If you guys don't mind, I deal with aviation accidents....here is some of the latest:
AIR CRASH RESCUE NEWS: NEWS FLASH!!
July 25, 2000 - 109 Killed in Jet Crash Near Paris
PARIS, France - An Air France Concorde en route to New York City crashed
outside Paris shortly after takeoff Tuesday, slamming into a hotel and a
restaurant. All 109 people aboard were reported killed in what was the first
crash of one of the supersonic jets.
Sid Hare, a Federal Express pilot who was at a hotel several miles from the
airport, said the plane went down in a ball of fire. He said he could ``see
smoke trailing'' from one of the plane's two left engines before the crash.
``It started rolling over and backsliding down to the ground. At that point
it was probably two miles from me,'' he told CNN. ``It was a sickening sight,
just a huge fireball.''
After the crash, one eyewitness told reporters the annex of the hotel was
``totally in flames.'' France Info radio, quoting the Interior Ministry, said
there were no survivors among the 109 passengers onboard. The radio station
said many of the passengers were believed to be German tourists.
France's LCI television quoted eyewitnesses as saying the aircraft was not
able to gain sufficient altitude before it crashed, and that police were
keeping onlookers away from the site.
France Info radio quoted another eyewitness as saying the plane's engine was
on fire and that a huge cloud of black smoke went up in the air. The crash
took place shortly before 5 p.m. local time, after takeoff from Paris'
Charles de Gaulle airport.
On Monday, British Airways said it had found cracks in the wings of some of
its supersonic Concorde aircraft, but said there was no danger to passengers.
No other details were immediately available.
The Concorde, which crosses the Atlantic at 1,350 mph, has been considered
among the world's safest planes. Its only major scare came in 1979, when a
bad landing blew out a plane's tires. The incident led to a design
modification.
On Jan. 30 of this year, a Concorde aircraft made an emergency landing at
London's Heathrow Airport - the second such landing within a 24-hour period
by one of the supersonic jets. A cockpit alarm had sounded, warning of a fire
in the rear cargo hold, but engineers found no problem.
The previous day, one of four engines had shut down on a Concorde as it
approached Heathrow.
The plane is popular with celebrities, world-class athletes and the rich. It
flies above turbulence at nearly 60,000 feet, crossing the Atlantic in about
3 1/2 hours, less than half that of regular jetliners.
The first Concorde plane flew in 1969. Now, 13 of the needle-nosed supersonic
jets are operated by Air France and British Airways. A roundtrip Paris-New
York ticket costs $9,000, roughly 25 percent more than regular first class. A
London-New York roundtrip runs $9,850.
Air France officials have said in the past that their current fleet is fit to
fly safely until 2007.
More AIR CRASH RESCUE NEWS:------
July 25, 2000 - ``Like A Mini-Atomic Bomb'' Says Crash Witness
LONDON, England - The Air France Concorde which crashed shortly after
take-off on Tuesday went down with an explosion ``like a mini-atomic bomb,''
according to a witness.
Sid Hare, himself a pilot, told CNN news the engines of the supersonic jet
were racing two or three times louder than normal and that smoke was trailing
from the back. ``It was a huge fireball, like a mini-atomic bomb -- really a
sickening sight,'' said Hare. ``One of the plane's four engines obviously had
had a catastrophic failure. It was trailing in flames 200 or 300 feet behind
the plane.''
Hare said the plane had probably suffered an engine failure within a few
seconds after take-off.
``My thought is that one engine failed on take-off and damaged the one next
to it...that would account for the huge flames,'' he said.
One British man staying at a hotel near the scene of the disaster said staff
had told him the plane passed about 20 metres (yards) overhead with its
engines on fire.
``It came across our hotel and it felt like it was going to go through it --
it was that low,'' Grant Mitchell told Britain's Sky Television. ``In the
distance you can see smoke billowing into the air.''
July 25, 2000 - Bystanders Rush To Save Victims
GONESSE, France (AP) - Jean-Claude Ramathon raced to a small hotel in a wheat
field to help frantic guests trapped in the flaming rubble of an Air France
Concorde. Telling his story hours later, his hands still trembled.
``We ran up and got up to two meters (two yards) away from the hotel but had
to stop because of the smoke,'' Ramathon said Tuesday. He is 39, a workman in
blue coveralls, but he said little about himself before hurrying away.
``We saw people in the hotel waving and screaming to us,'' he said. ``A man
with me ran to the window and tried to smash the pane, but it wouldn't
break.''
Firefighters, arriving moments later, smashed the glass. But an explosion
inside forced them back. In the end, officials said, four people died inside
along with 100 passengers and nine crew members on the Concorde.
