Engine failure is to blame?

By Vaiju Naravane

PARIS AND GONESSE, JULY 26. A team of experts today examined the first of two black boxes or in-flight recorders of the Air France Concorde which crashed just outside Paris on Tuesday evening killing 113 persons.

According to information trickling out, the alarm signals which warn the crew of engine malfunction did not go off until after the wheels had left the ground and certainly only once the aircraft had attained take-off speed, after which it is impossible to avoid take-off.

The black boxes were found late last night when the aircraft's smouldering debris had cooled sufficiently to allow firemen to look for them.

Air France has said that trouble with engine number 2, on the left side of the aircraft caused the first ever crash of a Concorde supersonic jet since the plane's inaugural flight in 1969. It was revealed that engineers and technicians carried out repairs on the engine just half an hour before the plane took off. The chartered flight carrying 96 German tourists, an Austrian, two Danes, one American and nine crew was delayed by over 40 minutes because of these last minute repairs, it was learnt here. The repairs were on the engine which caught fire and had to do with the engine's reverse thrust mechanism.

Prosecutor Elisabeth Senot who is in charge of the investigation said that the control tower alerted the pilot 56 seconds after take off that the rear of the plane was on fire. He replied that he had engine trouble. The captain at that point was apparently unaware that the engine was on fire. The plane crashed four minutes after take off. Prosecutor Senot said that the pilot was attempting to reach the nearby airport of Le Bourget when the plane crashed.

Eye witnesses said they heard explosions after the plane started turning left. Following which it went into a spin, flew for a bit on its back then crashed to the ground like a huge block of lead. The plane crashed through the Hotelissimo hotel, a wooden structure which has been completely razed. Only blackened stumps indicate there was ever a structure standing there. A much bigger tragedy was averted because several Polish tourists living in the hotel had gone on a sight-seeing visit. They found the hotel's charred remains on their return while 45 British youths who were to have arrived were late and thus escaped the catastrophe. Two Polish women working at the hotel were killed along with a British tourist. Five other people were injured and taken to hospital. Police arrived within minutes of the accident but could do nothing for the passengers and crew of the doomed plane.

``It became a huge fireball. For 30 seconds the explosions did not stop. There was this intense heat wave, like an atomic blast. I thought, this is what Hiroshima felt like. Then we were showered with hot particles which made holes in our clothes. It was so hot it was impossible to approach the plane or the hotel building, even though we saw people. It was horrendous, terrible,'' says Marc, a young man who witnessed the crash with three of his friends.

Over four hundred fire fighters were called in to put out the flames which left huge columns of dense smoke. The plane was fully tanked up with the special very high octane fuel that this plane which is half jet, half rocket uses and the fire was extremely difficult to put out. When the wind changed some two hours after the crash police hustled journalists and onlookers out of the area as the smoke could prove toxic.

The little town of Gonesse where the crash occurred today paid homage to the pilot who has not been named, who veered off to the left to avoid crashing onto the town or its hospital. But residents and the mayor also expressed their anger at the danger to which residents are exposed several hundred times a day. The Transport Minister, Mr. Jean-Claude Gayssot, said the decision on whether or not to build a third airport for Paris would be made at the end of the summer.

Ninety bodies, some of them charred beyond recognition, other grotesquely bloated have been recovered from the crash. Forty five of them have been taken to the forensic institute in Paris. A memorial ceremony is to be held at the municipal building in Gonesse which will be led by the President, Mr. Jacques Chirac. Victims' families have already begun converging on Paris and the traumatic and agonising task of identifying the bodies will now begin.

The crash, the first in the Concorde's history has cast a shadow on the future of the supersonic jet. France has grounded the planes for the duration of the enquiry but British Airways the only other Airline besides Air France to fly the plane has re- started its flights today. Air France said today that the small cracks discovered on the wings of the planes had nothing to do with the crash which it blamed on engine failure.

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