The REAL story About the Crash that Killed Concorde! | Air France flight 4590

It took 121 seconds, a nearly impeccable safety record of more than 30 years, a race in a matter of minutes when the aerospace ale bac concord

crash

ed into a hotel west of charles de gaulle airport in paris, but what exactly happened and during the time prior to the

flight

using the final report. Now I will tell you the

story

of the beginning of the end of Concord. Pay attention. Many thanks to Curiousstream for sponsoring this video. Air France

flight

4590

was actually a shorter flight that was scheduled to fly from Charles Gaulle Airport in Paris France to JFK International in New York United States once the passengers who were mainly German but also from New York landed in New York.

Other nationalities had to board a cruise that would take them to Ecuador in South America, making this probably a once-in-a-lifetime trip. There were 100 passengers scheduled for the flight, six cabin crew and three pilots. The plane he was flying was the legendary aerospace bac

concorde

, one of the most beautiful planes ever built and a feat of engineering. The Concord flew for the first time. on March 2, 1969 and during his more than 30 years in office he had never suffered a fatal accident. There are a couple of things you need to understand technically about the

concorde

for this

story

to make sense if we start with the wing design We have all seen these beautiful images of the Concord flying with its fantastic delta wing.

Now the reason engineers use the delta wing for the Concord is because a delta wing will work well in both the subsonic transonic and supersonic speed ranges. The problem with the delta window is that in order for it to provide enough lift for takeoff and landing you need to have a very high speed and also a fairly high angle of attack. Just to give you an example, a Boeing 737 would generally take off at the speed of around 140-150 knots, the concorde on the other hand needed around 200 knots and this is

real

ly important because those kinds of speeds would put a huge strain on the aircraft. tires used on the plane, in fact, the concorde during its 30 years of existence The operation had had 57 tire explosions, 12 of them had caused structural problems with the aircraft, as pieces of tires had been thrown towards the bottom of the wing and in six cases the wing tanks had been penetrated.

The most serious of these incidents occurred in 1979 where a Concord that was taking off from Washington in the United States had a tire burst during takeoff. Pieces of the tire penetrated the lower part of the wing and one of the wing tanks, causing a small leak of fuel. fuel and also caused damage to the hydraulic system. system that made it impossible to retract the gear after that incident a major investigation was launched into the airworthiness of the concorde and many recommendations were made mainly to reinforce the tires used and the protection of the hydraulic systems in the landing gear, but there were also some fire risk assessments, but the research team considered that the amount of fuel that could escape from a fuel leak caused by whole debris was relatively small and therefore the fire risk was very small, in addition to another something that needs to be taken into account.

What I understand about the Concord is that it has a fairly complicated fuel system consisting of 13 tanks, 12 of which are housed in the wings and body of the plane and the 13th tank which is situated towards the rear of the body and that tank is used. as a surge tank where pilots can transfer fuel in or out depending on where they want the center of gravity of the aircraft to be, which is

real

ly important, especially during takeoff, the engines on the concorde were four olympus turbojet engines from Located towards the rear of the delta wing, just outside and slightly behind the main landing gear, they had variable air intakes to be able to fly in supersonic flight and also had secondary air intakes at the bottom slightly behind the main air intakes and Those air intakes are actually going to play a very important role in this story.

All four engines were also equipped with full reheat or afterburning capability, giving the aircraft 18 more confidence during takeoff. The flight took off on July 25, 2000 and From the beginning there were some problems, another Concorde was originally scheduled to make the flight, but this individual was changed overnight and when the dispatcher began planning the flight he realized that there was a technical problem specifically with this Concorde. to one of the push traverses was now not an issue that would keep the aircraft on the ground, but it had a performance penalty and that performance penalty would potentially lead to the need for a fuel stop en route, in addition to most of the passengers.

They were German citizens and I had flown from Germany before and there had been some kind of problem in the Air France system when it came to checking in both passengers and bags, so many of the passengers in the bag were actually not on the passenger manifest when the dispatcher started making the load sheet, he went with this information to the flight group when they arrived and the flight crew said they would take care of the flight planning from that point, the way they did it was that they contacted the engineering department of Air France asking them if they could fix the trust inverter, they got a positive response and then they proceeded with the pre-flight.

