Case NOT closed: that 2010 verdict did not sit well with French prosecutors and lawyers for Continental Airlines. They filed an appeal which is now scheduled to be heard in March of 2012 in Versailles, near Paris. The precise grounds of appeal are not readily available at this stage, but it can be assumed that they will be publicly disclosed shortly.

   The unusual aspect of the upcoming appeal proceedings is that the appeal will involve issues of fact in addition to strict issues of law. This appeal has all the makings of a new trial. Experts will be called again to testify possibly about fresh evidence related to the crash that claimed 113 lives just short of 12 years ago.

   Another unusual aspect of the first trial and the upcoming appeal proceedings is that the joint French-British Concorde venture did not lead to charges being laid against British entities and personnel that participated in the design of the supersonic aircraft. As a matter of fact, despite similar incidents (i.e.: a blown tire on take-off) in the operation of Concorde aircraft by British Airways before the Paris crash of an Air France sister aircraft, the focus of the judicial proceedings has always been so far on French legal entities or individuals, and more so on Continental Airlines for its responsibility in the fateful dropping on the runway of a small metal strip from one of its aircraft immediately ahead of Concorde’s take-off on the same runway.

   The question that has arisen in many people’s mind is whether Continental Airlines was scape-goated during the technical investigation of the crash and the subsequent legal proceedings.

   Will the whole case be reopened in an attempt to counter allegations that there was an agreement of sorts among parties involved in the technical investigation of the crash or named in the judicial proceedings to lean one way to the detriment of Continental? 

   A number of experts still maintain that it takes more than a small strip of metal and the consenquent blow-up of a single tire to bring down an airliner in light of strict airworthiness standards and related service bulletins. Or, as others question, was it wise on the part of Concorde’s engineers to design the underside of the delta wing in a way that a strike by a piece of a blown tire on take-off could send a powerful shock wave through the fuel cells within Concorde’s wing, leading to a fuel leak that was possibly ignited by arcing electrical wires beneath the stricken supersonic? 

   It does seem as if the magnificent speed bird had a peculiar Achilles’ Heel. Technical assumptions abound about causal factors of of the crash. Rumours have been circulated to the effect that the doomed Concorde exceeded its maximum take-off weight by six tons and that it took off with a tail wind component. Who is to know for sure? Lawyers for Continental also argued in the lower court that ignited fuel started to escape from Concorde before its main landing gear overran the piece of metal dropped by the preceding Continental airliner. For the average Joe, such allegations are confusing and it’s not easy to find out how they were dealt with by the presiding judge in the lower court.

   The surprising finding by the lower court that the aircraft maintenance mechanic who installed the unsteady metal strip on the Continental jet that took-off ahead of Concorde must have forseen the catastrophic consequences of his shoddy workmanship. In fact, that point might very well be raised on appeal. (Please note that your diligent blogger here can only make an approximation about the ‘manslaughter’ or ‘negligence causing death’ charge for lack or knowledge of French law.)

   At any rate, the period from March to May of 2012 will generate much attention amongst the commercial aviation community and, to some extent, the public at large.

   Concorde was an iconic supersonic aircraft in France. Some may have turned their attention to other topics of interest over the last 12 years, while others still seek closure on the prestigious era of a French-designed marvel of an airliner, not to forget similarly concerned people on the British side.

   To what extent has French pride obscured technical and legal reasoning during the proceedings held by the lower court in Pontoise two years ago, if any connection at all? What lessons can the whole civil aviation community derive from the Paris crash and the demise of the supersonic Concorde program? We are likely to find out in 2012.

   Meanwhile, the French technical investigation authorities (known as the “BEA”) are to release their final investigation report also in the course of 2012, regarding the causes of the downing of Air France flight 447 in June of 2009, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, also with no survivors.

   Air travellers’ confidence in the overall safety of airline transport remains strong. And it should remain strong after the final judicial outcome of the Air France Concorde crash as well as the more recent crash of the Air France Airbus 330 en route from Rio to Paris, provided the judicial outcome of both tragedies is clear, all-encompassing and entirely justified.

   On a side-note, there remains a demand for public supersonic air transport. In order to respond to such demand, a radically new generation of supersonic aircraft will need to be designed. According to aviation media, that new step in supersonic transport is not around the corner. Launching a new aircraft capable of carrying paying passengers at Mach 2 or 3 over long distances appears for now to be beyond the financial reach of aircraft manufacturers.

   The third status report by the BEA results from its analysis so far of the aircraft’s CVR and FDR recently recovered from the ocean’s floor after a lengthy search mission of the crash area in unusually deep waters.

   The BEA status report dated today can be read here.

   Keeping in mind that today’s report is still an interim one, indications so far point to the following partial observations:

- the crash may have been averted but for pilot error

- insufficient cockpit crew management procedures by the two copilots (the First Officer and a back-up pilot) while the Captain was resting outside the cockpit;

- Pitot icing + faulty IAS response procedures not initiated by flight crew for lack of company training

- so far unexplained erratic manual flight control inputs by the flying pilot prior to stall and during stall

- temporary invalid airspeed readouts caused by faulty on-board equipment, which may have confused the flight crew

- so far unexplained nose-up trim to 13 degrees maintained during stall until contact with ocean

- all 3 pilots (Captain back in the cockpit) failed to identify symptoms of stall and to heed system warnings of stall

- flight crew likely unaware of excessive angle of attack owing to possible improper on-board system design

   As the day unfolds, numerous English-language aviation websites are analyzing the BEA’s third investigation status report. See, for example: Aviation Brief and Flight Global.

