An Analysis of the Crash of Air France Flight 4590

1462 Words3 Pages

Travelling at a speed twice that of sound might seem to be something futuristic; however, this feat has already been achieved almost 40 years ago by the world’s only supersonic passenger aircraft-The Concorde. Concorde brought a revolution in the aviation industry by operating transatlantic flights in less than four hours. The slick and elegant aircraft with one of the most sophisticated engineering was one of the most coveted aircrafts of its time. However, this was all destined to end when Air France Flight 4590 was involved in a tragic disaster just outside the city of Paris on July 25, 2000. The crash killed 113 people, but more disastrous was its impact. The belief and confidence people had with Concorde gradually started to fade, and finally Concorde was grounded after two and a half years of the crash. Official reports state that the main cause of the crash was a piece of metal dropped by a Continental aircraft that flew moments before Concorde, but, over the last decade, the report has met a lot of criticism, and many alternative hypotheses have thus been proposed.
It was the afternoon of July 25, 2000. One hundred passengers, most of them German, boarded the Concorde Air France Flight 4590. This was a trip of a lifetime for many people, as Concorde was restricted to the wealthy class of people. The excitement in people was cut short by the unfortunate delay in flight, because of maintenance in one of its engines. The passengers boarded the plane a couple of hours after the scheduled time. Finally, it was cleared for taxi on runway 26-Right. The pilots lined the aircraft parallel to the runway. A tragic accident, however, was about to befall.
Concorde was ready to take-off and the crew released the throttles. Gilles Logel...

... middle of paper ...

...2013. .
Logelin, Gilles. "Concorde: the Last Witness." www.expatica.com. Expatica Communications BV, n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2013. .
"Press release, 16 January 2002 Issue of the final report into the Concorde accident on 25 July 2000." http://www.bea.aero/. BEA, 16 Jan. 2002. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. .
Rose, David. "Doomed." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 12 May 2001. Web. 3 Dec. 2013. .
Smith, Patrick. "The Untold Story of the Concorde Disaster." Ask The Pilot. Aerophilia Enterprises, 9 Dec. 2012. Web. 6 Nov. 2013. .

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