Concorde crash- what you weren't told.

on the afternoon of the 25th of july 2000 concord flight af4590 sounded the death knell of supersonic flight at the time there was very little accurate information available air france wouldn't divulge any of their particular secrets so they sued continental and airlines but lost on appeal and you can ask why what was the effect of the runway service resurfacing and what effect did that have on the crash why did the sydney olympics matter and was any one person to blame my thanks first of all is to ron spencer for his magic with the slides now british airways concord what i'm going to do is talk to you first of all about concord in general and then talk about the particular events on that day when the af concord crashed this talk is designed for people who are not perhaps aeronautically literate so it's a general talk and most of you will know far more than i do about concord and about flying so if there's any problems please accept it for the time being and ask me at the end and this particular picture is the only picture of a concord flying at supersonic speed as you can see it was taken by an raf strike command tornado aircraft otherwise the aircraft was far faster than any of the attack aircraft available to any of the military services so we're going to talk about concord and particularly the af4590 but first let's look at the birth of supersonic flight which will have occurred in your lifetimes you will all remember chuck yeager and the bell x-9 aircraft and that was in 1947 so i can remember it just well sort of but um some of you will remember that very well and the question was at that time can we arrange for passenger carrying aircraft to five faster the speed of sound up to that point the only people who'd gone faster than the sound were by accident in some of the spitfires in a long dive and occasionally in other aircraft and they found it was almost impossible to control the aircraft and it wasn't until they got into the um vulcan bombers that they learned how to design the wings and people said well if we can carry bombs in a in a vulcan why can't we carry passengers and so in britain and in france they started looking for an aircraft that would fly people 62 meters long which is about nine cricket pitches and six 26 meters wide which is four cricket pitches wide so it's a big aircraft and the point of balance on these aircraft was exactly below the landing main landing wheels 79 tons plus 108 tons payload and that is quite important with what happened later on so we look at the and those of you who have flown in concord will realize how narrow it was and how small the seating height was um only six foot five so some tall people really had to duck as they went down even in the center part of the passageway the width was only eight foot seven that's not very wide just enough to get in four seats across with this narrow aisle and there were 25 rows of seats so you had a hundred passengers cabin crew was four sometimes three sometimes four and the flight deck was three so it was quite a narrow aircraft and if you look on the flight deck you must remember this is of course before computers came in so the flight engineer had the major task he had just an eye full of dials there were no compressors at all this aircraft was designed in in march 1969 the first one flew and it didn't come into service until 1976 but in the late 60s of course we weren't using computers it was all dials there's the captain and the co-pilot at the front and the flight engineer and a jump seat on the left so what we're going to do is look just some information although the unladen weight was 79 tons that maximum taxi weight and this is quite important is 187 tons maximum takeoff weight 185. it burned 13.2 kilograms per kilometer which meant that with a takeoff it was by burning 75 kilograms per minute very very heavy use of fuel and the other thing that is important is that the engine thrust although you could go forward with 150 kilonewtons just on takeoff with all four engines working you could put it through the barrier it buggered the engines up but you could get 169 kilonewtons with the emergency afterburners if you use them then the aircraft had to go in for complete refurbish but it was possible the other thing was the degree of rotation was very important that like all aircraft you've got a certain degree of irritation but you had tail dragging problems if you went any steeper than that brian trumpshaw did the test pilot test flights um in the late 60s and he said that the aircraft became almost uncontrollable if you've got more than 52.4 percent after loading behind those real wheels and he was at the empire test pilot school i met him there when i was stationed there for some time the previous dental officer of that particular uh station um had encouraged local young ladies to come and meet the test pilots which were from all over the world and he was using the medical center um and the emergency beds as a and so um it went very well for a year but then he got picked someone was told on him and so he got he got moved and i got moved back in and i've got a lot of gentlemen who were doing test fights saying well um where were the girls and a lot of girls actually turning out looking for a little bit of extra cash and it was quite an interesting time whilst i was there i was just a young client however let's look at this air france flight on the 25th of july 100 passengers these passengers were germans and they were already on their way um on a first-class fight they were going to go to new york and then they were going to go down to the nearest new orleans the the big but then they were going to go on a cruise and on to the sydney olympics and so they were going to take all their clothing with them and they had lots and lots of heavy baggage there was no limit given to them on the weight of baggage that they were allowed to take before we get to that actual detail let's just look at the charles de gaulle