Eurofigher Too Dangerous?

[Mairfrog]

OK, Concorde crash summary:

During routine maintenance the Air France engineers forgot to replace a spacer in the port u/c. This part holds the wheel bogie in fore/aft alignment. Air France also overloaded the aft luggage hold without telling the aircrew, this put the cg beyond the aft limit. They took off overwewight and with a tailwind, an equivalent to 6-8 knots off IAS IIRC.

During the take off run the port bogie ran over a piece of DC10 which burst one tyre. A tyre fragment punctured a fuel tank and also severed an ABS cable. The cable sparked which was the ignition source for the fire. Wind tunnel tests proved it impossible for the fire to have been lit by the jet exhausts.

The burst tyre dragged the port bogie out of alignment (no spacer) which gave a drag force to the left. Concorde started to run off the runway, ingesting a light along the way, and heading toward a parked 747 carrying the president of France! The ingested light and the fire both affected port engine thrust, increasing the assymmetry and making the take off veer worse.

The pilot elected to get the aeroplane airbourne before the wheels ran over grass and so took off before V2 was reached. He was also underspeed becuase of the afore mentioned overload and tailwind. High alpha does Concorde no favours as the drag is colossal so there was little chance of any acceleration. The aft cg didn't help either.

The fire was survivable. They could have reached Le Bourget and evacuated successfully though the aeroplane would have been lost. What caused the crash was attempting flight with insufficient speed. As with every air crash it was an unfortunate coincidence of factors that made a crash inevitable.

Basically, if Air France had done the maintenance properly, not overloaded the aeroplane and took off into wind then things might have been different. The best place to read up about it is www.concordesst.com

The fixing of the investigation is a different matter. I've seen photographs of skid marks on the runway leading directly to the ingested light. The French claim that there was no take off veer, as this helps them pretend they didn't omit the u/c spacer. The whole affair is an absolute outrage and just shows you what human life is worth compared to Gallic pride and corporate image.

[Ollie]

You forgot the engineer who shut down an engine when the exhaust temperature showed high temps and when the rest was doing fine.

Off course he took off, he was past decision speed.  We do that in the Piper Aztec too.

Still, a sad story.

 

[Mairfrog]

Yep, shutting down the engine didn't help, but even with all four going and no fire it was still gonna crash. They took off too early because they were veering off the runway.

Now, imagine what might have happened had it hit the president's 747!      

[Ollie]

They would have made it with all four burning.  Aircrafts can always take a fair overload, eh!

B)  

[Tophe]

The whole affair is an absolute outrage and just shows you what human life is worth compared to Gallic pride

Please, do not say insulting things like that. Maybe 90% of French people are very proud and bad while this figure is 10% in England, but do not condemn a whole country or race (like Napoleon and Hitler did, like sport journalists do). Condemn the guilty ones and their actions, do not condemn the innocents. Please...

[Aircav]

There is a report in todays Telegraph newspaper that Austria, Singapore and Greece are to get EFA's before the RAF and that South Korea and Norway are also looking at the plane.
Maybe if we can sell them all off we can then go and buy a decent plane for the RAF and the FAA

[Geoff_B]

Article

Yeah, looks like the MOD is trying to sell the Tranche 1 aircraft on so it can get the full quota Tranche 2 and 3 batches with their full multirole capability. The ones capable of repalcing the Jags are the Tranche 2 aircraft anyway, so we may only get an initial squadron of Tranche 1 to get into service. The Tornado F-3 can soldier on for a bit providing UK air defence. It aslo allows more time for the problems to be ironed out & tested.

Cheers

Thor B)  

[Mairfrog]

No offence meant, Tophe old chap. The people of France are no more responsible for their air accident investigation branch than we are for Tony Blair. Ok, a lot of Britons must have voted for him but I've never met anyone who'll admit it!  

What I meant is that Air France are the nationalised airline and SUD/Aerospatiale/EADS are the nationalised aerospace industry. The BEA is the nationalised air accident investigation unit. It comes as no surprise that the BEA never seem to blame their colleagues in the other two establishments.

Airlines are also very competitive and AF never made any money out of Concorde. BA, conversely, made a fortune (after our government wrote off the development costs and sold Concorde for £1 each!) and it can't have pleased AF to see their arch rival and sole supersonic competitor operating at a profit. Hence, when the chance came they lost no time in removing spares support, thus grounding the BA Concorde fleet. I think AF were very keen to get rid of Concorde which is why the BEA ignored that missing undercarrige spacer. Stopping BA flying her was commercial tactics and pure spite.

The thing is the French government looks after the interests of the French. British governments view our interests as petty annoyances. We Brits do grudgingly envy France in that way. Similarly, Germany is like Britain done properly (or how Britain used to be). I think the best indicator of how European nations view each other is the Eurovision Song Contest! ^_^

[Tophe]

Thanks Mairfrog for the explanations. No offense there, I agree. Thanks.

 Tophe (not eating frogs, despite his nationality...)

[nev]

I think the best indicator of how European nations view each other is the Eurovision Song Contest! ^_^

Grand Brittania nil points!

[Mairfrog]

The state of the DC10 that took off previously is more worrying.

Funny how there's always a DC10 involved.    

Good old Eurovision. Wasn't Charles de Gaulle one of the original judges?  Did Edward Heath write Britain's first entry? Ah, the whole gamut of international suspicion and rivallry is paraded every year, to the sound of some of the worst music ever written.

Britain and France hated each other for hundreds of years before we were so rudely interrupted by the Germans.  ^_^

Perhaps that's why Canadians are so weird?      :ar:

[Ollie]

Wooksta, runway was fine, there was a titanium DC-10 part on it though.

 

[F-32]

Having seen the film of her burning (far to many times)  I don't think there is anyway she would have made it to the airfield and landed safely and off loaded passengers without fatalities.  Even if they had reached the field they would have had to have landed on the first attempt and stoped with more than half the aircraft on fire.

As far as Eurofighter is concerned I think its the ill informed media playing up again.  Aircraft Illustrated magazine had a two part interview with the Typhoon pilots who all love the aircraft.  All the pilots have soloed in the aircraft and the aircraft is also being flown at night now.  The first RAF single seater flew successfully from Warton last week.  Its going to be a kick donkey aircraft.

Thor hit the nail on the head, the more time for testing the more bugs can be ironed out.  Just think of the great aircraft that have had a dodgy development period, the Hunter (early versions sucked) the Lightning and Starfighter (couldn't stay in the air once they got there) the Tomcat, etc etc....................

All the best things are worth waiting for.

[Mairfrog]

You're right there. There's nothing our press likes better than dissing new military aeroplanes. The truth doesn't concern them, as long as they can get a headline like "Eurofighter causes cancer" then they're happy.   Imagine what they'd make of the Hawker Typhoon's development problems!

The irony with Concorde is that fire was the least of their worries. By the time they reached Le Bourget the port fuel tanks would've been empty, according to the RAE boffins. As long as they were flying the slipstream was limiting structural damage. They could almost afford to fly around till the fire burned out, though it would be imprudent to try.  

What did for them was taking off with insufficient speed for their weight. The fire etc didn't help, but even without it they would've been doomed at that speed.  

[Aircav]

Always wanted to know how the man with the red flag keeped you with Concorde