   The BEA status report issued today does not ascribe legal blame nor will its final report. The BEA’s role  is to make neutral and expert findings on the cause and contributing factors of the crash to prevent similar accidents from reoccurring.

   However, it can be readily seen that a number of entities are involved in some way or another in the crash: Air France for possible lack of flight crew training and for not issuing special procedures; EADS (Airbus Industries) for possible design flaws of the A-330 flight control systems; flight crew members (all three died in the crash) for aircraft operating errors; Pitot tubes manufacturer for design fault and Air France for not responding to previous instances Pitot tube malfunction.

   One can expect a strong response from airline pilots’ unions against findings of pilot error.

   The crash of AF447 will lead to both criminal and civil proceedings, some of which are already underway.

   A routine flight it was supposed to be, but for an unpredictable event - yet to be confirmed - that was going to unleash a chain reaction leading to a deeply disturbing civil aviation accident in recent times.

  Such a sudden statement, in the first paragraph above, can be interpreted as an overall and quick assessment of the doomed airliner’s situation which, after reaching an unplanned altitude of 38,000 feet, went into an unrecoverable stall and final plunge in the ocean below, at an abnormal descent rate of about 10,000 feet per minute.

   AF447 was trapped, according to various sources, in an aerodynamic condition, perhaps a stall, that the flight crew was unable to correct, and that resulted in a rate of descent equivalent to nearly 120 miles per hour vertical speed, much greater than the Airbus 330′s  glide ratio. Something was terribly wrong, but what was causing it? To this day, over two years after the crash, we still don’t know for sure. Many scenarios are being circulated in aviation circles, none conclusive so far. It is now up to France’s Bureau d’enquêtes et d’analyses (BEA) to identify and report on the most plausible triggering event or events that led to the crash of AF447, as well as on ways to prevent such a deadly occurrence.

   Why did this accident happen in the first place on a routine long-distance flight? How could this happen on a modern airliner supposedly equipped with the best computerized flight control system available at the time, not to mention the captain and the first officer’s cumulative qualifications and experience?

   There seems to have been a total disconnect here between man and machine, perhaps comparable to the one imagined in the acclaimed Space Odyssey 2001 science-fiction novel written by Arthur C. Clarke decades ago. A well trained crew, on the one hand, and an ‘intelligent’ space craft, on the other, working at cross-purposes.

   Most readers of this blog would know how simple a Pitot Tube is (also called an airspeed sensor), however sophisticated the airliner it is attached to. Comparing forward dynamic air pressure against static pressure is its basic function.

   In the case of AF447, there were three such identical Pitot tubes providing essential information to the fly-by-wire computers and auto-pilot operating the airliner under the watchful eyes of the flight crew. Icing is the suspected culprit for knocking off all three airspeed probes in a matter of minutes.

   There were three Pitot tubes feeding information to the three on-board computers. There were three flight crew members in the cockpit when trouble began, each as clued-out as the other, as AF447 was about to start a three minute fatal plunge in the Atlantic Ocean below.

   ‘Hal’, in the Space Odyssey 2001 story, was the one and single journey control computer, designed on heuristic principles allowing it to follow dutifully preprogrammed mission instructions while learning to adapt to various unplanned situations as the space mission unfolded. In short, Hal was able to correct, without human input, what it perceived to be conflicting instructions. Unfortunately, as the novel shows, Hal’s logic did not always match that of humans. Its logic was preeminent when a man/machine conflict of logic arose, and Hal’s logic prevailed with disastrous consequences, not out of hubris, but simply because it genuinely believed to be acting in the best interest of the space mission. 

"Discovery" spaceship in Space Odyssey 2001

  This arrangement stands technically but not necessarily conceptually, in contrast to AF447′s three fully programmed, mutually cross-checking computers relying on input data from… three identical Pitot tubes, among other essential sensors.

   AF447′s computers were not so bold as Hal. When the Airbus’ fly-by-wire system computers could no longer handle the situation, they handed control of the airliner over to the pilots by disconnecting the autopilot and displaying illogical (read: “no longer valid”) data on flight instruments in the cockpit. Quite a double whammy for the flight crew, at a time when the airliner was in a tight area of its flight envelope! 

Airbus A-330 operated by Air France

   In recent months, a French daily ran an article stating that, had the flight crew followed proper procedures, the Airbus A-330 operated on AF447 would have been flyable without the autopilot. Whether that was the case, is for the BEA to confirm or deny. This might be one of the pivotal issues in the current technical investigation. With time, we’ll learn from the BEA whether the flight crew was adequately trained, if trained at all, to deal with such unlikely situations.

   Even if the BEA were to find that the Airbus A-330 operated on AF447 was manually recoverable from an upset at 35,000 feet, the conceptual question will remain as to whether automation turned the table on Airbus designers and on travellers the aircraft was supposed to carry safely to destination.

    Could it be that 30 years ago or so, airline pilots caught in a situation similar to the AF447 flight crew would have said “We no longer have any reliable indications?“  After all, in those days, there were no such thing as a ‘computer laws’ in the cockpit of airliners.  Today’s airline pilots fly with a different frame of mind in many ways because of automation, by far for the better, one would think.