Finally it was thought that the passengers' discrepancy had been resolved, but they ended up with 19 more suitcases on board than what the cargo manifest would show, giving them a little more weight around 1400 utcs, that is, 1600 local time in Paris. , the flight crew began doing their pre-flight inspections inside the cabin, now the crew flying consisted of a 54-year-old captain. elderly man with 13,477 hours of total time of which 317 flew on the concorde the captain was scheduled to be the pilot of this flight and the follow-on pilot was to be the first officer was a 50-year-old man with 10,035 hours and 2,698 hours on the concorde and was also a simulator instructor on the concorde, joining them in the flight technician was also a very experienced flight engineer, 58 year old man with 12,532 hours of total time and 937 hours in the concord, so this was a very experienced flight crew, which was typical of Air France's Concord cruiser, which was a very small group consisting of only about 30 pilots.

As the flight crew begins to prepare the plane for flight, the engineer returns to them and informs the captain that the Trust Reverse is now fully functional, meaning they can load up as much fuel as they need to fly directly to New York and They decide on a final fuel figure of 95 tons. The crew begins to argue that this will make the plane go up. at a weight that is very close to its maximum structural weight for departure and when they calculate their performance figures they set themselves at a speed v1 of 150 knots v rotation speed of 198 knots and a v2 which is the endian speed of 220 knot departure the dispatcher arrives with the final figures for the departure and tells the crew that he has calculated on a taxi fuel consumption of approximately two tonnes, this will later prove to be too much, but we will get to that in a moment. second, at time 1425, everything is ready for departure, the cabin crew has secured the cabin, all passengers are seated and the flight crew receives their start clearance, they start the Concord engines in sequence three, two and then four and one and once the boot starts.

The sequence is complete, they ask for permission to shoot. The runway used on this day is runway 2-6 on the right, which is one of the longest runways at Shelder Gold, so the air traffic controller asks the Concorde if they can take off at an intersection, but given his very high weight, the captain instead requests that departure runway 2-6 be completed, they received their tax authorization to begin reducing taxes, away from Romeo to the holding point, runway 26 on the right and at time 1435 utc, the aircraft begins to descend towards the holding point as they are taxiing now the crew continues with their pre-departure preparation and part of that the first officer realizes that one of the electrical control systems The rudder keeps jumping from its primary control system to its backup control system and he mentions this to the flight engineer and says, hey, you have green indicators all the time and the flight engineer says yes, that's true. , they discussed this a bit, decide to go back to the primary control system anyway and the flight engineer says that if this problem continues or occurs during takeover then we will just ignore it because it is a fixable fault and you won't have no impact on the flight during this taxi, approximately four minutes before departure, they begin a Fuel transfer from fuel tank 11, which is at the rear of the aircraft, to the feeder tanks to bring the center of gravity of the aircraft at 54, which is the optimal point for takeoff with maximum takeoff weight.

This fuel transfer was completed successfully. A few minutes before departure, at the same time this is happening, a Continental Airlines DC-10 is lining up and taking off on runway 26, exactly the same runway that the Concorde is about to take off from during takeoff. A short strip of metal. About 43 centimeters fall from the right engine of the DC-10. There are no indications in the cabin about this. There are no warnings and the crew simply continues flying to the destination because this happens only a few minutes before the Concord's departure there. There are no runway inspections that could have detected this, in fact in France at the time only two runway inspections were required per day, the Concorde is now putting on load and approaching the holding position at Romeo with 2-6 at the right and the captain does it. a takeoff briefing, this is something we always tend to do, where we do a brief summary of the most important points before we leave and the captain says that the takeoff is with a maximum takeoff weight of 180 tons 100, which means 4 overheats with a maximum n2 of 103 and a fault n2 of 98 between 0 and 100 knots I stopped for any oral warning and the tire flashes and the tire flashes and the call comes from you right between 100 knots and v1 I ignore the gong I stopped because an engine came on, a tire flash and a failure call after we won, we will continue with the standard instrument departure like we just talked about and land back on runway 2 6, so this is a takeoff briefing Pretty standard.

