Tag: air france

  • Appeal proceedings in the matter of the July 2000 supersonic Concorde crash in Paris

       The Concorde crash judicial saga goes on. In December 2010, more than ten years after the crash of the Air France supersonic Concorde at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, a lower court in France returned a verdict of guilty of manslaughter against Continental Airlines (renamed since “Continental-United Airlines”) and one of its aircraft maintenance employees. Accused…

  • AF447: third status report by French accident investigation body

       The French aviation accident investigation authority (the “BEA”) issued today its third investigation status report in the deadly crash of the Rio to Paris Air France flight AF447.  The fatal accident occurred on June 1, 2009, as the long-haul Airbus 330-203 was crossing the Atlantic on its way to Paris. There were no survivors.   …

  • AF447 & “Space Odyssey 2001”

    AF447 & “Space Odyssey 2001”

       “We no longer have any valid indications” was the ominous statement from the non-flying pilot soon after the captain of AF447 finally emerged from his resting quarters into the cockpit of the Air France flight AF 447 operated with an Airbus 330, on a scheduled run from Rio to Paris.  (underline added) A routine flight it was supposed to be, but…

  • Rio to Paris AF447 tragedy: black boxes retrieved and readable. What next?

       The Cockpit Voice Recorder and the Flight Data recorder, a.k.a: “the black boxes” (so called despite their orange colour) have been recovered nearly two years after Air France flight AF447 from Rio to Paris went down for unknown reasons in the Equatorial Zone, an area of the globe known for extreme weather.  However, the…

  • Supersonic Concorde legal saga not over yet.

    Criminal proceedings into the deadly Concorde crash opened in early 2010, more than 10 years after the event. The resulting trial judgment issued on December 6, 2010, which laid criminal liability on one Continental Airlines mechanic and consequently on his employer, is doubtful. In fact, most of the defendants, as well as the prosecution, are appealing the ruling. What possibly went wrong – not in the crash itself –…

  • Recent Developments in the Concorde Crash Criminal Proceedings

    The following post has been updated a number of times by other posts in this blog. To access the latest post on the Concorde legal saga, simply click on the link in the PS note at the end of this post. SUMMARY: More than three weeks after criminal proceedings were initiated by French justice officials in Pontoise (France), little is known yet…

  • Crash and Retirement of the Concorde Supersonic Airliner: What Next?

       What more can be said by way of generality about Concorde that has not yet been said? Not much, I suppose, especially since criminal hearings are currently underway in Pontoise not far from the crash site. More detailed facts, incriminating or not, about the actual cause and chain of events leading up to the fateful crash are yet…