Continental guilty in Concorde crash

Airlines and aviation safety experts fear the French ruling against Continental Airlines for involuntary homicide could usher in a new era of prosecutions for future airline crashes.
 

A French judge in Paris ruled that Continental Airlines and one of its mechanics were guilty of involuntary homicide for their role in the 2000 crash of an Air France Concorde jet that killed 113 people.
 

Judge Dominique Andréassier of the court in Pontoise ordered the American carrier to pay a fine of UUS$265,000 and civil damages of more than $1.3 million to Air France. John Taylor, 42, the mechanic, was fined $2,650 and given a suspended 15-month prison sentence.
 

Henri Perrier, 81, considered the “father” of the iconic supersonic jet and an executive of Aérospatiale, the company that built the Concorde, was acquitted. So were two other French officials who certified the plane’s airworthiness.
 

A report by French air accident investigators concluded that a small strip of metal had fallen off a Continental DC-10 that took off minutes earlier and that the piece punctured a tire of the Concorde as it accelerated down the runway in 2000. The tire disintegrated in seconds, investigators said, sending shards of rubber into the fuel tanks and causing a catastrophic fire. All 109 passengers and crew members were killed, along with four people on the ground.
 

Defense lawyers argued that 20 witnesses testified the plane appeared to have caught fire on the runway before it ever reached the metal strip.
 

Continental said it would appeal the “absurd” ruling, which took more than a decade to work its way through the French courts.
 

“To find that any crime was committed in this tragic accident is not supported either by the evidence at trial or by aviation authorities and experts around the world,” Nick Britton, a Continental spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement.
 

The decision to proceed with criminal charges in the Concorde case has alarmed airlines and aviation safety experts worldwide, who contend that the threat of prosecution can dissuade some witnesses from cooperating in crash investigations.
 

France is one of a handful of countries that routinely seeks criminal indictments in transportation accidents, regardless of whether there is clear evidence of criminal intent or negligence, said newspaper reports.
 

Air France itself was not accused of wrongdoing and joined the case as a civil party in the hope of recouping damages from Continental. The US$1.3 million in damages awarded was far less than the nearly $20 million the French airline had sought.
 

The airline reached a $150 million settlement in 2001 with the families of the victims, most of whom were German citizens. But the new verdict could still open the door to millions of dollars in potential litigation by the victims’ families against Continental and against European Aeronautic Defense and Space, the parent company of Airbus, which absorbed Aérospatiale in the 1970s, said the New York Times.
 

The crash of Air France Flight 4590 was the only fatal accident involving the Concorde, which first flew in 1969 and became a symbol of transatlantic luxury travel.
 

The disaster hastened the end of commercial operations of the plane, which had become a financial problem for its operators, Air France and British Airways, according to the Times. Both airlines took the plane out of service in 2003.
 

Only 20 of the planes were built, and just 14 entered commercial service. With a maximum cruising speed of 1,350 miles per hour, the Concorde was capable of flying from London to New York in less than three and a half hours.
 

By David Wilkening