Word: runways
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...might think passengers taking off or landing at Charles de Gaulle Airport would feel unsettled seeing a supersonic Concorde jet mounted on a steel frame alongside the runway, with its needle-like beak pointed upward in take-off position. After all, just such a Concorde plane crashed in a ball of fire nearly 10 years ago, less than two miles (3 km) from where the mounted jet now stands. It was an event that doomed the world's fastest-ever passenger jet - an aircraft designed by French and British engineers - to a future as a museum relic...
Continental and two former employees are on trial for involuntary manslaughter, for having allowed a piece of titanium known as a wear strip to drop off one of the airline's DC-10 planes as it taxied down the runway two aircraft ahead of the fateful Air France Concorde, on a hot July afternoon in 2000. Five minutes later, the Concorde, according to the charges, rolled over the debris, which pierced one of its tires, sending pieces of rubber flying. One piece of rubber apparently penetrated the Concorde's full fuel tank, which exploded in fire. As traffic controllers screamed...
Investigators have also raised other concerns: the doomed Concorde appeared to be overloaded with luggage from its planeload of German tourists, who were flying to meet their cruise liner in New York City; one of two routine daily runway sweeps at Charles de Gaulle Airport had reportedly been cancelled that day; and Concorde workers had allegedly neglected to replace a crucial tire spacer on the aircraft in maintenance work four days before the crash. Continental is the only company charged, along with the firm's former welder John Taylor, who fixed the titanium strip to the Continental...
...France unfairly fingered a U.S. company in order to protect the Concorde's legacy? In late January, a documentary on the French network Canal+ argued that point. In the film, several eyewitnesses say they remembered seeing flames coming from the plane on the runway before it hit Continental's stray metal piece, suggesting that something was wrong with the Concorde itself. That is a key point in the defense strategy pursued by Continental's lawyers, who say they have 28 witnesses who can provide similar testimony. The lawyers told the Parisien newspaper last Friday that they intend...
...France lawyer Fernand Garnault told TIME last week he is convinced Continental is solely to blame for the crash. "It is clear that a piece from a Continental plane fell on the runway. It is clear that the origin of the accident was this," says Garnault, one of France's leading aviation lawyers. "This is my personal conviction and of course that of Air France...