When was the last time anyone investigated an airplane accident all the way down to the mechanic and held him responsible. Kudos to the French justice system. We here in the U.S. need to get back to the good old days of holding people responsible for their actions.
TDD
Not sure. I know an airplane mechanic who's told me horror stories about mechanics in other countries, mainly the far east. A certified mechanic there may have a dozen illiterate flunkies working under him that don't know what they are doing.
Yawn.... How surprising that a French court decided it was Continental and a US mechanic solely responsible for what happened and not 3 French guys that were responsible for the Concorde design. I don't know the merits of the particular case, only that it's not unusual for these things to go this way. In this case, I don't know exactly how the piece of metal that came off that Continental plane wound up on the runway or the design issues that made the Concorde so vulnerable to a piece of scrap metal.
A good example of the always blame the other guy was the worst Airline crash in history that killed 500+ people at Teneriff, when 2 747's crashed almost head-on on takeoff in fog. In that case, they placed part of the blame on Pan Am which was on the runway, looking for their turnoff, when KLM took off without takeoff clearance. In the left seat at KLM was the most senior and chief pilot for all of KLM. The voice and flight recorders showed that upon reaching the end of the runway in fog at barely takeoff minimums, he immediately proceeded to take off without clearance. That resulted in the co-pilot saying they didn't have clearance. So the captain tells him to go ahead and ask. Which he did and he received instructions on the flight path upon departure, but NOT clearance to takeoff. Whereupon the captain again shoved the throttles forward and this time the co-pilot said nothing. All this time they knew Pan Am had been following them on the active runway that was shrouded in fog and no one had ever said that Pan Am was clear of the runway. At the point of impact Pan Am was just starting to turn off. Yet they blamed the Pan Am crew for not finding their turnoff faster in the fog.
Of course the french had to vindicate, and Find Blame, to their only symbol of 20th century success. A plane that made no money, didnt flying into the countries it was designed for at the design speed. A plane that made no monetary sense, should never been built and was run at a loss.
Who buys their cars, motorcycles? Tvs, computers, movies, stereos, drills and power tools, computer control systems, nobody because they have none. They make nothing except the booze they export and what probably caused this crash. How about the design of that plane, that allowed a blow out of a tire to crash it, You wont see a tire destroy a Boeing, How about the tire manufacturer that made a tire that shredded into small pieces, what about runway safey observers, were they to drunk.
Sadly it was just an accident, but leave it to the french to find someone else to blame so they can dream the concorde is something still to be proud of.
Smitty Two wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:
That seems to be what a lot of people in other lines of work, do, too.
I agree with a lot of what you said above. Still, I was sad to see the Concorde go and I think the French and British deserve a lot of credit for a true technological achivement. You're right, it never showed a profit and was an economic disaster. From that standpoint, it's an example of where having govt run businesses and make decisions get you.
But watching that bad boy take off, the afterburners glowing, was an awesome sight. I got to see it a few times at JFK leaving or coming in. Unfortunately, I never got to fly on it, though I do know people who did. I did get on board the one in NYC at the Intrepid museum. The obvious tradeoff for the passengers was that while the plane gets you there in half the time, the seats were very cramped, no lie flat bed seats, etc. In business class, for which a ticket costs less, you have twice or more the room and can actually sleep. Consequently a lot of the seats on Concorde were being given away for free to people who had Air France or British Airways freq flyer miles. miles
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