   The three Pitot tubes were as good as one another while subject to identical vagaries due to freezing conditions that prevailed in the area where AF447 went down with its precious load of unsuspecting passengers and crew, not to mention their clueless relatives, friends and associates ready to meet them at the Paris airport or at other final destinations.

   Months after the AF447 crash, Boeing proudly advertised that its (slow-coming) Dreamliner, the B-787, was NOT flown by computers. Before and after the sad crash of AF447, competition between Airbus Industries (EADS) and Boeing was fierce and still is, witness the 49th International Paris Airshow. It begs the same old question: which way is the man vs. machine interface evolving on trend-setting modern airliners?  Is improving the man/machine interface a question of better flight control system design or better pilot training, or both?

   Could it be that the three hapless flight crew members on duty on AF447, when the ‘music died’, decades after the publication of Space Odyssey 2001, were totally clued out as to what situation they were in? Situational awareness was of no help? Known emergency procedures were of no help? Cockpit Crew Management procedures were of no help either, even with three pilots in the cockpit instead of the usual roster of two? The void as to what flight conditions hit AF447 is huge for the time being.

   What are the designers of the Airbus A-330 thinking to themselves at present? Flight crew error or design error, or a mixture of both? It takes a lot of humility to canvass all three possibilities from the comfort of ground-based offices.

   The remaining Space Odyssey 2001 astronauts unknowingly monitored by the eye of Hal, the lip-reading computer, finally managed to shut it down, one logic module at a time. There was no rush in doing so, just method and personal resolve by the remaining astronauts.  In contrast, the AF447 flight crew did not have much time to take appropriate action and recover from the high altitude jet upset.

   AF447, with its three flight crew in the cockpit, with three minutes to go before the fatal splash-down, from an altitude of about 30,000 feet, did not have the luxury of time. They could not figure out, so it seems, what action to take in their predicament, one that was more difficult to deal with, having to contend with three runaway computers because of three allegedly iced-up Pitot tubes. As AF447 neared the surface of the Atlantic ocean in warmer air, the Pitot tubes started to respond again. By then, it was most likely too late to regain control of the aircraft.

   Somewhere in France in the near future, a sort of triumvirate of investigative, industrial and judicial interests will eventually issue findings, positions and accusations over the unjustifiable loss of too many passengers and crew in the world’s most advanced civil aviation systems.  At this point, one can only trust they will actually behave as a triumvirate for the betterment of civil aviation safety.

   For a more sobber and technical view of man/machine interface issues in the world of advanced airliners, please check this three-year old news item regarding a Qantas Airlines incident.

Aircraft black boxes are orange

   The Cockpit Voice Recorder and the Flight Data recorder, a.k.a: “the black boxes” (so called despite their orange colour) have been recovered nearly two years after Air France flight AF447 from Rio to Paris went down for unknown reasons in the Equatorial Zone, an area of the globe known for extreme weather.  However, the downed airliner, an Airbus A330 has a good reputation and, together with its well trained crew, it should have flown routinely through that zone on the way to Paris, at normal cruising altitude.

   It didn’t. What went wrong? Where are we now in terms of filling in the blanks thanks to the data contained in the black boxes?

  Days have gone by while the black boxes are being examined in the laboratory setting of the ‘Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses’ (BEA), a French accident investigation body, well equipped for the job.

   What has transpired since the box were opened in the BEA’s labs a week ago?  Zilch, except for the good news that the recorded pre-crash cockpit conversation and flight data are totally readable, despite a two-year stay under water at a depth of about 13,000 feet. An excellent outcome for the investigation of an aviation tragedy that seemed at times unexplainable. What is going on now at the BEA with the black boxes is a secret only a very small elite knows about.

   What visible action has been taken since the black boxes underwent decoding and serious technical scrutiny by the BEA?  Here is what we now know for now: French news sources report that reassuring telex messages have been sent to operators of Airbus 330 to the effect that no immediate action is required, based on preliminary data obtained from the doomed Airbus 330′s black boxes.  Such a reassuring and hasty statement can mean two things: 1) whatever corrective action might be required can wait, and 2) the preceding statement is based on preliminary data. Confusing statement if anything. The world can turn upside down in the meanwhile and the reassuring statement from Airbus Industries would still remain suitably vague and appropriate.

   Behind the scenes, though, criminal proceedings against potential culprits in the AF447 have started. Some sources report that, while judicial proceedings are underway, the contents of the perfectly readable black boxes’ recording cannot yet be released. What’s this new legal impediment to public disclosure of the black boxes?

   Another alleged reason supporting the non-disclosure of the contents of the black boxes to everyone concerned with the AF447 disaster is that the BEA must first ascertain having interpreted and analyzed the recordings in a way that will lead to accurate findings, findings that will actually identify the causes and culprits directly and indirectly involved in the AF447 crash. Culprits, or causes in a long chain of contributing factors, no doubt.

   “Identify culprits”, “Lay blame”… These are just media lines. Useless jargon, except for legal beagles.  First and foremost, relatives of victims, operators of the same type of aircraft, manufacturers of the aircraft and of its components should not have to wait, in order to take necessary safety action, for any blame to be technically ascribed to any entities, individual or corporate. They need to know NOW how to act, on the side of caution, of course, more than two years after the agonizing event.

