Concorde crash: Continental Airlines at fault, hit with $1.3m fine

[editor]

So the shitty US airline Continental Airlines has been found responsible for the demise of the Concorde:

A small strip of metal that had fallen off a Continental DC-10 that took off minutes earlier had punctured a tire of the Concorde as it accelerated down the runway on July 25, 2000. The tire disintegrated in seconds, investigators said, sending shards of rubber into the fuel tanks and sending the plane crashing into a hotel near the airport, flames pouring from its undercarriage.

Their mechanic had poorly fitted a small strip of metal that was made from the wrong material.

Continental Airlines will have to pay $1.3 million in damages and a $265,000 fine—which seems a bit light as compensation for the negligent deaths of over 100 people. A Continental mechanic has been handed a 15 month prison sentence as well, as it was his negligence that sent the flaming mess into motion.

http://gizmodo.com/5707400/the-concorde-from-supersonic-icon-to-involuntary-homicide

One of the BA Concordes now sits on a pier in New York and makes for a sad sight.

LIFE Tribute: http://www.life.com/image/2668836/in-gallery/24961/supersonic-tribute-to-concorde

 

[ferrelhadley]

$90 a barrel oil means Concorde would have been dead anyway.

 

[Oswaldtwistle]

$90 a barrel oil means Concorde would have been dead anyway.

Maybe. But don't forget it's customers were super-rich. What percentage of the ticket price was fuel?

********

Can't say I'm over-happy with the idea of a mechanic being sent to prison, either. That opens up quite a can of worms.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Maybe. But don't forget it's customers were super-rich. What percentage of the ticket price was fuel?

Not a lot.

Oddly when it first came out it didn't make money. BA asked Concorde passengers how much they thought their tickets had cost, (as their secretaries had invariably bought them with company cash). 100% of answers came in way more than the actual cost of the ticket, so BA adjusted the price to meet expectation.

Of all the Concorde tickets I've sold I can't recall anyone ever asking how much the ticket cost, they just said Mr. So-And-So needs to be on the 0920 to JFK on such and such a date.

If you had to ask, you can't afford it type thing.

The real reason Concorde died is cos it was too slow in an electronic world.

 

[editor]

Here's the one stuck on the end of a NYC pier.

My caption: "Now docked at the end of a pier as part of the Intrepid space and flight museum on the west side is a BA Concorde.

Although there’s a lot of reasons to hate Concorde – it was, after all, a hideously polluting plane for the rich – it remains a glorious and quite beautiful piece of engineering and it’s sad to see it no longer flying."

http://www.urban75.org/blog/new-york-city-snapshots/

 

[TitanSound]

Can't say I'm over-happy with the idea of a mechanic being sent to prison, either. That opens up quite a can of worms.

Well from what I heard he used Titanium to carry out the repair. A material that was widely acknowledged to cause these kind of hazards to other aircraft because of it's strength. That's negligence no? And he has not been imprisoned, He got a 15 month suspended sentence.

The only thing I would see unfair is if he he been told by management to carry out the repair regardless of the danger. But then again, he could of refused. Too many unanswered questions.

 

[kyser_soze]

Interesting that none of the French people involved were found remotely responsible, despite the tyre blowouts having happened before. The path of madame du justice clearly runs very smoothly in France.

 

[Oswaldtwistle]

Not a lot.

Oddly when it first came out it didn't make money. BA asked Concorde passengers how much they thought their tickets had cost, (as their secretaries had invariably bought them with company cash). 100% of answers came in way more than the actual cost of the ticket, so BA adjusted the price to meet expectation.


.

Yes, I vaguely recall a documentary on some satellite channel that said similar.

And he has not been imprisoned, He got a 15 month suspended sentence.

Happy to stand corrected.

 

[Spymaster]

So the shitty US airline Continental Airlines has been found responsible for the demise of the Concorde:

Concorde's card was marked way before the crash, so whilst we could conceivably suggest that the accident hastened its demise, there's no way it caused it. The cost of running it wasn't a huge issue either, Branson wanted to fly it as a loss leader. The biggest problem Concorde had, to my mind, was political, with major airlines that didn't have them, lobbying their governments and aviation regulators against BA and Air France supersonic flights. So much airspace was subsequently closed to the aircraft because of "noise restrictions" that it became impossible for the planes to be used to their full potential on the routes that would have seen the most benefits.

As far as the crash verdict is concerned, it's got "French Stitch-Up" written all over it in great big stinky letters. They've ignored any evidence or argument that anything French could have contributed to the accident, including the result of a 7 year judicial enquiry which concluded that French officials ignored significant warnings over structural weaknesses in the aircrafts wings and fuel tanks that could contribute to an accident exactly as the one that occured. Continentals defence has always been that poor Air France undercarriage maintenence contributed to the tyre-burst, but that of course was rejected out of hand by the French court.

I'd also be interested to hear more about how they've come to their damages awards. If they're going to hold Continental liable for downing an Air France Concorde, why the paltry sum? I'm not sure what a Concorde costs, or the write-off on Air France's books for the loss of one, but I'm damn fucking sure it's more than 1.2 million Euros.

There's more to this than we're being told.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Concorde's card was marked way before the crash, so whilst we could conceivably suggest that the accident hastened its demise, there's no way it caused it. The cost of running it wasn't a huge issue either, Branson wanted to fly it as a loss leader. The biggest problem Concorde had, to my mind, was political, with major airlines that didn't have them, lobbying their governments and aviation regulators against BA and Air France supersonic flights. So much airspace was subsequently closed to the aircraft because of "noise restrictions" that it became impossible for the planes to be used to their full potential on the routes that would have seen the most benefits.

Indeed BA didn't mind if it wasn't profitable, it steered so many wealthy Yanks to the airline and built a loyalty amongst them that is still string today.

As to the airspace thing the problems with the US were resolved many years ago, interestingly during the winter it flew to Barbados; whilst all aircraft approaching Bridgetown had to fly a certain route away from the key tourist beaches, the Bajan government allowed (insisted) it fly right along Sandy lane beach both coming in and when it left.