French prosecutors called on Friday for a two-year suspended jail term for an 80-year-old engineer known as the father of the Concorde after a deadly crash of the supersonic jet in 2000.
Henri Perrier — who directed the Concorde program at Aerospatiale, now part of EADS, from 1978 to 1994 — is accused of ignoring warning signs from a string of incidents on Concorde planes before the accident outside Paris.
Prosecutors at a trial into the crash also sought a 175,000 euro (US$220,000) fine against Continental Airlines, siding with experts who said the Concorde was brought down by a strip of metal on the runway that had fallen off a Continental jet that took off just before.
PHOTO: AFP
The New York-bound Air France Concorde smashed into a hotel in a ball of fire just after take-off from Paris Charles de Gaulle on July 25, 2000, claiming 113 lives and sounding the death knell for commercial supersonic travel.
The prosecutor singled out what he called “defective overall maintenance” on Continental DC-10 aircraft.
He called for 18-month suspended sentences against two of its US employees — John Taylor, a mechanic who allegedly fitted the non-standard strip, and airline chief of maintenance Stanley Ford.
The prosecution called for charges to be dropped against two other defendants, a former French civil aviation official accusing of overlooking faults on the plane, and another former Concorde engineer.
A French accident inquiry concluded in December 2004 that the disaster was partly caused by a strip of metal that fell on the runway from a Continental DC-10 plane that took off just before the supersonic jet.
The Concorde ran over the super-hard titanium strip, which shredded one tire, causing a blow-out and sending debris flying into an engine and a fuel tank and setting it on fire, investigators said.
During their 27 years of service, the jets suffered dozens of tire blowouts or wheel damage that in several cases pierced the fuel tanks — a flaw that Perrier’s team and the French civil aviation were accused of missing.
“The previous incidents were adequately analyzed by the manufacturer and appropriate measures were taken,” said Simon Ndiaye, a lawyer at EADS. “The accident was unforeseeable,” he said.
While some modifications were made to the Concorde, prosecutors faulted it for abandoning efforts to strengthen the underside of the wings, which held the fuel tanks.
Continental, which risked a maximum fine of up to 225,000 euros, has maintained the Concorde caught fire before hitting the metal strip from its aircraft.
The mammoth trial, which is due to wrap up on Friday, has drawn on testimony from dozens of witnesses and experts, examining 90 volumes of case files and 534 pieces of evidence, at a cost of three million euros.
A verdict is not expected before the end of the year.
Most of the families of the people who died in the crash agreed not to take legal action in exchange for compensation from Air France, the EADS aerospace firm, Continental and Goodyear tire maker.
The Concorde made its maiden commercial flight in 1976. Only 20 were made, six for development and the remaining 14 for flying mainly trans-Atlantic routes at speeds of up to 2,170kph.
Air France and British Airways grounded their Concordes for 15 months after the crash and, after a brief resumption, finally ended the supersonic commercial service in 2003.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion