- Title: FRANCE: ACCIDENT EXPERTS INVESTIGATING CONCORDE CRASH HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE
- Date: 1st August 2000
- Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (JULY 31, 2000) (REUTERS) 1. MV PAN INSIDE PRESS CONFERENCE ROOM AT MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT 0.06 2. (SOUNDBITE) (French) ALAIN MONNIER, HEAD OF THE ENQUIRY COMMISSION SAYING: "One must realise that we are at the beginning of an enquiry which is difficult, extremely different from what I have known in the Mount Saint Odile crash, but difficult because we have a certain number of elements which are certitudes or quasi certitudes and that BEA ( Accident Investigation Bureau ) has already made known, like a burst tyre, an intense fire, a problem of wheels and engine problems but that we cant yet build the least picture to relate these facts together". 0.50 3. SLV PRESS CONFERENCE 0.55 4. (SOUNDBITE) (French) PAUL LOUIS ARSLANIAN, HEAD OF THE BEA SAYING: "There is no new established, fact so you know the same facts as we do. What are we working on? We are working on everything. First to understand each of these factors that we identified: burst tyre, why, how? engine, why, how? A fire, why, how? Is it a leak but why, how? We are trying to understand how each of these elements link. Its not simple but we are progressing. 1.27 5. SLV PRESS CONFERENCE 1.32 6. (SOUNDBITE) (French) P.L. ARSLANIAN SAYING "It is during take off, after the instant of speed decision taking, a certain number of things happened which we don't know in which order and how but we see that we had burst tyres, one and maybe two and that there was a fuel leak which catches fire. We have, when the plane took off, engine failure, on one engine and then later on the second engine. The wheels according to the crew didn't raise up. The plane lifted up with difficulty at slow speed and that's it. 2.23 7. SCU MEDIA 2.28 8. (SOUNDBITE)(English) PAUL LOUIS ARSLANIAN SAYING: "First let me say that we are working with colleagues from Britain, also with colleague investigators from Germany and we are also joined with people from American NTSV and American FA. As it was said in French we are working to understand what happened. We have some factors scattered, for the time being it is not possible to say what links those facts, what caused those facts and the possible consequence of any of those facts. We found on the runway evidence of tyre burst, excuse my English, we found also evidence of fuel leakage and this leak eventually took fire, this is the cause of the fire. 3.41 9. SLV PRESS CONFERENCE (2 SHOTS) 3.46 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 16th August 2000 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: PARIS, FRANCE
- Country: France
- Reuters ID: LVA4QA5KTEIJE9Q5YI8VEECKA8EG
- Story Text: After meeting today in Paris the experts examining the
first research on the cause of the Concorde accident have not
yet been able to draw conclusions.
Investigators said on Monday (July 31) that it was
still too early to establish the chain of events that led to
last week's Air France Concorde disaster.
"You have to understand that we are at the start of a
difficult inquiry," Alain Monnier, head of the inquiry
commission appointed by Transport Minister Jean-Claude
Gayssot, said after a day-long meeting.
He told reporters there were "certainties or near
certainties" that a tyre had burst, that there was an intense
fire and that there were problems with the landing gear and
engines.
"For the moment, we don't know how to construct the
slightest scenario for linking these phenomena to each other,"
he said.
Monnier's commission is assisting the official French
Accident Investigation Bureau (BEA) in the technical probe
into last Tuesday's crash, which killed all 109 people on
board the supersonic airliner and four on the ground.
The Concorde, streaming a trail of fire, plunged into a
hotel near the town of Gonesse less than two minutes after
taking off from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport bound for
New York.
The government grounded Air France's five remaining
Concordes immediately after the crash just north of Paris.
24 hours after the accident the world's only other
Concorde operator, British Airways, resumed its flights
putting pressure on the French state-controlled airline to
follow suit.
A separate committee including British and French
aviation officials, industry experts and aeronautical
manufacturers held talks through the day in Paris on Monday
(July 31) to try to draw up a list of ways of preventing a
similar accident from happening.
But Gayssot's office said more time would be needed to
reach a decision on additional safety measures.
"The experts say they haven't been able to establish a
scenario, so the measures can't be taken that fast," a
spokeswoman for Gayssot said.
The BEA said on Sunday that flames shooting from the left
wing of the ageing Concorde before it crashed were probably
due to a fuel leak rather than a problem with an engine.
That has led to speculation that fuel tanks might have
been torn open by debris from a burst wheel, with the
subsequent fire knocking out one engine and crippling another.
BEA chief Paul-Louis Arslanian said on Monday that no
engine debris had been found on the runway and that
investigations had identified no cause for concern before the
plane took off.
That appeared to rule out, at this stage of the inquiry,
that a repair to one of the plane's four engines just before
the flight may have played a part in the catastrophe.
In France, police confirmed on Monday that the death toll
from the Gonesse crash was 113, as originally thought, and not
114, as reported by the Ministry of Transport on Friday. An
official said there had been a mix up registering the corpses.
Most of the dead were German tourists heading to New York
to join a Caribbean cruise.
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