A captain describes what the crew is expected to do in the event of an aborted takeoff in the low speed regime, which in this case on the Concorde is between 0 knots and 100 knots, basically they stop at anything, the gong to which refer is What would be equivalent to a master caution warning on a Boeing is just an oral warning that some type of failure has occurred, it may not be a critical failure and then from 100 knots up to v1 are a little more restrictive because Now we are in the high speed regime of takeoff, so from that point they only stop early and their fire warning is a failure warning.

In this case also what they call a tire flash, a tire flash is a warning light that comes on if the system senses a sudden loss of pressure in one of the tires. Now, on the Boeing I fly, we don't stop for a blown tire at over 80 knots, but in the case of Concord it has proven to be a much bigger problem, which is why it falls under one of those critical failures. that will stop in the high speed regime and above v1, are committed to takeoff, so all pilots are trained that if you reject v1 at that point, it will make a possible catastrophic excursion on the runway, for What instead, taking the plane into the air solves any problem and in this case the discussion returns to land on the very long runway 26 right in Paris but as we are about to find out, the failure that these pilots are about to make experimenting is going to be much more complicated.

In addition to that, the captain now also asks the flight engineer how much fuel they used during taxiing because remember that on the load sheet they had two tons calculated. The flight engineer responds with um, we have 800 kilos there, so this would indicate that We are actually using about a ton less taxi fuel and since they were already at maximum takeoff weight using the two tons of taxi fuel that they were supposed to use, if they used a ton less, it means they are now using about a ton less fuel for taxis. 800 kilos above the maximum takeoff weight, the flight engineer at this point also says that the brake temperaturechecks at 150 and the captain asks if it's warmer on the left or right side.

The flight engineer says it's pretty much the same thing and that's going to turn out to be a really important statement for the investigation later at that time at 1442 UTC the Concorde was cleared to line up and cleared for takeoff from a checkpoint. Right air traffic 2-6 gave them a surface wind of 090 degrees at 8 knots and the pilot had not calculated with that much tailwind in their performance calculations, if they had they would have seen that their maximum takeoff weight now had been reduced to 180 tons instead of just over 185 tons, the limiting factor here would have been the concorde's tire speed because if you take off with a tailwind it will increase ground speed before it gets enough airspeed to turn the plane and in this case the tire speed would have been too high.

Further investigation would show that this had no real impact on what happened. to this flight and I also understand that as a pilot, when you line up, many things happen at the same time and if you suddenly have a different wind than what you have calculated, it is easy to miss it. true, but if you are a pilot, it is very important that you take your time and really think about the wind that you are getting before. you start your takeoff rule from this point things are going to happen very, very quickly and this is where the 121 seconds start at time 14 42 and 30 seconds the captain advances the four confidence levels in the cockpit out of confidence, this causes the four powerful Olympus engines to roar at all thrust technology with full superheat activated and the plane begins accelerating down the runway 24 seconds later, the first officer shouted 100, followed by the flight engineer who said four greens, indicating that each of the four The goal lights associated with each engine show that the engine is operating normally and that all four reheats are activated six seconds later, the first of the v1 calls and now there is no return from this takeoff, this is approximately 35 seconds after this flight.

At time 14 43 and 9 seconds a slight yaw to the left is recorded on the flight data recorder, this yaw was not caused by any rudder movement and at this point when the plane passed about 1700 meters from the runway they also found pieces of water. left main gear deflector, so this probably represented the moment when the Concorde passed over that strip of metal left by the DC-10 that had departed earlier. Within half a second, the noise registers on the cockpit voice recorder and is probably coming. From the explosion of one of the tires of the left main gear boogie, the reason why the investigators thought this way was because at that point on the track they were able to find the metal strip and also pieces of tire remains, a second The plane then accelerated to maximum speed. speed of 178 knots and at this point, approximately 1810 meters from takeoff, a noise change is heard in the cabin, what has probably happened here is that pieces of the blown tire have been thrown towards the underside of the left wing in the In the area where the number five fuel tank is located, those pieces have impacted the wing with such force that it actually buckled the bottom of the wing inward and the area around that buckled a little outward, causing a huge wave of pressure inside the tank and Since this tank was at that time completely full, that pressure wave had nowhere to go except to push further into the area of ​​the tank next to where this piece impacted causing a rupture outward of the fuel tank and The reason investigators think this happened is because they found pieces of fuel tank number five at this position on the runway but the pieces indicated that the rupture has occurred from the inside of the fuel tank and not from the outside. due to the change in noise heard on the track. voice recorder, it is most likely due to the fact that several dozen liters of fuel are now gushing out through this hole in fuel tank number five and has come into contact with something that caused it to ignite, which caused the fire to be lit and, in fact, sustained.

