Concorde Disaster:-

Air France – Concorde story: -

The only supersonic passenger aircraft the Concorde met with a fatal accident in the year 2002 in France. That accident caused the entire Concorde fleet to be grounded permanently and the most cherished aircraft in the history of aviation now rests in museum only.

The factors contributed to the accident were:-

1.       There were 109 passengers and crew on board the aircraft

2.       To name a few passengers, there was entire 3 generations of a family, a teacher husband & wife, who saved for over 20 years to fly in Concorde for the very first time.

3.       The Pilot ordered to repair the reverse engine thrusters in one of the engine just before the flight was about to take off

4.       This delayed the take off by about an hour

5.       Just before the flight took off, a DC 10 aircraft took off from the same run way

6.       A piece of metal around 2 ft long fell off from the DC 10 aircraft’s engine

7.       After the delay and repairs the Concorde was on its runway ready for take off

8.       Concorde was traveling @ 320 km/hr in the runway when the flight’s tyre trod over the metal piece

9.       The tyre bursts and a piece of tyre weighing 5 kgs hits the underside of the flight’s wings

10.   The impact triggers a shock wave and the fuel starts to flow out of the wing

11.   The tyre impact had also ruptured an electric line guiding the landing lever. The flowing fuel triggers a spark and both the left engines catch fire

12.   Control tower alerts the pilot about the fire in the wings, but Concorde has already reached the 320 km/hr mark where the flight is committed to take off. No plane can abort the take off at such speeds. Moreover Concorde needs 3000 m to stop whereas the remaining airstrip was only 2000 m

13.   Within seconds of take off the aircraft stalls and falls above a hotel killing 4 people in the hotel

In over 20 years of its flight Concorde has never met with any fatal accidents, apart from few ruptured tyres.

Aircrafts are still the safest means of transportation. Even in the above scenario, if one watches closely all the above factors working in synchronization have contributed to the aircraft’s accident. Even if one factor was not to happen then most of the passengers could have survived.

Human error is the single most important factor that contribute to accidents

The accidents that happen could be explained as below: -