It began on a quiet summer doldrums afternoon.
The sleek, drooped-nosed supersonic airliner flashed off the runway toward
New York as usual, still thrilling after all these years. But people on the
ground saw that something was wrong.
Samir Hossein and his buddies looked up from their tennis game to see flames
trailing from the plane. They watched it lose altitude, bank desperately away
from the town center, and plunge into the small hotel.
``It chopped off the tops of those trees and headed to the ground,'' Hossein
said. ``The pilot tried to bank but the plane rolled over and smacked into
the hotel, nose first and then turned over.''
Apparently, the pilot wanted to avoid the populated center of Gonesse, a
down-at-the-heels suburban settlement behind Charles de Gaulle Airport, nine
miles from the edge of Paris.
Hossein said flames shot about 150 feet into the air. He heard a thundering
boom before impact, which may have been an engine exploding. The plane
carried 100 tons of fuel.
Antonio Ferreira looked up from his gardening when he noticed something
strange about the Concorde he knew so well. The engines suddenly fell silent.
``We hear all the planes that pass overhead,'' said the 43-year-old Gonesse
resident. ``Then there was nothing. I looked up. And then, it was like an
atomic bomb, a mushroom cloud in the sky.''
Between the impact and fire, most of the hotel annex was obliterated, but
journalists kept far from the site could not verify conflicting accounts.
Police said almost nothing.
From a distance, however, it was clear enough. All that remained of the proud
symbol of French glory was a white-painted section, the size of a small car,
leaning against the undamaged front of the hotel.
Emergency vehicles came and went late into the night. Helicopters circled
above, and police brought in dogs trained to sniff out explosives and human
scent.
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin visited the scene, his eyes red from crying. Far
back behind police lines, people in a small crowd quietly told each other
what little they knew.
``I was driving home down D902, and I saw flames coming from the left wing,''
said Willy Corenthin, 29, an electrician who works at the airport. ``The
turbine exploded with a loud boom. The plane tried a sharp turn but
nose-dived.''
Corenthin, speaking calmly and looking relaxed in white Versace T-shirt, was
perhaps 900 yards from the point of impact.
``Well, I'm normally calm by nature,'' he said, when asked if he wasn't
frightened, ``but I can tell you I was petrified.''
A 40-year-old man who called himself only Elie was even closer to the scene,
in a nondescript building just off Highway 17.
``Maybe 50 of us were inside that building for a training course in
transport,'' he said, ``and we all heard the plane making a strange loud
noise. By the time we ran to the windows, it was on the way down.''
Calculating the angle, Elie saw that if the Concorde had not suddenly dived
it might have skidded on toward his training center. ``Was I scared?'' he
said, repeating a question put to him. ``What do you think?''
More AIR CRASH RESCUE NEWS:------
July 25, 2000 - Pilot Error Ruled Cause Of 1997 FedEx Crash
WASHINGTON (USA) - Federal investigators concluded Tuesday that pilot error
was the most likely cause of a fiery crash of a Federal Express Corp. cargo
plane in Newark, New Jersey, three years ago.
The National Transportation Safety Board said the captain of Federal Express
Flight 14 should have aborted his landing attempt on July 31, 1997, after
making an awkward initial approach.
Instead the plane hit the runway hard, breaking its right landing gear and
wing, catching fire and flipping upside down.
The two flight crew and three other people on board crawled to safety through
a cockpit window of the three-engined MD-11 plane.
The safety board said the captain came in steeply to touch down early,
thinking the runway was shorter than it actually was.
``The probable cause of this accident was the captain's over control of the
airplane during the landing and his failure to execute a go-around,'' the
board's report said.
The safety board finished its investigation a year ago, but withheld its
release to consider if a China Airlines MD-11 crash in Hong Kong last August
was relevant to the probe.
Boeing Co. inherited MD-11 production in its 1997 takeover of McDonnell
Douglas. Manufacture of the wide-bodied plane is being phased out with the
200th and final aircraft undergoing final assembly at the Long Beach,
California plant.
More AIR CRASH RESCUE NEWS:------
July 25, 2000 - Experts: Concorde Engines in Probe
PARIS, France - Investigators looking into the Air France Concorde crash
outside Paris will focus on apparent engine problems at the supersonic jet's
most vulnerable stage of flight, aviation experts said Tuesday.
Witnesses reported at least one engine was on fire and spewing smoke moments
before the luxury jetliner slammed into a hotel and restaurant in Gonesse,
killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground.
``It appears to be a problem with insufficient thrust, which usually means a
problem with the engines,'' said Michael Barr, director of the aviation
safety program at the University of Southern California. ``It appears the
airplane stalled.''
