Continental blamed for Concorde crash

I don't know enough about the Concorde case to agree or disagree with you about somebody being blamed - but the size and scale of a disaster doesn't have any bearing on whether anybody deserves to get blamed.

As for insurance...

...so you're saying that if I'm driving down a road, safely and within the speed limit, and my tyre bursts through random rubber fatigue, causing my car to swerve and hit a tree, that someone ought to be blamed?

Insurance is no different to gambling, really. A hundred of us might pay a £500 premium, and five of us will have accidents costing £10,000 each. Those who have accidents don't lose out financially, and those who don't have accidents accept that they are paying for those who do. Factor in a profit margin for the insurer, and that's it. I paid my £500 last year, and I didn't have an accident and didn't make a claim. The £500 was to pay for somebody else's accident, and for the peace of mind that if it happens to me, there are 19 other accident-free people each paying £500 to cover my losses.

Obviously the premiums are calculated before any claims are made, so there has to be some prediction by the insurer - that's who's taking a gamble - and at the end of the day it's all just balancing the book.
 
[TW]Fox;17945792 said:
Neither does it suprise me that you'd come down against Continental, you are the most predictable poster on this forum. There seem to be serious doubts that it was infact the metal from the DC10 that caused the fire.
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That doesn't seem to be Continental's defence. They seem to be peeved that they are getting so much blame.

"Portraying the metal strip as the cause of the accident, and Continental and one of its employees as the sole guilty parties, shows the determination of the French authorities to shift attention and blame away from Air France, which was government-owned at the time and operated and maintained the aircraft, as well as from the French authorities responsible for the Concorde's airworthiness and safety."

Are they saying that if the aircraft had been airworthy, then a metal strip going into the tyres should not have caused a problem?

EADS are getting some blame for what it seems are design errors.


(ST)Pohaku said:
I don't know enough about the Concorde case to agree or disagree with you about somebody being blamed - but the size and scale of a disaster doesn't have any bearing on whether anybody deserves to get blamed.

As for insurance...

...so you're saying that if I'm driving down a road, safely and within the speed limit, and my tyre bursts through random rubber fatigue, causing my car to swerve and hit a tree, that someone ought to be blamed?
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Random is different from a design fault. As for the metal strip, it was made of banned material.

Also, in this case your premiums will be going up. The blame is perhaps unfairly being given to you.

Insurance is no different to gambling, really. A hundred of us might pay a £500 premium, and five of us will have accidents costing £10,000 each. Those who have accidents don't lose out financially, and those who don't have accidents accept that they are paying for those who do. Factor in a profit margin for the insurer, and that's it. I paid my £500 last year, and I didn't have an accident and didn't make a claim. The £500 was to pay for somebody else's accident, and for the peace of mind that if it happens to me, there are 19 other accident-free people each paying £500 to cover my losses.

Obviously the premiums are calculated before any claims are made, so there has to be some prediction by the insurer - that's who's taking a gamble - and at the end of the day it's all just balancing the book.
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Insurance isn't aggregated across all individuals. If it was, then we could just ensure that insurance companies repair the cars they have policies for, regardless of who's fault it was. Insurance products aren't homogeneous though and so it is important to ensure that blame is correctly given. The tyre company needs to ensure they have insurance for any provable cases of selling faulty products.
 
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ghost101 said:
That doesn't seem to be Continental's defence. They seem to be peeved that they are getting so much blame.

"Portraying the metal strip as the cause of the accident, and Continental and one of its employees as the sole guilty parties, shows the determination of the French authorities to shift attention and blame away from Air France, which was government-owned at the time and operated and maintained the aircraft, as well as from the French authorities responsible for the Concorde's airworthiness and safety."

Are they saying that if the aircraft had been airworthy, then a metal strip going into the tyres should not have caused a problem?

EADS are getting some blame for what it seems are design errors.
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Surely an internet forum jockey would know more about it than a court of law.
 
scorza said:
Surely an internet forum jockey would know more about it than a court of law.
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Youre right, I don't know much about the case. My point was that whilst French courts may potentially have been unfair, from the BBC article Continental are annoyed with 2 things.

They believe the plane was failing before the metal strip made any contact and that no blame has been given to Air France. They may be correct, however...

the comments make it seem as Continental accept the titanium piece was theirs. Hence questioning why where Fox got the doubts about the metal strip from.
 
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ghost101 said:
the comments make it seem as Continental accept the titanium piece was theirs. Hence questioning why where Fox got the doubts about the metal strip from.
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There is no doubt that the metal strip was there, but there is doubt it caused the fire.

Here is a quote to support what I was saying:

Continental had disputed this interpretation, saying the airliner, operated by Air France, was already in flames before it hit the small piece of titanium.
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One thing to bear in mind is that losing a tyre on the takeoff roll would not be an issue with any other commercial airliner. Tyres had burst before and made holes in Concorde. Blaming the metal strip entirely is ignoring a huge amount of contributory factors to do with design and maintenance.
 
It seems odd that Air France, the operators of the Concorde in question have more or less been given the all clear by a French investigation. Surely the airport operators should spot/remote debris from the runways and from what they've been able to tell there's no guarantee that the concorde run by Air France wasn't on fire before the debris caused this problem with the tyre. They've grasped hold of this one piece of evidence and are using it for closure, nothing more.
 
It's eyewitness from the airport fire service. Eyewitness reports of plane crashes are notoriously unreliable. Apparently the brain takes in the information, but then jumbles up the sequence of events when under extreme stress. Every time a plane crashes witnesses will swear it was on fire or exploded before impact wether it did or not. In this case the fact that they were fire fighters is giving their evidence more weight than it deserves. They are still only human.
 
Yes. It was also the responsibility of Air France, and Airbus to make sure their plane could survive hitting a small piece of debris. Continental also have a responsibility to maintain their planes according to regulations.
 
PiKe said:
Surely it was the responsibility of the airport/atc to ensure the runway was free of debris?
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Routine runway inspections are carried out at every airport but you can't do an inspection after each departure.

There is talk on another forum of a spacer missing from the main landing gear that was known about. I'm not sure what bearing that has but it seems that anything related to Air France has been ignored.

As Scuzi said, it's a typical French decision. Having worked for Cityjet (owned by Air France) under French management, I can honestly say that they are some of the most ignorant individuals I have ever come across.
It's a shame they didn't stick up for themselves as much 70 years ago.
 
There is a number of specific issues that caused the entire thing to go wrong.

If one of the factors had not been present (Lack of Spacer, over-fueled, tail-wind, etc) then the story could have been very different.

Ignore the fact that the metal was a/the cause of the crash, it shouldn't have been fitted at all.

I think the fine is more because someone did something they shouldn't of done, which in this case contributed to a crash.

I know sub-standard repairs go on all the time, unfortunately this had serious implications.
 
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