the hotel – two Polish women, an Algerian and a citizen of Mauritius.
Cockpit recordings show that the first officer believed until the last moment that they would be able to safely land in the port of Le Bourget. The captain probably already knew they wouldn’t make it to the airport. After the air traffic control tower ordered them to return and land at CDG airport, the pilots managed to utter only two sentences (in French): “too late, we don’t have time” (captain) and “no, we’re trying Le Bourget” (co-pilot). The next few words are incomprehensible, after a while there are more crackling sounds and the recording stops. The whole drama lasted only a few seconds. The plane hit the ground exactly two minutes after taking off.
Controversy surrounding the disaster. Did the fire come earlier?
Immediately after the crash, all Concordes were grounded for the duration of the investigation, of which 20 were produced in total. They returned to commercial flights only after 15 months (in November 2001) and after introducing several safety improvements. French investigators determined that the example that crashed near Paris was indeed overloaded by less than a ton, but this had very little effect on its performance. Plays in the landing gear were also found, but they were not supposed to affect the behavior of the aircraft. Ultimately, the court found that the direct cause of the crash was the tire being cut by the metal strip from the previous plane. In addition, it was found that the plane took off in unfavorable wind (the direction changed just before take-off) and took off at too low a speed. Investigators concluded that there was no saving Concorde – both the attempt to brake, turn back to Gaulle Airport, and landing at Le Bourget would end in crashing the machine.
It also determined that a metal component on the Continental Airlines plane had previously caused problems and had been replaced in both June and July just before the Concorde crash. Continental, however, did not admit guilt, arguing that the fire appeared before the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 aircraft hit the part. There were even three witnesses whose testimonies confirmed the version of the American line. However, there are still many uncertainties surrounding the reasons. It is not known whether the poor condition of the runway surface and the Concorde’s tires contributed to the accident. It was clear that due to the very high take-off and landing speeds, these machines had a huge problem with tires wearing out too quickly. By the time of the crash, a total of over 70 tire-related incidents had been counted.
After the Concorde disaster, the fuel tanks and improved tire design to prevent a similar accident from happening again. However, the event was the beginning of the end for Concorde. Just before the return to flights, the September 11 attack took place (it caused a decrease in the number of travelers), and fuel-guzzling machines played the fight with more modern and more economical planes. Finally, Air France decided to end Concord flights in May 2003. A few months later, British Airways did the same. Since then, no commercial aircraft flying at supersonic speeds has taken to the air.
Source: Gazeta
Mabel is a talented author and journalist with a passion for all things technology. As an experienced writer for the 247 News Agency, she has established a reputation for her in-depth reporting and expert analysis on the latest developments in the tech industry.