air for airfield 25 kilometers northeast of paris it's a very large airfield with four runways and the ones we're interested in are the southern two runways here 26 right and um it's it's actually oh eight left because this is the landing runway this runway here the takeoff for the concorde measures just on 2.6 kilometers sorry 2.6 miles now at that time it was slightly shorter and they were at the time of the concord this particular flight they were lengthening the runway and some of the runway was still being finished and it hadn't got its top surface on so that the runway itself was still in the hunters under um tarmac and the one we're particularly looking at is one way here this two six right here um no problems at all the standard wind in this area was always from the left to the right so people always took off this way very occasionally very rarely the wind will flow from the northeast but lonely it's in the southwest and in particular we're going to look at these uh taxiways here instead of coming right to the end of the runway because this area was under construct reconstruction there was a taxiway there and the one we were interested in is taxiway romeo so here we are foxtrot vargo tango sierra charlie airframe just under 12 000 hours landings just under 4 000 now all these concords had a long history of tire blowouts the tires couldn't take the landing stress very well at takeoff the tyres were rotating 23 revolutions per second and the rubber which was made by michelin and um also by dundalk two sets of tyres couldn't really take it and the tyres would shred particularly if they hit a bump or something like that but the largest pizza ever was known to take off from the tyres was about half a kilo about a pound and this has happened a lot of times there's been a lot of them and british airways decided to put in mud guards they said the mud guards here were for stop water spray for wet runways or if the runways had a slight amount of snow air france decided not to put in the the guards over the main landing wheels i'd said that these people were the germans who were on this holiday of a lifetime flight engineer had said we have got too many bags we've got about 19 large bags excess i don't want to put them on to the rear where the cargo bay is the front cargo bay is full i don't want to put them on the back because they are very heavy and i think that they will unbalance the aircraft we're already at the point of balance of 52 aft but the captain said no put them on it'll be all right don't worry so he put on 19 bags and these bags weighed um something over 40 to 50 kilos each and he was putting them on right at the back but unknown to the captain the loadmaster had put on board already a large box which weighed 600 kilos and he didn't tell the airload master and he didn't tell the captain so this was already at the back and then they stacked all these bags on behind the captain for some reason that no one has yet explained also was concerned about the fuel and he decided to fill up both the rear tanks here tank 11 and the tank above the main wheels there tank five instead of normal 85 percent fall to allow a little bit of air space for shocks he filled them up to 97 in fact the one at the back he topped it off he gave deliberate instructions to the refuellers to top the tanks off so the tanks had no air space whatsoever the extra load the extra mass was between two and three tons above the wheels and no one's yet reported on how much went into the back tank but they think it was another two to three tons of fuel so the aircraft was way overweight and already was the load balance was far too far off now charles de gaulle airport um here is uh 25 kilometers northeast of paris at 20 kilometers northeast of paris is the old french main air airport le bourget and in between the two is a little town which has grown up to service both the airports so the aircraft will be flying directly that way towards lagones over the bouquet and then out on its trip to new york so here we have the aircraft all ready to go the tanks have been filled and what the captain then did was he was very worried about the load he actually knew that he'd overloaded the aircraft and he started pumping through tank 11 at the back through to the tank above the wheels but this tank five was already full so it wasn't doing anything that he up all the valves and tried to come to fuel you are strictly forbidden in the this particular view from pumping fuel while you're taxiing or you're taking off he overrode that um it's an obvious thing that if you if you're pumping fuel you you can't get a spinach onto the wrong way or anywhere so he he overrode that and that was one problem the other thing that had happened was that the aircraft had just gone in for a service and it had done two flights since the service but during the service they had replaced the whole of the main landing gear but they had forgotten to put in an important spacer which held the wheels apart it's like a supermarket trolley they wobble and for some reason air france engineers forgot to put the spacer in it was not visible from the outside you couldn't see it once all the wheels were back in you couldn't see that the spacer was missing and it's first for the first couple of takeoffs after the service everything was fine but there was this missing spacer and no one knew about it they did find it later hanging up in the service hangout just and it was a big metal tube about this long which held the wheels separately so nobody knew about that so the holes in the swiss cheese are beginning to mount up go back to the runway now the aircraft that air france aircraft was held for half an hour to three quarters of an hour because there's been a problem with the reverse thrusters and so the aircraft was actually running very late three-quarters of an hour late and when they came to take the taxi to take off they were told first of all that the wind had changed direction and had been in fact on and off all