   France’s major airline pilots’ union is incensed at the recent turn of events in which the aircraft manufacturer was prompt to issue the vague statement referred to above, one that was sent a number of times to all operators of the Airbus 330 type of aircraft. The union feels that the pilots of the doomed Airbus A330 are being unjustly finger-pointed in the absence of any serious signs of aircraft malfunction detected so far.

   This is happening against a backdrop of concerned parties patiently waiting for 1) the in-depth and almost irrefutable findings by the BEA,  2) the findings that might not be made public until the technical report in its entirety is filed with the judicial authorities involved in uncovering possible human criminal error or neglect leading up to the crash. Let us pause here, for a moment, to remember how it took the Concorde case 10 years to reach the criminal liability hearings stage in Pontoise, north of Paris. Closure after an aviation accident cannot wait that long anymore. Justice delayed is Justice denied. In the case of AF447, the contents of the black boxes’ recordings might not be disclosed before July or so. A few more weeks to go! Suspense is running high and so are tensions among major stakeholders in the crash.

   Let us keep in mind however that the recovery of the black boxes, two years after the crash, at a depth of around 4,000 metres below sea level (about 13,000 feet deep) is in itself a feat and a gesture of due diligence and best efforts on the part of Air France and Airbus Industries (EADS). The upcoming days hold a few surprises, including – why not? – the full public release of the decoded contents of the black boxes against all technical, legal and judicial odds. For the record, let it be known that France’s administrative and judicial processes tend to be burdensome and lengthy, ‘rigueur intellectuelle oblige’, although major systemic reforms are reportedly under way. This is not new nor limited to France. “La sécurité aérienne, c’est moi” Louis XIV would have said, had he been alive today.

   So far, it would seem that the parties mostly concerned, such as relatives of the AF447 victims, might require a little more patience.

   Why?  Why in a French jurisdiction? Why is the American NTSB more proactive in getting concerned parties in on the action as opposed to the French way of putting on the breaks before the public release of any significant info?

   Why does the BEA have to be so concerned about impeccable and time-consuming analysis of the back boxes in order to pinpoint blame on some entities for the sad fate of flight AF447, subject to judicial consideration by the French judicial system?

   In the best of worlds, it seems that the sooner the European Union manages to implement uniform standards across member countries for the purpose of investigating public transportation accidents, the better. In that respect, France might in fact be lagging behind the NTSB, its Canadian counter-part and other proactive civil aviation authorities, in revealing promptly the hard facts as to what happened in any transportation accident of the magnitude of AF447′s deadly splash down from cruise flight. Cruising flight it was indeed, not taking off nor landing, but in that very stage of flight where accident statistics are lowest.

   What happened to flight AF447 up there, dodging documented weather disturbances? We are still clueless after months and years of beating up the A-330′s Pitot tubes with a thousand accusatory sticks, until the last few days after the perfectly readable black boxes were finally been recovered from the abyss of the Atlantic ocean. Pitot Tubes may have been a causal factor; however, Airbus maintains that no immediate corrective action is required, assuming perhaps that A-330 operators already updated Pitot tubes that were prone to icing and subsequent unreliability of input to on-board automated flight control and monitoring systems. 

   At the time of the crash, there were nasty cells moving about in the vicinity of AF447′s flight track in the Equatorial Zone. Mind you, other airliners made it safely through the same zone at about the same time along different tracks and in the same messy weather. Some of them altered course to avoid the worst of active cells, a manoeuvre that underscores the severity of the weather disturbances in the area where AF447 went down. That much we know.  Part of airline safety is predicated on modern jetliners’ ability to fly above the weather. The equation is not that simple near the Equator where the atmosphere is notoriously unstable up to altitudes of 50,000 feet, way above jetliners’ normal cruising altitudes. At the opposite end, i.e.: way down below, even offshore sailboats crossing the Equatorial Zone feel the wrath of dynamic and unstable air in the form of squalls upon squalls from all directions. Whatever mode of transportation one is using, to allow crossing the equator, Neptune exacts a toll. However, airliners should be impervious to Neptune’s mood swings because of their ability to detect and dodge any significant weather beyond safe and comfortable flight.

   At this point, hinting at the fact that pilot error may have been a contributing factor in the AF447 ocean crash, is premature and also insulting to the highly qualified pilots at the controls of AF447 and to their peers presently flying for reputable airlines around the world.

   Hey, folks!  In the meantime, let us look at the positives as we impatiently await actual info on AF447′s pre-crash moments. This calls for a round of applause for those hard working and determined professionals from various walks of life who finally located and retrieved AF447′s precious black boxes from the Deep Blue. After all, they did find the two sought-after needles in the proverbial haystack, an accomplishment nobody took for granted prior to the fact.

Criminal proceedings into the deadly Concorde crash opened in early 2010, more than 10 years after the event. The resulting trial judgment issued on December 6, 2010, which laid criminal liability on one Continental Airlines mechanic and consequently on his employer, is doubtful. In fact, most of the defendants, as well as the prosecution, are appealing the ruling. What possibly went wrong – not in the crash itself – but in the court’s decision that has lead most of the parties on both sides of the case to file an appeal?      

