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Mechanic and Continental found guilty in the 2000 Concorde crash that killed 113 people.
French Court Convicts Continental in Concorde Disaster
New York Times 12/07/2010
Author: Nicola Clark
c. 2010 New York Times Company
PARIS — A judge ruled Monday that Continental Airlines and one of its mechanics were guilty of involuntary homicide for their role in the 2000 crash of an Air France Concorde jet outside Paris that killed 113 people and hastened the end of commercial supersonic travel.
The French court ordered Continental to pay civil damages of more than $1.3 million to Air France and a fine of $265,000. The mechanic was fined $2,650 and given a suspended 15-month prison sentence; three other defendants involved in the jet’s design and certification were acquitted.
Continental called the ruling “absurd” and said it would appeal.
A 2002 report by French air accident investigators concluded that a small strip of metal that fell off a Continental DC-10 that took off minutes earlier punctured a tire of the Concorde as it accelerated on the runway on July 25, 2000. The tire disintegrated in seconds, investigators said, sending shards of rubber into the fuel tanks. The plane crashed into a hotel near the airport, flames pouring from its undercarriage.
All 109 passengers and crew members were killed, along with 4 people on the ground.
The court faulted the mechanic, John Taylor, 42, for using titanium, rather than a softer metal like aluminum, to construct a replacement piece called a wear strip for the DC-10. It also accused him of improperly attaching the strip to the aircraft, resulting in it falling onto the runway.
“To find that any crime was committed in this tragic accident is not supported either by the evidence at trial or by aviation authorities and experts around the world,” Nick Britton, a Continental spokesman, said of the ruling. The case took more than a decade to work its way through the French courts.
The decision to proceed with criminal charges in the Concorde case alarmed airlines and aviation safety experts worldwide. They contended that the threat of prosecution could dissuade some witnesses from cooperating in crash investigations.
France is one of a handful of countries that routinely seek criminal indictments in transportation accidents, regardless of whether there is clear evidence of criminal intent or negligence.
“Verdicts like this tend to drive safety underground,” said William R. Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, based in Alexandria, Va. “Accident investigations depend on information from professionals who can admit mistakes when they happen.” The threat of criminal conviction, he said, “generates a climate where people are unlikely to do that.”
Judge Dominique Andréassier presided over the trial in Pontoise, northwest of Paris. A lawyer for Continental, Olivier Metzner, argued at the trial that investigators had disregarded accounts of more than 20 witnesses who said the plane appeared to have caught fire at a point on the runway several yards before it reached the metal strip.
The three defendants who were acquitted were Henri Perrier, 81, considered the “father” of the Concorde supersonic jet and an executive of Aérospatiale, the company that built it; Jacques Hérubel, a former senior engineer at Aérospatiale; and Claude Frantzen, formerly of the French airline regulator that certified the plane’s airworthiness.
Air France itself was not accused of wrongdoing and joined the case as a civil party in the hope of recouping damages from Continental. The $1.3 million in damages awarded Monday was far less than the nearly $20 million the French airline had sought. Air France reached a $150 million settlement in 2001 with the families of the victims, most of whom were German citizens.
Monday’s verdict could still open the door to millions of dollars in potential litigation by the victims’ families against Continental and against European Aeronautic Defense and Space, or EADS, the parent company of Airbus, which absorbed Aérospatiale in the 1970s. Judge Andréassier said EADS would have to share responsibility for 30 percent of any future civil damages resulting from the accident.
The crash of Air France Flight 4590 was the only fatal accident involving the Concorde, which first took to the skies in 1969, becoming an emblem of trans-Atlantic luxury travel. Flying at twice the speed of sound, its Paris-New York crossing took less than four hours and its London-New York time was just three and a half.
The crash helped bring an end to the plane’s commercial operations, which had become a financial burden for Air France and British Airways. Both took the Concorde out of service in 2003.
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