day but had changed direction and was blowing from the northeast to the southwest and the captain was advised to take on fuel enough so he could taxi this distance to the southern end of the runway and then take off in the abnormal direction that's this way but then just before he he said oh look i've got fuel on board already i'm all right and they said well actually as it happens the winds change direction it's now in its normal position the normal direction the wind is blowing um from 08 left along here and so we would like you to take it off here the loading on the um for the passengers is just there nearer the north end of the runway and so in taxiing out to his takeoff instead of using up two two and a half tons of fuel he'd only used uh they think between 700 and 800 kilos so he still had an enormous amount of fuel left on board also what had happened was that other aircraft because he was out of sequence other aircraft were queuing to take off and there were three aircraft waiting to take off then what happened was jacques shirak the french president had come in from overseas trip to japan and he'd landed on runway 08 right here and he was asked he said sir would you like to see your air france concord take off we can arrange it although it's fourth in the queue we will arrange it so it's head of the queue so he said yes please i would like very much to say that so they texted him um up on a little there's a another taxiway here and they parked the 747 with jack shirak on board just near off this 08 right near and he was waiting to see and they said to the concorde pilot look um what we want you to do is to please could you take taxiway romeo and come in on the main runway we instead of going right to the end of the runway here would you come in through taxiway romeo now taxiway romeo was one of the little taxiways that hadn't been completed and it hadn't got its full surface on board and it was just rough the the basement that was down but it was a very rough surface with bumps along the taxiway and jacques the the captain said yes okay i'll do that but i'm i'm a bit concerned that i've now got very much left runway he used to take off they said done it'll be all right you'll be all right you you do that you'll go ahead of the other aircraft and there's jack shirak waiting to see you take off in dumping over the taxiway romeo they think they actually moved the wheels so instead of the wheels being in their normal position this is the main landing wheels they started to wobble and it was very noticeable you could see it from one of the parked aircraft who was waiting to take off they could say i could see that the wheels didn't seem to be in their right position he was watching and he had a photograph of it and that photograph has gone missing no one can see it and as soon as he got onto the main runway he said look i'm having difficulty he was down about here i'm having difficulty in steering the aircraft seems to be pulling across to the left very heavily so what happened then was that he said well all right the co-pilot had said look sir and it's this is this is um because it's in french but you could hear it he said that i think we should stop we should go back there's too many things going wrong and captain martin's marty said no no it'll be fine it'll be all right don't worry look at that so what we're doing here is it's not um that particular airfield but what he'd done instead of the aircraft cueing here where he needed to take off he'd come down this uh taxiway romeo this is not the actual one but it gives you an idea where he was and how far down the runway he already was now he was overweight by something like four or five tons he'd got problems with his steering and he got problems with the um was the load of the aircraft this in the continental airlines had just taken off from that very same runway five minutes beforehand and on that continental um airlines uh someone had fitted a piece of metal over the engine bays that's fell off and it fell off onto the runway it was well off to the left-hand side of the runway out of the main track no one had spotted it the people in the tower didn't see it no one did it they didn't even send a land rover or whatever vehicle they used down to check for foreign objects on the runway because they had such a queue of aircraft taking off so this piece of titanium metal lay just out of sight down on the runway later it was found this is the picture of it on the side of the runway exactly that size it's not very big at all people expect it to be a lot bigger but that's the size of the metal so duties of flight deck offices as you well know this is for general population the decision for no go or go for v1 depends on the velocity of the mass and the distance the captain had reported incorrectly the mass of his aircraft he was told that you can't take off with a concorde more than 185 tons he was well over that some people say up to seven tons over but most people think three to four tons over so he had permission to take off at from the south tower that 1400 hours 42 minutes 31 seconds alpha is greenwich he immediately said that he was having problems with steering and he had such intense problems with the steering that the concorde actually came off the runway to the left and broke some of the side landing lights that were on the side of the runway he was way off to the left he missed the 747 with shaq sharack on board by 2.4 meters eight feet and the captain of that aircraft thought that the concorde was going to hit him it was that close he got to v1 and v1 he had only got two normal v1 is 150 knots and he'd only got to 148 knots 145 knots he called v1 and that was low even for a normally weighted aircraft and it was very late down the runway he should have stopped he had enough room to stop he had one mile and it took one mile to stop the laden concord doing that particular speed but he did he chose to continue they ran over the piece of metal and it cut into the tire and a large chunk