   July 2000. An Air France Concorde supersonic airliner crashes north of Paris Charles de Gaulle airport shortly after take-off, killing all on board in addition to three persons on the ground, for a total of 113 casualties, not to mention post-traumatic stress disorders that witnesses at the scene are still experiencing.     

   Early 2010: a French court in Pontoise (north of Paris) initiates hearings in search of possible criminal liability involved in the major air crash.     

   December 6, 2010: The Pontoise court issues a judgment holding an American aircraft mechanic and his employer, Continental Airlines, directly responsible for the Concorde crash (one of Continental’s DC-10s dropped a metal strip on the runway just before Concorde’s take-off on the same runway.)  Other defendants, such as Air France and the top manager in charge of the Concorde development program are acquitted because their actions in terms of continuing airworthiness are assessed as merely neglectful.     

   Air France, even though acquitted at trial, files an appeal requesting that it also be involved in the appeal process in order to clear its name after the damaging submissions made against it by Continental Airlines’ defense lawyer. This move is perceived as an attempt by Air France to restore its good reputation as a major airline.  Meanwhile, the Air France Rio-to-Paris Airbus crash trial is coming up soon. A lot of questions will need to be answered there too. Air France is likely wanting this other trial to start from a clean slate, with no negative inferences about its reputation arising from the Concorde trial.     

   On December 21, we learn of a new twist in the Concorde case that could also defeat the trial judgment: the State prosecution in Pontoise is appealing the acquittal of other defendants in the case, namely the top manager in charge of the Concorde program and another similarly important executive in charge of Concorde’s continuing airworthiness.     

   This looks like a typical case of back to square one, more than 10 years after the sad loss of innocent lives in the crash.     

   Arguments against the judgment issued by the trial judge on December 6, 2010, may be summarily stated as follows:     

1) causation and foreseeability of crash: there is no valid reason to pin direct liability on a Continental Airlines’ maintenance engineer for having improperly affixed a metal strip to the Continental DC-10 that took off ahead of Concorde, leading one of Concorde’s tires to blow apart with debris puncturing the underside of the wing, thereby causing the unforeseeable wing tank fire that brought Concorde down to a fiery and deadly crash two minutes after take-off;     

2) willful blindness: Air France and Aérospatiale’s (now EADS) top Concorde program managers were acquitted too easily, when evidence points to possible willful blindness about known design weaknesses of Concorde and repeated take-off incidents due to blown tires prior to the crash. How can such a gorgeous looking airliner have any faults, one might ask. Think again. Several observers have wondered whether national prestige may have played a role in shielding Concorde from impartial scrutiny in technical issues plaguing the government-backed French supersonic transport program. If that were the case, can a French trial judge make such a finding even if it entails lifting the political veil?     

3) knowingly exposing a third party to the risk of an accident resulting in known disastrous consequences («faute caractérisée»): according to legal commentators, the trial judge may have wrongly applied the recent statutory concept in French criminal law of «faute caractérisée», to the conduct of the Continental Airlines mechanic. This concept has no statutory definition; it is still in the process of being clarified by the French courts. And yet, it is a key concept upon which the Continental Airlines mechanic was held responsible for the crash.

   Lesson learned again: major airline disasters cannot be fully dealt with through ordinary criminal proceedings. A special public inquiry would have been preferable, assuming French law provides for such a venue. Too many technical elements are at stake in major aviation accidents. The sheer magnitude of non-natural disasters of public interest stands as an obstacle for ordinary criminal courts to rule on them meaningfully, no matter how many technical experts take the stand in support of and against the charges, or even as amici curiae (neutral advisors to the court.) The drawback with public inquiries is that they are in many cases limited to making specific findings not involving liability at all and to drafting recommendations for air safety improvements. Public inquiries get a lot of public attention, which is in the public interest of course. However, once their recommendations are issued, they are not necessarily binding and it is up to the concerned public authorities to act and follow up on them. Because of such limitations, the actual outcome of public inquiries is often uncertain.     

   Let’s make it clear again: though it is virtually impossible to put a dollar figure on the loss of a human life, relatives of persons who died in or as a result of the Concorde crash have been adequately compensated for years ago. One can only hope that the same relatives have had some degree of closure, keeping in mind that ultimate closure and solace reside in knowing that such horrendous and preventable crashes never happen again.      

SUMMARY: More than three weeks after criminal proceedings were initiated by French justice officials in Pontoise (France), little is known yet about the key contributing factor, if any, that actually is at the centre of a chain of events that ultimately lead to the crash of Concorde in Gonesse, resulting in the loss of 113 lives. The July 2000 deadly crash of an Air France Concorde, along with extraneous factors such as the financial health of major airlines in general, signaled in 2003 the end of the Concorde program for both Air France and British Airways and, consequently, the end of a supersonic commercial transport era.

   The criminal proceedings into the supersonic airliner Concorde’s deadly crash in Paris nearly ten years ago, are in the fourth week of judicial hearing with no clear and undisputed explanation of the root cause of the crash. Justice officials reckon the Pontoise proceedings will last four months at least in order to find the truth as to who is criminally liable for the crash.

   Before the current criminal proceedings were initiated on February 2nd, 2010, an accident investigation report was completed by the BEA (Bureau des enquêtes accident) in which the root cause of the crash of Concorde has been identified as a metal strip that fell off a Continental Airlines DC-10 which took off four minutes ahead of the ill-fated Air France Concorde on the same runway. The technical accident report by the BEA is already a few years old. Why it took so long for criminal proceedings to get underway afterwards is anyone’s guess. However, the purpose of the current criminal proceedings held in Pontoise is to determine if there is conclusive evidence to convict Air France, Continental Airlines and/or two aircraft maintenance employees of Continental on the charge of involuntary homicide.

