#flight 4590

As stated earlier in a Wired article, about the crash of the Concorde, seconds after take-off, we were right.

On July 25, 2000, Concorde Flight 4590, the aircraft that was supposed to herald the onset of worldwide supersonic flight met a sad and ignominious end when a full passenger flight departing Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris burst into flames just after takeoff and smashed into a nearby neighborhood, killing all aboard.

Investigators quickly determined that the cause had been a near improbable, if not bizarre scenario. a fire/explosion in a main fuel tank that had been struck by flying debris from a tire that burst during the takeoff run.  And that the tire had failed because it somehow had struck a short strip of metal that had fallen off the engine of a previously departing flight, and was lying on the runway as the Concorde passed over it.

The stripe, made of titanium, was traced to a Continental Airlines plane based in Houston, Texas, USA, and had detached from the engine, possibly/probably from some sort of mistake made during work on the engine by two Continental mechanics.

Circumstances such as this, of course, inevitably lead to lots of legal proceedings, claims and lawsuits. The families of the passengers (and crew) are looking for compensation for the loss of their loved ones, and in most cases, loss of financial support.  The Airline, or its hull insurer, looks for damages for the loss of its aircraft.  All the potential responsible parties are pointing the finger at each other, and cross- complaining against them in court.  These include the airline, the makers of the Concorde, the maker of the tire, Continental,  Air Traffic Control, the airport and others.  Also named in some suits were the two individual mechanics at Continental.

These were all civil suits; that is, claims and cross claims for damages. Many of the civil cases were filed here in the United States, because of the presence of the tire maker and Continental Airlines.  In some cases, the passenger plaintiff lawyers named the two US resident mechanics as additional defendants, not that they expected to collect any damages directly there from.  The employer, Continental, would be responsible in all cases for their actions, and it and they in turn were covered by insurance, both for the defense of the claim and payment of any damages.

But knowing in advance how the French system worked, naming the individual mechanics was a tactical move to try to prevent the US filed cases from being dismissed and forced to refile in France.  This would be standard strategy from any US based defendant: get the cases out of the US courts and somewhere else.  But the presence of US residents individuals in the case can make that process much more difficult for the corporate defendants, and because of the workings of the French legal system, which were discussed in detail in an earlier article on all this in “Wired,” (enter date) there is no way these mechanics would ever consent to move the case to France.

And in due time, probably within two and a half to three years, all the death claims were settled and cases closed.  The mechanics had that burden lifted from them, at least in the United States. There are no readily accessible hard numbers on such things because most settlements contain a confidentially clause and liability insurers do not make public what they have paid out in individual damage claims.  

In France, things work differently.   As explained in the “Wired” piece, an aviation accident of this magnitude is treated as a criminal matter.  In March of 2008, Pontoise deputy prosecutor Bernard Farret, petitioned a court to file manslaughter charges against the US airline, along with two people employed with the company at the time, as well as a former employee of airplane manufacturer EADS and a former official at France's civil aviation authority (DGAC).A judge presides over this; a special prosecutor is assigned; both are high profile positions, with many perks.  And the process can go on for a very long time.  The statute of limitations is over twenty years.

And so, eight years after the crash and a number of years after most if not all of the victims’ families had been paid and the civil cases closed,  the criminal proceedings began chugging along, with some passengers having hopes of joining in those proceedings, as is permitted by French law, in the hopes of recovering their damages in that fashion, perhaps to avoid lawyer and litigation fees, perhaps thinking they would recover more.

Special Prosecutor Farret announced with much fanfare that the two individual mechanics, still in the United States, and probably thinking that this whole ugly business was now long since behind them, would now be prosecuted for manslaughter.  Never mind the time that had gone by or evidence that may no longer be available and memories of witnesses which might have faded: Justice Must be Served.

We commented on all this extensively for the “Wired” article, in response to queries as to how can such be possible after so much time has passed.   In short, our observation then was that this is the product of the French process to intermix criminal and civil matters, as to provide for, in our view, a most unreasonable prolonged times for those involved in high profile matters to stay high profile.  But those are their rules, and so the process continued, and ended in a conviction.

But now, some four and half or so years later, a higher French court has ruled which seems should have been apparent from the outset.  Even granting that the Continental mechanics in Houston made a mistake, or even had been negligent, which could well have been the case: metal pieces should not spontaneously detach themselves from aircraft; but the “zone of danger” of such, which is a measure used by many US courts,  would not include a nightmare scenario such ensued some 5,000 miles away. Additionally, the fact that something may done negligently or carelessly in no way rises to the state of mind of criminal intent or reckless and willful.

We further commented then that the focus of any inquiry should have been on the design of the Concorde itself and its designers: a consortium of the UK and the government of France.  Tires on a multi-thousand pound fast moving machine may fail for many reasons and scatter tire debris is totally foreseeable.   When such tire is situated directly below fuel tanks, is it not logical to foresee that as well and design those tanks with a high level of protection?  What sort of metal was used? Were there joints or seams that may have more vulnerable to flying debris? Was there a tradeoff here, as can often be the case in aircraft design, of more protection, equating to more weight, for safety?

The French appellate court vacated the criminal charges against the mechanics.  Nearly 13 years after the occurrence.  It also, we note, either made or affirmed an award of something over 300,000 Euros as damages for some families.   It is not said whether interest will be added or not.  But even if so, such a sum equivalent to maybe 450,000 US dollars, is not much given today’s values for the loss of a breadwinner.  To the contrary, we are told now that the average compensation in a breadwinner airline crash is around two million dollars.  And that is usually paid within 18 to 24 months from the time of the crash, if not sooner.  Here, some families have waited 13 years. And what makes this huge delay even more painful is that such awards are inevitably paid by insurance; the carrier airline; Continental, whoever.  However, the interest earned on the sum ultimately paid: 300,000 or so Euros,, will more than pay the final sum.   This is due to the fact that the insurance companies “reserve” sums for payment of these losses at the start. But they keep the money, and keep it invested, so they collect and keep all that.  The longer it takes to get paid out, the better they do.  Sort of a reverse annuity for the victims.