In itself it is something that was also discussed a lot in the subsequent investigation, but it is most likely that the tire when it exploded caused a breakage of some electrical cables in the left axle strut. Now those broken cables caused an arc that ignited the flame and made the landing. The gear was still extended, which meant that behind the landing gear there was a turbulent zone that allowed the flame to stabilize and be maintained without being extinguished by the air current. What happens now is that the plane begins to turn to the left of the landing gear. runway the captain counteracts with right rudder to maintain the center line and this is not because the engines are beginning to fail, at least not at this point, but rather this turning movement is likely due to the damage caused to the tires left and also aerodynamics. drag that the flame is producing behind the plane two seconds later the plane is beginning to lose thrust in both engines number one and two so both engines on the left side in the case of engine number one is because it is ingesting a lot of debris from broken tires, rubber things like that and also quite a few hot gases and in the case of the number two engine, which is the engine closest to the landing gear, it is due to the ingestion of hot gases as an engine ingests these gases. it changes the pressure inside the compressor and can cause the compressor to stall, which is what is happening here, so the engine is basically choking on gases.

The first officer now shouted, watch out, quickly followed by the flight engineer saying exactly the same thing, watch out. and this is probably due to the two finish lights, so engines one and two would have gone out at this point as they are stalling and not producing the confidence that they are supposed to. The plane is now at a speed of 187 knots, still eight knots below. rotation speed, but since both engines one and two have essentially failed at this point and number one is slowly recovering, but engine number two is idling again, I'm confident the plane is starting to bite very very hard to the left, the captain is counteracting this, but the plane is still starting to deviate slightly from the center line, we don't know why the captain decides to start turning at this point, maybe it's because he feels that he is at about to exit the runway, maybe it is to avoid other traffic that he sees further down the taxiway, we don't know, but the fact is that the plane starts to turn and turns slower than it normally would, probably indicating that he is aware that the speed is not high enough as the plane is turning.

The flight engineer yells something that sounds like stop, but it wasn't clear on the voice recorder, but just a second later he yells engine failure number two and only says engine failure number two because Indian number one is actually starting to recover from those initial losses, but as the plane continues to turn and the nose angle increases more and more, the airflow changes around the wings, likely causing these hot gases to be ingested once again in both the wings. engine number one as in engine number two, probably using those secondary engine inputs we talked about earlier and this causes more losses, which again reduces confidence at near idle on both engines.

At this point, the first engine fire alarm can also be heard in the cockpit and the flight engineer responds to that with final shutdown call number two and the captain responds with the engine fire procedure while this happens, the air traffic controller can see all this happening from his vantage point in the control tower and shouts air

france

4590

you have flames you have flames behind you The first officer reads this and the flight engineer is now performing the engine fire procedure, which which means you are reducing the idle confidence level on engine number two and also pulling and turning the engine fire handle, this momentarily eliminates the fire alarm.

The extinguisher is probably cooling the engine but will soon return due to the fact that the fire is not actually in the engine but outside and the engine fire circuit is simply feeling the rise in temperature due to the immense fire burning outside while this is happening and remember everything we've covered so far has only taken a few seconds, there's another radio call from an unknown plane somewhere in the airport and the pilot says over the radio, uh, it's really on fire, huh, and uh, it's burning and I. I'm not sure it's coming from the engine, which will be very useful evidence for investigators later.

The Concorde is finally in the air and just before takeoff it passed over a few edge lights on the left side of the runway and The crew now faces the next problem, which is their airspeed because they rotated at a speed slightly less than the one they normally should have turned. Now they maintain a speed of 200 knots while their engine climb speed is 220, which means at that airspeed. They will not be able to climb or maintain altitude and the first officer points this out by calling speed several times. Engine number one is now recovering slightly, but is badly damaged and will never reach full power again.

