Continental found guilty in French court

Seems a little Pinto-esque to me, a blown tire should not lead to exploding plane.
[video=youtube;dT0J0rcJTLo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT0J0rcJTLo[/video]
 
If I understand the French logic: If a bear had escaped from Euro Disney, wandered on to the runway, clawed the concorde's tires as it sped by, which led to the ensuing disaster; then the crash would be Mickey Mouse's fault.

Did I read it right?
 
This excerpt from an MSNBC report sums it all up.

"The court in the Paris suburb of Pontoise ruled that the Houston-based airline must pay 1.08 million euros ($1.43 million) to Air France for moral damages and damages to its reputation."

This is about an airline owned by the french government, and finding a scapegoat. Funny I think this may be the only time in history that the french didnt back down (surrender) and there was money involved..was there ever any doubt about the verdict in a "Kangaroo Court", located in france.
 
Nigel Croker said:
This excerpt from an MSNBC report sums it all up.

"The court in the Paris suburb of Pontoise ruled that the Houston-based airline must pay 1.08 million euros ($1.43 million) to Air France for moral damages and damages to its reputation."

This is about an airline owned by the french government, and finding a scapegoat. Funny I think this may be the only time in history that the french didnt back down (surrender) and there was money involved..was there ever any doubt about the verdict in a "Kangaroo Court", located in france.
Click to expand...

I wonder what the appeal process is like? Snobby accent sound off at noon?
 
My take is that it was all an unfortunate accident. FOD on runways happens. Is Continental to blame for a part coming off a plane? Well, had the Concorde accident not happened, and airport ops had done a FOD sweep, found the piece, and removed it (like all other items of FOD on a runway), no one would've said a thing. Should airport ops then be liable for not insuring a clear runway or doing enough FOD sweeps or runway inspections? Same answer of no, since airport ops can't be everywhere at once and insure every runway is clear of every bolt or piece of metal, etc, 100% of the time. Should the designers of Concorde be held liable for a design that was so easily compromised by a piece of metal on the runway? Same answer of no, because there's no way to plan for every possible type of event that could occur to an airplane and design a fix for it.

Just a bad series of events that came together at the wrong place and wrong time. A classic accident scenario. I can't find any negligence either by commission or omission here, from any side involved.
 
MikeD said:
Just a bad series of events that came together at the wrong place and wrong time. A classic accident scenario. I can't find any negligence either by commission or omission here, from any side involved.
Click to expand...
Sadly in the interest of "maintaining indignanty", the french have set a dangerous precedent in international law. I would say I am shocked, but after all it is the french.
 
Mike is correct - in fact I believe that a FOD check was a requirement prior to taking off with the Concorde (not sure, but I think I read that somewhere). If they didn't do the FOD check, or if they missed the FOD, it's on the people doing the FOD check. The tires on Concorde have always been difficult. I'm not sure that any tires outside of something like the B-1 or XB-70 have ever had to be the size they are and have the high speeds on the runway - and Concorde's may have been higher than that (thinking the B-1 might be slower on the runway because of the variable wing - just a guess). Either way, it's a BS decision and yet another reason to hate the French.
 
In the 21 years of service prior to the crash Concorde had 57 blown tires, 7 of those punctured fuel tanks.

It was basically an accident that it didn't happen sooner.
 
There's a lot more that took place that the court did not look into. The plane had a problem with the bearing on the tire that blew, the flight was late, overweight, yes they have to do a FOD check of the runway prior to Concorde's take off, however, they did not in that instance, It was not the first time the fuel tank was punctured in the history of Concorde. I believe Discovery did an excellent show on the crash and all the many factors in the chain that contributed to the crash which are quite a lot and not just the piece from the DC 10. By the way I spoke to a BA Concorde pilot while in college and he said that BA put 26 different crews through that same scenario and 26 brought the plane back. and I agree that France did everything possible to shift blame from the airport authorities/Air France.
Sometimes things just happens, but singling out Continental and the mechanic is just plain wrong.
 
ozone said:
If I understand the French logic: If a bear had escaped from Euro Disney, wandered on to the runway, clawed the concorde's tires as it sped by, which led to the ensuing disaster; then the crash would be Mickey Mouse's fault.

Did I read it right?
Click to expand...

ya, wtf are the french thinking?
 
All Continental(United) has to do to win the appeal is roll up to court in some movie prop German tanks.








thank you, I am here all week, try the veal.
 
boondr said:
All Continental(United) has to do to win the appeal is roll up to court in some movie prop German tanks.
thank you, I am here all week, try the veal.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of the old question: Why are all the streets in Paris lined with trees?









The Germans prefer to march in the shade!


Please remember to tip your waitresses, they're working hard for you!

Back to the original topic,
I can see that there were several things that could have/should have been done to prevent this.
Why focus all the blame on an American corporation?
 
From the stuff posted here, they found a scapegoat from another country that was eaiser on the countries pride to find guilty. If a FOD check is supposed to be done prior to the things takeoff roll, Continental should just thumb the French the finger and say "come and get your money suckers!"

Yeah, so a DC-10 droped a piece of FOD on the runway. It should have been cought from proper procedures. At the minimum, there should be some joint responsibility here. And the guy that worked on the DC-10 should not be held liable. It doesn't appear to be negligence from the information I can find.

Split the blame between Aérospatiale, Continental, the local airport and the airline(see below). They all droped the ball it seems.

Aérospatiale for having a known problem with fuel tanks, Continental for dropping the piece on the runway, the runway inspection crew for not doing their job, and the airline for going without their SOP's(runway inspection) being complied with.
 
mshunter said:
If a FOD check is supposed to be done prior to the things takeoff roll, Continental should just thumb the French the finger and say "come and get your money suckers!"
Click to expand...

Would Eurocontrol be able/authorized to deny United flights entrance into French airspace if they did refuse to pay?
 
You guys realize that a million dollars in damages is less than Continental probably paid to their lawyers to fight this, right?

CAL will pay it, write down the damages in their taxes somehow and go on their marry way and everybody is happy.
 
Bernoulli Fan said:
Would Eurocontrol be able/authorized to deny United flights entrance into French airspace if they did refuse to pay?
Click to expand...

Why wouldn't they be? It's their airspace, they can do what they want with it.

They could outlaw CAL outright for no reason if they wanted to.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top