France Finds Continental Guilty in Crash of Concorde

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A French judge ruled on Monday 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, northwest of Paris, ordered the American carrier to pay a fine of $265,000.

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, and two other French officials, Jacques Hérubel, and Claude Frantzen, formerly of the French airline regulator who certified the plane’s airworthiness, were acquitted.

A 2002 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 on July 25, 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 4 people on the ground.

Olivier Metzner, the French lawyer for Continental in the case, vigorously challenged the investigators’ findings in court, however, and presented a starkly different scenario. Mr. Metzner argued that the investigators disregarded accounts of the accident from more than 20 witnesses who said the plane appeared to have caught fire at a point on the runway several yards before it reached the metal strip.

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.

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 ruling on Monday awarded the French carrier $1.3 million.

The airline reached a $150 million settlement in 2001 with the families of the victims, most of whom were German citizens. The verdict could also open the door to a suit against Continental by Air France’s insurers, including Global Aerospace Underwriting Managers, to recover the settlement payments, legal experts said.

The crash of Air France Flight 4590 was the only fatal accident involving the Concorde, which first took to the skies in 1969 and became an emblem of transatlantic luxury travel. The plane crashed into a hotel near the airport, flames pouring from its undercarriage.

The disaster hastened the end of commercial operations of the plane, which had become a financial burden for its two operators, Air France and British Airways. 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.