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The decisions of French and British aviation authorities to ground the Concorde, quite possibly forever, after a 25 July crash in Paris, are best understood against a background of chronic but not highly publicized problems with the supersonic transport's tires. IEEE Spectrum Contributing Editor Marlowe Hood, reporting from Paris, describes previous incidents of tire failure at Washington, D.C.'s, Dulles Airport and London's Heathrow Airport, the most serious of which looked "almost like a dress rehearsal for a catastrophe." In that incident, which occurred on 25 October 1993, British investigators found that a tire exploded, causing a water deflector on the undercarriage to detach and fly through the underside of the wing, puncturing a fuel line. Fortunately, the puncture was far enough away from the hot engines so that vapors from the leak did not explode.
Evidently a similar puncture during the takeoff on 25 July happened to be too close to an engine, leading to a raging fire and the engine failures that caused the plane to crash. The tragedy raises questions on whether the possibility of a tire explosion causing a catastrophic accident was properly taken into account in the engineering of the plane and on decisions not to use a redesigned water deflector. While the accident investigation is far from complete, civil penalties are sure to be severe, and criminal penalties are not excluded.
Contact: Marlowe Hood, + 33 1 4041 7351, [email protected].
For a faxed copy of the complete article ["The day the Concorde fell to earth" by Marlowe Hood, IEEE Spectrum, September 2000, pp. 27-28], or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, [email protected].
URL: www.spectrum.ieee.org
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