of tyre came off weighing just over four kilos 4.5 kilos that's the same weight as a human head it came off at a very fast speed because the aircraft was already turning and the wheel was turning at 23 revolutions a second these are four foot landing wheels and the um it probably came off at about 300 feet per second 325 kilometers an hour it didn't penetrate the tank but it set up a pressure wave he was already and had continued to pump fuel from tanki 11 at the rear of the aircraft through to tank 5. so tank 5 was already full all the valves are open to allow the pumping into tank 5 but the shock wave of a full tank um sprung open the emergency valve on it and allow the fuel to come out the fuel that came out in in a large gush from that the piece of rubber that had come off the tire and also as it had gone up into to hit the tank had severed the wiring which is the undercarriage wiring and that started sparking and set fire to the fuel british airways later said how is it that a piece of metal that big can cause that piece of tyre to come off and they ran over the tire at that speed a couple of times several times nothing happened at all the tire just ran over it but as soon as they put the tyre skidding as they were and you can see the black marks on the runway at shot the on the on the runway 26 right where it had been skidding then it cut into the tire and the piece came off so it would have been all right had it not been for the loose wheel and the fact that the aircraft was already way off to the left of the runway running over that piece of metal otherwise had he gone down the center of the runway could have missed it completely there would have been no trouble there was consternation on the flight deck so the tyre here was burning this is just another picture of a tyre those tyres are four foot tall they're big tyres they're spinning very fast right at the limits of their ability consternation on the flight deck the flight engineer said i have fire in number one engine i'm shutting it down there was no firing number one engine what had happened was that the piece of rubber coming off and the fire had burnt through the wiring to number two and number one engines and so it came up on his board that he had a fire in both one and two engines there was nothing wrong whatsoever with number one engine there was nothing wrong with number two engine except it was sucking in flames and giving reduced power the captain said what have you done it's number two engine so the flight engineer tried to reschool number one and that takes several seconds for a large engine to restore up from having been shut had an emergency shutdown number two engine the captain said and it's again you can hear it on the report um shut down number two engine and the engineer did that he should really have kept number two engine going most of you i think and i was taught this even if you have a fire and an engine at takeoff you keep it going as long as you can as long as it's still giving some power because you need it so at this point concord had both number one and number two engines out of action all giving very little power on the left side then there came the problem of course that he was overloaded at the back by several tons it was worked out later that he was something like 54.5 55 after loading so the aircraft not only had the problem with the lack of one or two engines but he was tail dragging and thereafter it just got worse and things they didn't know what to do he was told to try and land that um but he said no i i am unable to retract the undercarriage the message try for the boujee 50 seconds after the start of roll engines 3 and 4 also lost power so he was effectively had no power at all very little power it hit the ground tail first and killed seven seven people on the ground and everyone on board died crash occurred at 59 seconds 14 hours 43 minutes 59 seconds and it was just impossible there was nobody could be saved this is the official air france report on the crash it says basically that the aircraft ran over debris on the runway it blew a tyre and into the landing gear bay all they said about the fuel tanks was they were unusually full and resulting from the lack of air space caused rupture fuel pouring out yes that's true debris flew in the power wiring sparked making it impossible to retract the gear as the aircraft climbed they weren't worried about the gear retracted at all that was nothing to do with it it could have flown quite happily with all the gear down if the engines were still wrong the sparks structured fuel tank it didn't the fuel tank was never penetrated it was just a shock wave and then they said the reduction of thrust from engine 102 no mention at all about the engineer shutting down the engines and it made it impossible to control the aircraft that it crashed so it was nothing to do with any of the pieces missing in the landing gear allowing the wheels to wobble nothing to do with the uh pilot saying overfill the tanks to 97 nothing to do with the weight of the aircraft and the incorrect location of it it was all just pure accident they sued the continental airlines but continental airlines said look no now piece of metal yes it was wrong it shouldn't have been there but it was way off the runway it was nothing to do with us if you look at the reports for the from air france you'll see that basically they are maintaining this if you look at the reports from other people including the british john hutchison on the bbc documentary and the book by andrew brooks which was published in 2002 you will see that there's a very different story the one i've told you today thank you [Music] you

Channel: OldFliersGroup

Views: 11,328

Keywords: Old Fliers Group, Jandakot, Royal Aero Club of WA, Peter Mack, Concorde, Concorde crash, Air France, Jacques Chirac, Christian Marty, Continental Airlines, DC10, F-BTSC, Gonesse, Le Bourget

Id: N0sPfqYy6FI

Length: 34min 45sec (2085 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2021