David Learmount/SHANNON
The UK has accused France of dragging its feet in investigating the 25 July crash of an Air France Concorde. Senior UK Government officials have appealed to their French counterparts to speed up judicial procedures which they believe are unreasonably holding up the investigation into the crash which killed 113 people and resulted in the grounding of the entire Concorde fleet.
UK Air Accident Investigation Branch chief Ken Smart tells Flight International: "We are 10 weeks into the investigation and we have done about three weeks' work. This kind of delay has repercussions not just for the Concorde investigation, but for all investigations."
Speaking at the International Society of Air Safety Investigators annual seminar in Shannon, Ireland, last week, Smart said the legal inflexibility of the French investigation was breaking the terms of the International Civil Aviation Organisation treaty Annex 13 - the standards for accident investigation.
The judge leading the investigation is holding rigidly to the rules for gathering evidence. The main Concorde wreckage remains locked in a hangar at Le Bourget Airport, Paris, awaiting reconstruction and further evaluation.
The UK and French authorities suspended Concorde's certificate of airworthiness in mid-August as a result of initial investigations which appeared to show that the crash resulted from a tyre carcass penetrating the port wing fuel tank and causing a fire.
Smart says that the UK has made representations at all levels "short of prime ministers Blair and Jospin - that is the only weapon we have left".
It is essential, he says, to reassemble the crashed Concorde's left wing to examine the damage in more detail, enabling analysis of the process that led to the wing and fuel tank being pierced and the leaking fuel ignited.
The UK Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions reinforced Smart's statements, saying that [at the last] Concorde working group [it] demanded that "the investigation be pursued with vigor," and says that ministers were "aware of and cleared" the request before it was made.
The four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus engines, an important part of the investigation, have not been returned to the UK company's Bristol site as is normal, but are being held in Paris.
The head of international affairs at France's Bureau d'Enquêtes Accidents (BEA), Jean-Paul Villeneuve, counters that the procedure has been proper. He says the wreckage, which was examined on site, was secured at Le Bourget until the BEA and the judiciary had the resources to examine it.
"Now the wing reconstruction is beginning and the engines have been taken to the BEA's Paris engine plant for teardown."
Source: Flight International
