Continental on trial for deadly Concorde crash

[NickN]

I don't know the law very well, however from a laymans perspective this case looks like a bit of a stretch. Parts fall off aircraft all the time, it happens. Sure this time it was a non-standard part (is anyone claiming it was fitted against regulations or that it was just non-standard but legal?) but it could have been any one of a hundred other parts to fall off.

It sounds like all involved have made good financially. It would be hard to make a firm ruling on who is the "most" to blame, the people who allegedly knew Concordes faults and let them ride, or the folks who directly or indirectly led to a piece of metal ending up on the runway.

I am surprised to hear that Goodyear paid out money considering their tyre wasn't faulty or in any way responsible.

[Philip Argy]

Negligence is a surprisingly uniform legal principle across the globe. In essence, you have a duty of care toward anyone you can reasonably foresee would be harmed if you did or failed to do something that a reasonable person in your position wouldn't have or would have done. You then have a legal liability if you breach that duty of care.

[NickN]

Philip, is there any determination made as to who's mistake primarily contributed to the accident?

My point being, if the manufacturer of Concorde knew over a decade ago there were deficiencies with the wing/fuel tank design and failed to rectify the issue, does that make them more responsible than the engineer who fitted the faulty part which ultimately ended up on the runway in Concordes path?

In other words, had they fixed the design fault, would that piece of titanium still had the same impact as it did?

If that is part of the scope of the trial that could significantly reduce the impact for Continental and its engineers.

[Philip Argy]

The more separate contributions to an outcome the less likely any one of them is 'responsible' for the outcome. In some jurisdictions a 'but for' test is used to hone in on one contributor but for whose act or omission the event would not have occurred.

If applying that test still results in multiple contributors it is normally impossible to get a criminal conviction as you can't satisfy the 'beyond reasonable doubt' requirement.

For civil liability it can be apportioned but here everyone has been paid out so there's no residual civil liability as I understand it.

[NickN]

Considering the list of various contributors to the accident is it likely that the outcome may be that nobody ends up being convicted?

[Philip Argy]

It is likely to depend on how the evidence comes out. For example, if the evidence shows that the airport overlooked a runway sweep that was scheduled they could become the fall guy; if the evidence is that the manufacturer of the fuel tank knew of its unusual vulnerability but did nothing urgent about it, they could be in the firing line, etc

Based on what is public that I have seen, the fuel tanks were known to be susceptible to damage from blown tyres but apparently no-one did anything about it before the fatal accident. Once someone can be identified that consciously took a calculated risk, the odds are that person will cop the blame. Apart from that it's hard to see anyone else getting a criminal conviction, but there may be some idiosyncrasies of French law that make it more onerous than here.

[Stephen Brown]

Where does it end...

The pilot could have swerved to miss the strip...

The Air traffic control could have got their timing better. Cleared the concorde for pushback and taxi before the DC-10.

etc etc

and finally

I blame the airport safety officers for not noticing the strip was on the runway.

Pack of bludgers the lot of them....(Safety Officers that is)

[Philip Argy]

The investigatory report conclusions were:

The accident was due to the following causes:

•

High-speed passage of a tyre over a part lost by an aircraft that had taken off five

minutes earlier and the destruction of the tyre.

•

The ripping out of a large piece of tank in a complex process of transmission of the

energy produced by the impact of a piece of tyre at another point on the tank, this
transmission associating deformation of the tank skin and the movement of the
fuel, with perhaps the contributory effect of other more minor shocks and /or a
hydrodynamic pressure surge.

•

Ignition of the leaking fuel by an electric arc in the landing gear bay or through

contact with the hot parts of the engine with forward propagation of the flame
causing a very large fire under the aircraft’s wing and severe loss of thrust on
engine 2 then engine 1.

In addition, the impossibility of retracting the landing gear probably contributed to the retention and stabilisation of the flame throughout the flight.

In my view the report should have made it impossible to secure a criminal conviction of anyone, although significant negligence in maintenance procedures does appear to have been responsible for the loss of the wear strip from the Continental aircraft.

Perhaps most surprising is the testing that showed how deep an aircraft tyre can be cut, and how powerful tyre fragments are, when a tyre is cut during takeoff or landing.

Also of interest is that Concorde took off about 900kg over its maximum takeoff weight. The investigation concluded that this had neglible impact on its inability to achieve climb out after both left hand engines failed 15 km/h before VR and the thrust in the right engines had been reduced after takeoff to counter the severely asymmetrical rotational forces slewing the aircraft. The alternative of an aborted takeoff was found to be just as likely to be catastrophic as the outcome that occurred due to the speed at which a runway excursion would have occurred and the effects of the resultant conflagration.

[D Chan]

lawyers must be having a field day with this one. At the end does anyone really 'win' besides the lawyers? Relatives of victims won't get the deceased back, the airlines involved will have to spend money defending themselves in court etc.

this case will set an interesting precedent for airlines and airport operators alike especially re: FOD on runways. The ultimate question is who has the duty of care? the airline in which one of its aircraft leaves debris on the runway, the airport operator for not clearing the debris from runway, or is it the flight crew lining the aircraft up for takeoff?

I would argue that Continental is negligent in their maintenance procedures which resulted in the loss of the part from the DC10. However it has no control of which carrier's aircraft was to takeoff afterwards, and furthermore the chain of event that followed would not have been perceivable.

[NickN]

Isn't it a concern that load planning was so poor that Concorde departed 900kg overweight, regardless of whether that directly impacted on the outcome of the accident?

And secondly, I'd argue that there seems to be a well known design fault issue with the wing/fuel tank setup and had that been attended to back when the issue was detected may have prevented such a catastrophic outcome from occuring.

I suppose this is one of those situations where you could roll a dice and find any number of people responsible in one way or another.