US airline to fight Concorde disaster charges in court

Continental Airlines, two of its staff and three other individuals will stand trial at a French court tomorrow, accused of manslaughter over the crash of the supersonic aircraft in Paris.

Investigators have concluded that the cause of the accident was a metal strip left on the Charles de Gaulle airport runway from a Continental plane.

This strip – known as a wear strip which is attached to the interior casing of an engine – is thought to have shredded a tyre on the Air France Concorde as it took off from the Paris airport.

Fragments from the tyre punctured the supersonic aircraft's fuel tanks, the plane bursting into flames and crashing.

Before the trial, Continental said: "Continental Airlines welcomes the opportunity to refute in court the theory that a wear strip from one of its aircraft was the cause of the Concorde accident.

"The evidence will show that neither Continental nor its employees were responsible for the accident. It will show that there was a fire on the Concorde before it reached the point on the runway where it supposedly rolled over the wear strip, and that a series of issues relating to the Concorde itself and its abnormal operation that day made the tragic accident unavoidable."

All 109 people on board and four people on the ground were killed in the accident, which led to a 16-month suspension of Concorde services by Air France and British Airways.

The manslaughter trial, likely to last at least three months, is being heard at a court in the Paris suburb of Pontoise.

Among those facing manslaughter charges are John Taylor, a mechanic with Continental Airlines, and Stanley Ford, a maintenance official with the US carrier.

Two Concorde officials working for the former French planemaking company Aerospatiale also face manslaughter charges, as does a former member of the French civil aviation authority.

Chartered by a German company, the Air France Concorde had taken off from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport just after a Continental DC-10 had taken to the air bound for Houston, US.

With the plane ablaze, the cockpit crew tried to land at nearby Le Bourget.

But the plane crashed into the grounds of a hotel.

It was not until November 2001 that Air France and BA were able to put their seven-strong Concorde fleet back into passenger service.

However, with passenger numbers suffering and maintenance costs rising, BA and Air France decided to cease Concorde operations in October 2003.