A stall occurs when there is insufficient airspeed over the wings to create
the lift that sustains an aircraft's flight.
The Concorde crashed moments after taking off, when all airplanes are most
vulnerable. Once past the runway, an aborted takeoff is impossible, the plane
is loaded down with fuel and the aircraft is moving slowly compared to
cruising speed.
Possible explanations for Tuesday's apparent engine fire range from birds
flying into the air intake to a mechanical failure. Most jet engines can
withstand bird collisions without catastrophic explosion, experts said.
``It's possible that there was some kind of flashback condition or some type
of failure within the combustion section, or possibly within the turbine
section,'' said Ann Karagozian, an engineering professor at the University of
California, Los Angeles.
Though the Concorde flies higher and faster than passenger jetliners, its
four Rolls-Royce Olympus engines do not differ greatly from slower and
lower-flying models on other commercial jets.
At supersonic speeds, air entering the Concorde's engines is slowed down
before it is combined with fuel and combusted for thrust - like other
commercial jetliners.
The Concorde is the only commercial jetliner to use afterburners, which
provide extra thrust. Afterburners, which are typically found on fighters,
mixes warm air and fuel in the tailpipe of the engine.
Concordes take off at subsonic speeds and do not break the speed of sound
until they are over the ocean. Because of their unique design, they do take
off faster and steeper than other jets.
``If you build a wing that works well low-speed, it doesn't work well at
high-speed and vice versa,'' said William Waldock, associate director for the
Center for Aerospace Safety Education at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University. ``Some airplane designs like the F-14, it's a very fast airplane,
but to be able to fly it at low speeds, you have to move the wing.''
Former Concorde pilot David Brister, who flew the aircraft from 1976 to 1982,
said other aspects of its design may have made it vulnerable to engine
problems.
``Concorde is unusual in that the two engines on each wing are very close
together. Any four-engined aircraft can cope perfectly well with losing one
engine but if two go on the same side you can be in for a difficult time,''
he said. ``But with Concorde the engines are so close that it is possible one
could affect the other and then you have a much more serious situation.''
Because the crash occurred on land, it will be easier to piece together the
wreckage compared with the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 and last year's Egypt
Air disaster, both over the Atlantic, or this year's Alaska Airlines crash
off Southern California.
``There is a lot they should be able to see in terms of what was burned up
within the engine,'' Karagozian said.
More AIR CRASH RESCUE NEWS:------
July 25, 2000 - Concorde Pilot Avoided Greater Carnage-Witnesses
GONESSE, France - Residents of this small French town hailed the pilot of a
doomed Air France Concorde as a hero on Tuesday for a desperate final attempt
to steer his plane away from their homes as it slammed into the ground.
The unidentified pilot, who was among the 109 people on board who perished in
the supersonic airliner's plunge to disaster, banked to avoid residential
areas as the plane dropped like a stone, residents of Gonesse said.
``I'm sure that the pilot was trying to avoid more populated areas -- I think
it was trying to get back to the airport or land in a field,'' said
51-year-old Christine Turpin, who watched the flaming fuselage screech 50
metres overhead.
``I thought it was going to land on my petrol station -- all I could think
about was my daughter and grand-daughter who were in the petrol station, I
want to thank the pilot,'' she said.
The airliner, trailing a tail of fire as long as its fuselage, ploughed into
a hotel in Gonesse, just six km (four miles) from Charles de Gaulle airport
minutes after taking off on a chartered flight to New York.
Narrowly avoiding a road, the Concorde left another hotel standing just
metres (yards) from the impact point. Four people were killed and another
five injured on the ground.
Emergency services rushed to the scene, where the charred skeleton of the
plane cast a thick pall of whitish smoke that filled the air with the smell
of burning rubber and kerosene.
But there was nothing that firemen and police could do for the passengers or
crew -- except to carry their bodies away in black plastic bags to a stream
of hearses taking away the dead.
Christian Dupont was working in a transport company about 400 metres from the
destroyed hotel when he said he saw the trying to turn, while flames licked
over the fuselage.
``The pilot realised he was in difficulty and tried to turn around -- there
were enormous flames coming out of the engine,'' he said. ``The Concorde was
turning, but it flipped over like a pancake and landed on its back.''
Witnesses who rushed to the scene said the plane exploded on impact, setting
trees ablaze and scorching the earth black.
``What frightened me most was the heat of the explosion -- I could feel it in
the lorry,'' said Willy Corenthin, who was driving his van half a mile from
the crash site.
As night fell and floodlits lit up the mangled wreckage, planes were still
coming into land at nearby Charles de Gaulle airport thousands of feet above
Concorde's smouldering hulk.