Engine number two has been recovered. has been shut down through the engine fire procedure that the flight engineer just completed and engines number three and four have gone into something called contingency mode, which is where they are building as much confidence as possible to counteract the loss of confidence . On one or two of the other engines, the Concorde is at an altitude of 100 feet by radio with a speed of 200 knots and they are climbing at about 750 feet per minute and at this point air traffic control calls them and says air

france

4590. you have big flames behind you and you have priority to return to the airfield, the first officer reads this and as he does so the flight engineer reminds him to bring the gear up, now the first officer initially says no to that and It's probably because he knows that, as a procedure, if there are signs of damage to the landing gear, the concorde is not supposed to retract the gear, but then the captain barges in and gives a direct order to retract the gear, the First officer tries, but it is evident from the corpus voice recorder that he can't do it, he just can't seem to get on the train.

The reason for this is probably due to the damage caused by the tire burst. It could have damaged the landing gear door on the left side. side and because of the sequence that landing gear retraction is supposed to follow if the landing gear door does not move when commanded to do so, the landing gear will remain out, the captain now turns to the flight engineer and asks are you? turning off engine number two and the flight engineer responds that yes, it is off, the first officer calls out the airspeed again and then the gear does not retract at time 14 43 and 55 seconds, the first signs of An unordered rule can be seen on the flight data recorder, this feature is probably due to the fact that the fire has been burning for a while and is beginning to melt the inner elevator on the left side, which is causing problems flight control now the captain is trying to counter this.

As that happens, the plane's nose rises higher and higher and its angle of attack constantly increases. The first officer is listening to the atc frequency and can hear how Charlie Gold Tower is talking to the fire leader, who is telling the fire leader that the concorde will probably return to land on the opposite runway in response to which he shouts le bourget level j and we are going to try lebo j the engine fire alarm is now back in the cockpit and the number one engine is accelerating once again eliminating all the remaining thrust on that side of the plane, this causes the plane to turn towards the left and enter the worst point at a roll angle of 113 degrees to the left, the gpws warning system now sounds in the cabin and says "lift up, pull up" and while that happens, there are signs that the confidence is being transferred back to the remaining engines three and four, this is likely to try to counteract the role and get the plane at wing level so it can continue flying unfortunately it's too late, just a few seconds later, 14, 44 and 31 seconds in, the Concorde

crash

es into a hotel in Gunness, just west of Charles Gold Airport, as it does all 109 people aboard the Concorde Parish along with four people in the hotel on the ground.

This was an unspeakable tragedy and the plane crash investigation began immediately at the crash site as investigators began toChecking all the parts left behind from the accident, they very quickly found the left landing gear boogie and when they examined the landing gear boogie they realized that a crucial spacer was missing, the function of that spacer was to maintain the alignment of the tires on the ram landing and without that spacer in place the boogie could start to wobble up to three degrees in either direction, could that have had an impact on the accident sequence and also was there anything the pilots could have done to prevent this accident from happening?

I'm going to tell you all about what the accident investigation team discovered right after this short message from my supporting sponsors. I want to take this opportunity right now to thank the sponsor of this episode, who is a flow of curiosity and I love having him. them in the sponsors because I know that you are watching this episode because you, like me, love to participate in a great documentary or non-fiction story and that is exactly what CuriousStream is about, they are a subscription streaming service with thousands of quality non-fiction stories or documentaries from some of the best filmmakers in the world I'm now watching something called Hurricane Anatomy is a miniseries and I had no idea I knew so little about Hurricanes If this sounds interesting to you then go to curiositystream.commentorpilot use the pilot mentor coupon code and that will get you a whopping 25 off the annual fee and that boils down to expecting 14.99 per year which is incredibly cheap for what you get so if that sounds interesting head down below , click the link support me by supporting my sponsors and enjoy the first thing the air accident investigation team started doing when they found out about the missing space.

I was trying to find him because maybe he was somewhere at the crash site, but they quickly found him. I found the spacer at an Air France workshop where the Concorde had undergone some landing gear maintenance just a few days earlier. This was a very serious turn by Air France and the investigation team now needed to understand whether this spacer was missing or not. could have actually caused or aggravated the accident and the way they did it was to take a look at the Concorde's performance data. If the landing gear boogie had started to twist during the takeoff roll or even during taxiing, you could see that on the way.

