Over the past few days, there have been a number of news stories about the trial that is to begin outside Paris, France against Continental, 2 former Continental employees and 3 French nationals ( an official with France’s civil aviation authoritythe DGAC and 2 former employees of Aerospatiale.)  Any airline enthusiast knows the story of the Concorde crash July 25th, 2000 and the resulting aftermath of modifications, return to flight and then the permanent retirement of the Concorde in 2003.

 

What is tragic is that the five men and Continental (the corporation) are being tried for involuntary manslaughter and this entire trial bothers me quite a bit.  First, the three Frenchmen being tried strike me as scapegoats put up for trial and the benefit of seeming to be “fair”.  Second, to blame Continental or its employees for this tragedy just seems, well, so very French in attitude.

 

The two former Aerospatiale employees, Henri Perrier and Jacques Herubel, are both very old men and accused of failing to carry out modifications on Concorde after a series of tire blowouts in the 1970’s revealed design flaws that allowed debris from tires to penetrate the Concorde wings.  There is the story of the Air France Concorde that suffered a blowout on take-off from Dulles airport in the late 1970’s that saw its wing tanks penetrated and it managed to leak tons of jet fuel before returning to land. 

 

It is true enough that such flaws were known for a long time.  It was a two part problem.  Because Concorde took off at such higher speeds (as fast as 250mph), it was difficult to build a tire for it that would not catastrophically fail in the event of a blow-out.  Mind you, blow outs just happened more often back then too. 

 

The second problem was the wing.  It was possible for a tire blow out to throw pieces of the tire up against and into the wing of the aircraft where fuel tanks existed.  As you can imagine, it isn’t a good idea to penetrate fuel tanks ever and certainly not next to 2 afterburning engines on take-off.

 

Over time, the tires got better (but not fixed per se) and Concorde managed to fly successfully for 2 more decades before the tragic crash in France.  A little historical context is necessary to understand everything at play here.

 

First, Aerospatiale is now a part of EADS/Airbus.  And guess who owns a large chunk of EADS?  Yup, the government of France.  I should also mention that Aerospatiale was formed from the merger of several government owned aerospace companies in 1970 and continued to be owned by the government of France.  Notice that they are not a part of this trial.  

 

Second, guess who owned Air France in the 1970’s. . . yes, the government of France.   Air France was a government owned entity in a variety of forms until privatization occured in 1999.  However, the French government still owned a majority holding of shares as recently as 2002.  Further, Air France has always been recognized as a national flag carrier in France and even despite privatization, it holds that kind of status throughout the nation even today.  Notice that Air France is not on trial either. 

 

If someone should be on trial for this tragedy, it should be Aerospatiale/EADS, Air France and, possibly, the DGAC (French civilian aviation authority).   At least from the French perspective.  However, it is much easier to lay blame at three elderly men who are old enough to not have any “patrons” in the government still and therefore leave them unprotected from what by all appearances is a failure on the part of the French government rather than these men.

 

I’ll also take note that France has studiously avoided dragging BAe Systems (formerly BAC and the co-builder of Concorde) as they are, wait for it . . . still a first tier vendor to EADS/Airbus although no longer a partner.   No finger was pointed at the UK government for permitting design flaws to continue on for 2 decades and the UK was just as aware as the French.  However, the French have to work with the UK and and business is business.

 

Frankly, I predict that the French court will likely lay the blame firmly at Continental’s feet and assign some to those 3 elder Frenchmen on trial.

 

But the real tragedy will be France failing to shine sunlight upon their own behaviour and complicency in this crash and that makes France a less safe place for all concerned. 

 

Sadly, French arrogance when it comes to this kind of issue still rules today.  When an Air France A-330 was lost over the Atlantic Ocean near the coast of Brazil, the offer of US investigatory assistance was nearly ignored entirely.   That is criminal in itself since the US has the best investigative force for airline crashes in the world.  There is no one who comes close and that is why the US is asked to assist with investigations around the world.  However, the US has the nasty habit of, more often than not, calling a spade a spade.  Something that the French will not tolerate when it comes to their aerospace and aviation industries.

 

The Continental Airlines employees on trial will not be present.  They will be represented and therefore they run almost no risk of imprisonment no matter what the outcome.  However, I think that makes it just easier to blame them as a face saving gesture.   I suspect that no matter how vigorously Continental Airlines defends itself they will be the ones to pay ultimately.  

 

The three Frenchmen on trial may suffer some blame, again as a face saving gesture, but I wonder if they’ll take it.  They have no reason to.  An 80 year old man has little to lose in speaking out at what was going on in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s.

 

If this post seems xenophobic, I can see why that might be the interpretation.  However, I stand by my characterizations of both the French government and the French aerospace industry.   I doubt seriously that anyone who has observed the aerospace industry would disagree with me either.  My characterizations are based on their deeds and those deeds have been many over the past 50 years.

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