Monday 8 February 2010

Concorde Trial Starts With Victims Remembered

This article was taken from The Telegraph 2nd February 2010:

The names of the 113 victims of the Concorde disaster were read out in a French court as six defendants went on trial.

Dozens of experts and 60 witnesses will give evidence in the four-month trial in Pontoise, near Paris, in what promises to be a highly technical battle over what brought the Air France jet down next to a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport barely a minute after taking off for New York.

But on Tuesday at the start of the trial the presiding judge urged the court not to let "the inevitable technical details" overshadow "the human dimension" of the case, in which the defendants are charged with unintentional homicide.

The families of the 100 mainly German passengers were not in court, as they have already accepted £100 million in compensation from Air France in a definitive settlement. However, the family of the plane's captain and four people killed on the ground are all civil plaintiffs.

"I am here to remind people that this is not the trial of an empty plane," said Stéphane Gicquel, head of Fenvac, the national federation of collective accident victims.

The case will answer a key question: was Concorde a fragile bird by design or the victim of a freak accident?

French prosecutors argued that a 17-inch scrap of metal on the runway caused the crash. A Continental Airlines DC-10 shed the titanium "wear strip" on the runway four minutes before takeoff, they said. This acted as a "razor blade", gashing the Concorde's tyre and showering pieces of rubber into the fuel tanks, which caused a fire.

The airline and two of its US employees are charged with involuntary homicide. Their lawyer, Olivier Metzner, said: "I am here to establish that Continental Airlines is not responsible for the accident. I question the independence of the investigators. They wanted to protect Concorde, the image if gave of France."

He maintained that the jet should have been grounded given its known weaknesses, namely tyres prone to burst and insufficiently robust fuel tanks. The plane in question was overloaded and took off missing a piece to stabilize the wheels, he said.

Some 28 witnesses noted a fire on board the Concorde eight seconds and 800 yards before it hit the metal strip, he said. Mr Metzner called for the case to be called off as the document ordering the trial failed to factor in the witnesses' counter arguments.

Air France, a civil plaintiff, disputes Continental's claims.

Also charged with manslaughter are a former senior French air safety official and two retired Concorde engineers. They are accused of failing to resolve design weak spots, but their lawyers said they were not to blame and that the accident could not have been predicted.

A lawyer representing the pilot's family said that the metal strip should not have caused the crash. "There are always 'foreign bodies' [on runways], he said. If a strip like that caused the crash, air transport should be stopped altogether".

If convicted, Continental faces a maximum fine of £328,000 and the five individual defendants face up to five years in jail and a fine £66,000.

Meanwhile a British survivor of the disaster who was trapped in the burning hotel said she was still traumatised by her ordeal.

Alice Brooking, 22, from Sevenoaks, told the Evening Standard: "Whenever an aircraft passes overhead I shudder and look towards the sky."

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7139997/Concorde-trial-starts-with-victims-remembered.html