The plane accelerated during takeoff and I also remember how the crew talked about the brake temperature before takeoff and the fact that it was the same on both sides. That was the first real clue that the landing gear boogie was properly aligned at least during taxiing. Because it would have been skewed, which would have had an indication of potentially higher brake temperatures on the left side during the takeoff roll, the researchers looked at the pilots' rudder pedal movement to see if there had been any They kind of tried to look in any direction but they found nothing and also the data from the Concorde performance manual coincided very closely with the actual performance of the aircraft during the takeoff function and that would indicate that at least during takeoff Initially, before passing over the metal strip, there was no additional resistance coming from the left wheel boogie, so the alignment appears to have been good at all times until the airplane crossed that metal strip and the tire burst.

This data indicates that even though the missing spacer was a big mistake on the part of air france, it still had no real impact on the accident sequence, the investigation team now turned their eyes towards continental airlines and the DC-10 from which The metal strip had fallen off and when they visited Continental Airlines and reviewed the maintenance history of this DC-10. They recognized that this support metal strip had actually been replaced not once but twice in the previous two months and when they looked at it they realized that the metal strip itself had not been manufactured according to the manufacturer's instructions. of the engine, it had also been drilled 37 times instead of the 12 times stipulated by the engine manufacturer and the metal strip next to it was actually too long and that was what was causing this. the metal strip is constantly wearing away and probably also the reason why it fell off in the first place, these findings led to a lot of litigation and legal problems between the French authorities and the continental airlines, but we won't go into that instead.

From this video, let's take a look at how the drivers performed during these 121 seconds. The air accident investigation team quickly realized that the pilots had never been trained for a scenario like this in which they would lose both engines on one side along with a huge amount of fuel. leak and also a fire since the aircraft had accelerated beyond its decision speed of v1 when they passed over the metal strip and the tire exploded, the crew was essentially committed to takeoff from that point if they had decided to reject the takeoff. It is very likely that the plane would have overshot the runway at high speed, which would have caused the landing gear to collapse and which, together with the fire that was already burning, would have most likely caused a total loss of the plane, so the While continuing the takeoff and getting the plane into the air was completely understandable, once they were airborne, they effectively lacked enough thrust for the plane to accelerate to a sustainable climb speed or climb since they couldn't retract the gear and The fact that they couldn't retract the gear was probably what was also keeping the flame on the outside, so even if the pilots had been able to keep the plane's wings level and in the air, the sustained fire would have eventually started to burn. devour both flight controls. on the left side and the structure of the aircraft that led to the disaster so effectively that investigators said there was little or nothing this crew could have done differently to prevent this accident from occurring, so in the end the team of air accident investigation concluded that a single burst tire, something that had happened to the Concorde many times before and would likely happen again, was the cause of this catastrophic and irreversible tragedy and because of that conclusion, the certificate of Concorde's airworthiness was withdrawn almost immediately until serious problems arose.

Improvements could be made to the structure. These improvements included things like Kevlar lining inside the fuel tanks to ensure that even if a tire were to burst, it wouldn't have these catastrophic consequences. It also included shielding and partial rewiring of the electrical wiring within the landing gear strut and wheel compartment and in addition the aircraft was to be fitted with new ncg michelin burst resistant tires and there were also some other minor improvements that They had to be done on the plane, all this led to the concorde. It was grounded for over a year and just before it was scheduled to return to service, the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York occurred which had a major influence on the aviation business around the world, What would become the beginning of the end of the Concord era, the Concorde continued to fly for approximately two more years until British Airways, as the last remaining operator, retired the last Concord on October 24, 2003, marking the end of the Concord era. end, at least for now, of supersonic passenger flights.

I also want to mention here that the UK air accident investigation team had some serious problems with the way they had been treated by the French investigation team. In this effort, the UK team said they had been denied access to crucial bits and pieces of information they had been unable to obtain. investigate some of the debris that was found on the runway until much later and many other points like this and all this is described in an appendix to the final report now if you want to see an absolutely dizzying story about two pilots who pushed to bring their plane to their absolute limits during positioning flights in the US would have had really serious consequences.

Then watch this video here or you can watch this entire video series on air crash investigation using this playlist here. Have an absolutely fantastic day. and if you want to support me and the work I do with the channel, then consider becoming a patreon. I have weekly meetings with my patreon team. I love doing it and hope to see you at one of those places next time. Bye bye.