Continental Airlines under investigation for manslaughter.

[Doodler]

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2005-03-10-continental-concorde_x.htm

Glad the US isn't the only country capable of this kind of nonsense. Just out of perverse curiousity, if convicted, who gets locked up?

[SciFi Chick]

My guess is no one. I think corporations just pay fines when they break the law. I'm no expert though, so that is just a guess.

[Doodler]

That would be a reasonable assertion, but they're pursuing it as a criminal matter, at least the investigation. That seems a bit odd, but then I'm not very familiar with the Napoleanic Code, which I believe is what French jurisprudence is based on.

[jt-3d]

Crap falls off (http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/cowling.asp) of planes all the time. The French don't want to take any blame for said crap being on their runway despite their having promised to check for FOD prior to each concorde take off.

Besides there is some doubt as to whether that would have caused to crash anyway. For instance I doubt that a tire will hole a wing without there being a design flaw to begin with.

Bottom line, it was their runway and their responsibility.

[The Rat]

...don't want to take any blame for said crap being on their runway despite their having promised to check for FOD prior to each concorde take off.

I worked for Airfield Maintenance at Pearson International in Toronto for years, and we always did a FOD check before any Concorde took off.

For instance I doubt that a tire will hole a wing without there being a design flaw to begin with.

I have no doubt that it could. I have seen aircraft tires blow on take-off, and they go with one hell of a force. I have slides that I took of a 747 that blew a tire, and if they weren't packed away in another house I would scan them and post them. There were some nasty gouges under the fuselage that had gone completely through the skin.

[jt-3d]

Yes but wing skin is thicker than fuselage or flap skin. At least it should be and if it wasn't strong enough to withstand a hit from a burst tire, that IMO is a design flaw.

[The Rat]

Yes but wing skin is thicker than fuselage or flap skin. At least it should be and if it wasn't strong enough to withstand a hit from a burst tire, that IMO is a design flaw.

Well, let's get an aircraft engineer to weigh in, there's gotta be some around this place.


Love your sig by the way! (Shoulda hit him harder Buzz, shoulda hit him harder... )

[Doodler]

...don't want to take any blame for said crap being on their runway despite their having promised to check for FOD prior to each concorde take off.

I worked for Airfield Maintenance at Pearson International in Toronto for years, and we always did a FOD check before any Concorde took off.


Question, if I may, who's responsible for FOD checks, the airline or the airport?

[jt-3d]

On the runways, the airport. At the gates, the tenants of the gate. On the ramp, everybody that drives on the ramp.
If we see FOD on a taxiway, we're not even allowed to go get it, even if it's 30ft away. We're supposed to call airport operations. You can't go on a runway unless you have an airplane under you. Although if you have radio contact with the tower, they can allow you on the runways and taxiways if there's no other way to get where you're going.

edit: I work for an airline, not an airport.

[The Rat]

Question, if I may, who's responsible for FOD checks, the airline or the airport?

At any airport I've worked at you're constantly told that it is everybody's responsibility. In practise, airline employees are limited in what they can do because they can't get far away from the terminals. At YYZ most of the FOD control was carried out by airfield maintenance. We used methods such as mechanical and hand sweeping on all apron areas, and runway checks on a regular basis, often every few hours. Whenever I needed to move from one area of the apron to another I always requested from the Ground Traffic Controller, and I don't recall ever being denied, permission to follow the centre line instead of the vehicle corridors, so that I could check for debris.

[Trebuchet]

[quote=jt-3d]Well, let's get an aircraft engineer to weigh in, there's gotta be some around this place.

OK, here goes: The regs say something on the order of this: "Any single failure, or combination of failures that is not extremely improbable, shall not prevent continued safe flight and landing."

"Extremely improbable" specifically means a probability less than 10E-9. One in a billion.

This was not the only Concorde to have had a fuel tank holed by a blown tire. The airplane, although absolutely lovely, was not, IMHO, airworthy.

Any civil aircraft should be capable of surviving running over a small piece of FOD. The French should be ashamed of themselves.

[The Rat]

Any civil aircraft should be capable of surviving running over a small piece of FOD. The French should be ashamed of themselves.

A piece of debris may be small, but it can also at the same time be heavy, sharp, and traveling at high velocity. In this case, the aircraft tire would be moving at high velocity when it impacted the debris, but it's the same thing.

In all its years of service Concorde had one crash. Let's not call it a turkey unless it's got feathers.

But yes, the French authorities should be ashamed.

[Trebuchet]

I'd like to know if the French are considering charges against anyone else. The folks who were supposed to clean the runway before takeoff? The airline which sent the airplane out overloaded, above max gross weight? The builders who already knew, from a previous incident, that a blown tire could puncture the tank and cause a fire? The tire maker? Or is it just a convenient American fall guy?

Again, stuff falls off airplanes all the time. It shouldn't, but it does. It should NEVER cause a catastrophic incident to another airplane. The Concorde design, while lovely, was in hindsight deeply flawed.

I'm sorry the Concorde is out of service. I'm really sorry I never got to ride on it. But it's probably just as well.