   Basically, the criminal proceedings have evolved from preliminary procedural issues to actual substantive ones argued by both the prosecution and defense lawyers during the third week. Repeated requests by counsel for Continental Airlines to have the charges against defendants dismissed on a number of grounds have been noted by the presiding judge who will deal with them later. This is to allow the proceedings to continue on the merits of the case instead of being bogged down in procedure.

   A number of civil aviation experts and lawyers are still claiming, both outside and inside the courtroom, that criminal proceedings have no place in an aviation disaster of such magnitude, once terrorism and foul play are ruled out at the initial investigation stage. Furthermore, all families of the 113 victims have been fairly compensated and are not part of the present proceedings. The reason for family members of Concorde’s captain, Christian Marty, to attend the Pontoise proceedings as civil parties is to protect the stellar flying record of the captain who also died in crash. Their goal is to ensure that Captain Marty will not be scapegoated or denigrated in absentia. According to some media sources, it would seem that during the two minutes of emergency handling in Concorde’s cockpit, the cockpit voice recorder makes it sound as if Captain Marty was running his own show while the First Officer and Flight Engineer were discussing quickly various ways of dealing with the loss of power in the two port side engines.

   Media sources sometimes don’t have the inside view as to what is actually going on in the cockpit of an airliner in distress. Assuming Captain Marty was the flying pilot, it would have been quite normal for the First Officer and Flight Engineer to deal with the technical problems at hand, leaving the Captain with the delicate task of keeping Concorde under control in the final stage of take-off and during initial climb, while these recorded discussions were taking place.

   So why all the fuss now, in a French criminal court, over this sad episode in the recent history of civil aviation?

(a) To further compensate victims’ relatives? No. They have been well compensated by now in a non-American way quite acceptable to Europeans. To my knowledge, champerty does not apply to possible civil proceedings based on judicial findings in Pontoise. This means that there would be little to gain from launching civil trials or a class action suit after the Pontoise proceedings.

(b) To prevent the same type of air crash from occurring? My mitigated answer here is also “no”, because Concorde’s crash might result from old corporate wisdom partly based on the “word of honour” system amongst highly competent professionals in the 1960s. Such a system had the potential of keeping up the prestige of an aeronautical success story at the expense of flight safety. This safety culture no longer applies to modern-day airline service. Instead, the concept of risk management has made a quantum leap since Concorde was designed, manufactured and put into service.

(c) To ascribe criminal liability to one or several defendants? Not necessarily, as French society is not seeking retribution. However, the aim of digging out, through the court adversarial process, more accurate facts than the BEA accident report provides is quite justifiable, because the BEA’s expert accident report is essentially a one-sided report. Perhaps, more can be learned through the Pontoise criminal proceedings than is known so far about the actual cause or causes of the crash. That being said, one should refrain from readily assuming that the present criminal proceedings are aimed at meeting out criminal sanctions against corporations and individuals involved in the Concorde program since its inception the early 60s. Furthermore, the proceedings are likely, in my humble opinion, to exonerate once and for all Continental Airlines of any criminal action leading up to Concorde’s crash. If anything, Continental Airlines could turn around when the Pontoise proceedings are over and initiate a lawsuit against the French government for abuse of process or wrongful/malicious (whichever) prosecution. Why? Because Continental’s lawyer requested at the very beginning of the proceedings a dismissal of the charges against his client and the presiding judge at the Pontoise hearings decided to go ahead anyway with Continental and two of its employees as co-defendants.

(d) To settle outstanding insurance matters? Possibly, although in a number of jurisdictions, criminal liability does not automatically lead to civil liability as well.

   Over the years, various civil aviation commentators and Concorde experts have pointed out that the success of the Concorde program depended on the ability of Concorde to stay well ahead of subsonic airliners’ transatlantic flying time, namely by maintaining tightly scheduled departures and arrivals times between Paris/London and New York, and vice versa. This pressure on Concorde personnel, some would say, lead Air France employees to curb potential departure delays even if it meant taking short cuts in dispatch and aircraft maintenance action. These allegations are suspect, if not foolhardy, in that they would entail that Air France’s top-notch pilots carefully selected to operate Concorde would compromise safety over time to destination. Such a scenario does not stand to reason in today’s airlines circles. There is too much at stake. Even student pilots are educated in this basic principle of flight safety philosophy and good airmanship.

   Other commentators claim that Concorde was behind the times in terms of airworthiness when the Paris crash occurred. Some also claim that officials responsible for the Concorde program turned a blind eye to airworthiness issues, managing risk in their own way, a way that would keep the obsolete Concorde pointing visibly towards the future of supersonic transport flight.

   Counsel for Continental Airlines has maintained from the start of the Pontoise proceedings that the charges against Continental are pointless and must be dismissed at the first opportunity for two reasons:

1) a relatively small piece of metal left on the runway from which Concorde took off four minutes after the Continental DC-10 should not have lead to such disastrous consequences, taking into account airworthiness standards in force in the year 2000; and

2) fire erupted on Concorde’s left wing during the take-off roll before contact with metal strip (Continental claims to have 20 eyewitnesses on hand to support this contention). However, this part of the defense contradicts French investigation experts who were able to pinpoint the area on the runway where Concorde’s left landing gear came into contact with the metal strip. Furthermore, the same experts also found the point further down the runway where traces of kerosene appear on the runway’s surface, where there shouldn’t be any in ordinary circumstances.

   Below are a few of the points canvassed by counsel for opposing parties:

(1) The lab testing of tire burst by experts is not conclusive. Their technical findings must be corroborated in some way or another because of the impossibility of recreating identical conditions as the ill-fated Concorde went through during the take-off run. According to an experienced former Concorde captain, running over an object during Concorde’s rotation (at about 190 kts, i.e.: 320 km/h approx.) increases the load on tires and makes them more vulnerable to runway debris, even though Concorde’s tires had been made more resistant to such debris and to slightly damaged runway surfaces well after initial airworthiness certification.

(2) Counsel for Continental has repeatedly cast doubt on the impartiality of Concorde’s post-crash examination, because one expert was still on salary from Air France at the time. The expert in question relies through his counsel on the French aviation culture of “the word of honour” in relation to Concorde’s original designers and to the early Concorde program administrators. Such was indeed the culture of those days. However, can “the word of honour” culture still be invoked nowadays by way of defense against allegations of self-interest or partiality in an aircraft accident investigation?

(3) Outside critics comment that the presiding judge is wrong in temporarily not allowing the scope of the Pontoise proceedings to be extended beyond the matters covered by the BEA accident investigation report.

(4) The outcome of the Pontoise proceedings is unpredictable at this stage. In fact, much of it depends on the weight of evidence put forth by counsel for Continental as to when flames started to visibly stream behind Concorde during the take-off run.

(5) Concorde’s delta wing design had faults, despite popular thinking to the contrary. For further reading on this topic, simply look at this thorough article on Concorde available on the Global Security website. In fact, in the later part of the fourth week of hearings, experts have testified in the Pontoise proceedings that Concorde did not stand a chance to climb out with only two out of four engines running, especially with the two good engines being on the right side of the supersonic airliner. Also according to expert evidence in the proceedings, the ingestion by one of the four jet engines of roughly 100 grams of tire debris was enough to cause serious trouble to the proper operation of the engine type. Expert evidence underlined again the frailty of Concorde. Back in 1995, another Concorde on approach to JFK Airport in New York lost power on one engine due to a bird strike and started throwing broken parts into the engine right next to it. The flight crew of Concorde involved in that incident managed to complete a safe landing.

3 June 1995.  An Air France Concorde, at about 10 feet AGL while landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport (NY), ingested 1 or 2 Canada geese into the #3 engine.  The engine suffered an uncontained failure.  Shrapnel from the #3 engine destroyed the #4 engine and cut several hydraulic lines and control cables.  The pilot was able to land the plane safely but the runway was closed for several hours.  Damage to the Concorde was estimated at over $7 million.  The French Aviation Authority sued the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and eventually settled out of court for $5.3 million.  (Source: Birdstrike.org)

(6) As a side comment, attempts to address Concorde’s noise and environmental issues were made over the years at great expense, albeit with no significant results. All Concordes would have been retired soon or later due to public pressure. It is saddening that British Airways’ Concordes and especially Air France’s Concordes were removed from service on such a tragic note, despite airworthiness improvements being made to the whole fleet as a result of the Paris crash. Even without the disastrous Paris crash, all Concordes would have been retired soon or later because of a slump in the number of passengers willing to pay extra money for the sake of shaving off half the flight time on transatlantic flights.

(7) In the end, however, the old question remains: should concerned civil aviation authorities have acted more quickly in issuing airworthiness directives in respect of Concorde, and monitored compliance by Air France with such directives? Should the same authorities have shown more proactive and transparent inspections and investigations, as well as a generally higher duty of care toward paying passengers in relation to a supersonic aircraft fleet born straight out of the 1960s’ supersonic aircraft manufacturing know-how? 

(8) In the last decade, the EADS consortium took over the Concorde project from Aérospatiale, the original manufacturer. EADS was not saddled with the responsibility of issuing non-mandatory service bulletins with respect to Concorde’s airworthiness issues. However, it would seem (and this area of responsibility is somewhat murky) that EADS was more involved in taking supersonic air transport to new ‘heights’ instead of keeping the existing project in good flying order. Consequently, EADS was not named as a defendant in the current criminal proceedings; however, former Aérospatiale executives have been so named.

   Concorde had technical issues that, until the Paris crash, were addressed with mixed results. Was Concorde’s original design such that the aircraft was, realistically speaking, upwardly compatible with advances in aeronautical engineering and technology? Or could it be that airworthiness issues, such as updated certification standards, were ignored by civil aviation authorities on the strength of Concorde’s prestigious image among airline passengers? After all, the travelling public was confident until the Paris crash of Concorde that such a sleek and modern looking supersonic aircraft still had a long future ahead.

   Concorde was a legend by all accounts, a legend that possibly led to complacency on matters of design safety and airworthiness upgrades, coupled with sheer bad luck. Murphy’s Law stepped in to bring down an aviation giant. If only 113 lives had been spared in the process…

PS: News about the Concorde legal proceedings have been updated on December 22, 2009.  Click here to view: Supersonic Concorde legal saga not over yet.

   The greatness of Concorde lies not only in the amount of engineering, flight testing, lobbying for acceptance in foreign countries, and money allocated to the supersonic transport jet mega-project, but also in the purity and elegance of its profile, lines and curvatures together with graceful manoeuvres on take-off and landing, and overall sheer good looks (decibels quite apart, I admit). Moreover, Concorde  kicked off a passionate debate in the far recesses of my own mind: did she look sleek by design or as a result of  her suitability as an airliner in both a subsonic climb to altitude and approach to land environment on the one hand, and a supersonic cruising environment on the other?

   Imagine the engineering ingenuity  that went into designing a flap-less delta-wing supersonic airliner fit for existing airports. The end result was an aircraft both so streamlined and functional that body-style designers, such as Ferrari, perhaps could not have dreamed of for any vehicle. At high levels of attack on take-off and landing with her drooped nose, she maintained a graceful look, something straight out of an artist’s imagination.

   Most people did not realise also how much engineering know-how had to be applied in order for Concorde to stretch and contract in length as her skin went from low temperatures to high temperatures generated  by Mach 2.2 cruise flight on her wings and fuselage. A civil aviation marvel she was indeed.

   By hubris or not, the magnitude of the Concorde project which, some say, helped usher France and the U.K. into the European Union, reflects the hopes and aspirations of a whole generation. Continents would be linked in less than half the time it takes for subsonic jets to fly the same intercontinental routes.

   The frailty of Concorde can be found in her anachronism. Her splendour was obvious; however, she was born out of older technology, a problem that a number of reputable aeroplanes, such as the DC-3 and the Boeing 707, to name but a few, shared with Concorde, albeit with fewer news coverage of dramatic and fatal signs of aging.

   This airliner was the subject of much attention by both pro-Concorde and anti-Concorde interest groups. A compromise agreement was struck: Concorde would be allowed to overfly populated areas at subsonic speeds only.

   Why would dual flag-carrying airliners such as Concorde be allowed to operate amongst slower jetliners built to recent, more stringent and more efficient aeronautical and environmental standards? Oh yes, I hear: “She was grandfathered in.” If so, should public authorities keep on protecting, from a regulatory perspective, a beautiful aeronautical product from a recent past at the cost of putting lives at risk until other circumstances brought its commercial use to an end?

   How many people would nowadays go for a ride in a hot air balloon built in all respects like the original Montgolfier brother’s (presumably) successful model?

   France and the U.K. had every reason to be jointly proud of Concorde. The problem is neither country knew when to confine the aging supersonic airliner to a museum before disaster struck. Did the the Concorde program change to a prestige-driven venture only? This was likely the case since a number of jet aircraft of an older vintage and no longer allowed to carry paying passengers are still allowed to carry freight. Unfortunately, Concorde did not have a  fall-back commercial niche; flying the Jet Set at premium airfares was its only remaining one.

   When Concorde crashed after her fateful take-off from Roissy, she was technologically decades behind her times by several standards, even if she could cruise twice as fast as modern subsonic  jetliners.

   On a more positive note, Concorde was the first commercial airliner to incorporate sophisticated fly-by-wire technology, a major engineering feat  in the 1960s. Her quadruple Olympus power plant was amongst the most reliable at the time. Unfortunately, Concorde’s complex design made it difficult to incorporate later on engines that were more fuel-efficient, less noisy and more resistant to FOD. 

   The Concorde disaster in Paris has a positive fall-out: the growing opinion that high-speed intercontinental travel should perhaps be carried out above the atmosphere, i.e. with suborbital spacecraft. This approach is supported in part by the major airlines’ reluctance, in today’s economic context, to place orders for new supersonic transport aircraft operated at higher operating costs on a per seat per mile basis. 

   The short to medium solution now being considered and tested is not an improved existing SST concept, but a totally different one: a suborbital spacecraft such as the Virgin Galactic SpaceshipTwo recently unveiled by Virgin Air’s CEO, Sir Richard Branson and by Dick Rutan, a well-known pioneering  expert in composite materials applied to innovative aircraft designs.

  NASA is wise in phasing-out the current space shuttles. In fact, the U.S. space agency had set a life expectancy for its fleet of space shuttles.

   Were the U.K. and France in the process of acting likewise for Concorde when the Paris crash occurred? Civil aviation authorities in both countries may have set a time limit only as a result of Concorde’s unfortunate crash in Paris.

   Having said this, the future looks promising for supersonic intercontinental travel using suborbital trajectories with whatever vehicles will foot the bill in terms of commercial feasibility. For now, suborbital transportation remains far in the offing. Spaceflight bookings confidently accepted at present by Virgin Galactic will no doubt offer space tourists a sensational experience, keeping in mind however their amazing spacecraft will land where it took off from. 

Happy New Year!

   PS: With the underside of their delta wing strengthened after the deadly crash of a Concorde shortly after take-off from Paris-CDG airport in 2000, other Concorde units resumed commercial transatlantic flights under the Air France and British Airways banners. All Concorde units were finally retired in 2003, owing to excessive operating costs to both airlines. Concorde had flown commercially for nearly 30 years with no reported casualties until the most unfortunate Paris crash.  See Wikipedia for further details about the history of Concorde.