You have your opinion, I have mine.
You feel the report is just.
I feel the report smudges over a few important facts.

I did not comment further on the spacer as I did not feel it necessary.
If you want to accuse me of not having a backbone because of that then fair play to you. But allow me a retort by saying that your attitude in this thread has been one of utter contempt to anyone with a view different to yours.

I will concede however, that my recollection of the spacer causing the plane to veer from the centerline was in error. A combination of a long day and a migraine impeeded my judgement. For that I apologise.

Nevertheless, I still think the investigation washed over that matter with too much ease.
I highlighted the above issues to show what I think is a rather dismissive attitude in the report which I still maintain lends too much weight to the significance of the famous metal strip.

The problem is that you do not start with question marks or doubts. You come up with an entire alternative narrative that simply do not withstand even basic scrutiny. You have not come up with serious challenges to the report, but simply try to collate elements here and there that do not make any sense. Basically, you try not to find holes in the report because there may be holes in it, but start from the premise that it is French, therefore its is a cover up and any (even if mindless) alternative narrative will demonstrate. This is just not serious and shows simple prejudices. It’s basically the same process as some anti-americans have in France. The 9-11 report, being american, is necessarily a cover up and loopholes are found to prove that (even though these loopholes are ridiculous).

Now, for whatever this is worth, my take in this story is that those that are to blame are the manufacturer(s), the operators (on both sides of the channel) and the aviation authorities (on both sides of the channel) for not addressing an underlying issue with Concorde that was bound to create such an accident. If you look at it, of the 60 something incidents having affected BA between 1978 and today, all but 8 concerned Concorde (and the same thing applies to Air France) – and when you look at the number of flights of Concorde compared with the rest of the fleet, that tells you a lot.

But I guess it is easier to bash frogs for the end of the Concorde than to face reality, which is that Concorde was unsafe and all parties that exploited or had the task to supervise its exploitation failed in making the necessary modifications mandatory.

In your first post, you claim that the accident is due to the plane veering sideway before hitting the Continental metal strip. I challenged you to prove this was correct (as the FDR shows that this is a lot of bull) and you are suddenly changing your tune arguing that it is a weight issue. That is what we call having a lot of backbone.

As you say, Concorde should have made it with No.2 shutdown. I admit I got the sequence wrong by a second or so, it had been a while since I read the report.
The aircraft should have been able to turn round with one, perhaps even two engines shut down. But why didn’t they?
Perhaps because she was overweight?

Certainly not. That is the contrary of what I said. The plane would not have made it whether No. 2 had been shutdown or not, irrespective of the weight. Even if it had not been switched off, nr 2 would not have provided power as it was ingesting kerosene. Nr 1 was never able to give sufficient power as it was also affected. This was compounded by the fact that the gear could not be retracted because of the damage created by the bursting tire. And the wing structure was losing in shape as a result of the fire, all of which made the plane totally uncontrollable.

My point and primary beef is: The authorities are blaming the metal strip and it appears only that metal strip. The entire report states “damaged by the metal strip” from the very first pages, to the last.
They dismiss everything else within one page, sometimes a single paragraph and continue to focus on the metal strip.

It stinks of coverup and protectionism.
It will be interesting to see what happens in this trial.

You are either willfully misleading, have been misled or have not red the report. The report says that the Continental metal strip is one element among several. This is why, contrary to what you state, the current legal procedure has not only indicted Continental representatives but also :
– Aerospatiale/EADS representative for not taking decisive action as the repeated tyre incidents showed that the plane was unsafe (exploding tyres and burst tanks on dozens of occasions, both on AF and BA Concordes)
– DGAC (French aviation authorities) for basically the same reason as for EADS.

I guess that, should France judges have indicted Air France but not EADS and the DGAC, you would have here again claimed that it was all a cover-up.

There is a major difference between asking questions and challenging some elements of an inquiry, and submitting an entire alternative narrative without backing it with any data or hard proof.

Also, this is disingenous insofar as you do not question the gospel of authorities writ large – you question the existing narrative as a matter of principle because we speak of the French authorities.

Flying Frankfurt-Chicago-Dallas today, am fearing the worse in terms of security check, delay and stuff…..

No idea, the jolly CAA in South Africa have not yet released the investigation report. You can see all the finalized reports on http://www.caa.co.za
The one in 2004 was also Emirates.
Cheers
🙂

The report says that the incident was due to an erroneous takeoff technique employed by the flying pilot (that they were taught by Emirates). Both the pilots and co-pilots had just started working on the 340 (I think it was only the 2nd flight on 340 for the pilot).

In any case, I would like to thank Schorsch for bringing a technical input to the discussions, and an added value as a result. And he is about the only one to do that.

As regards the fact that a specific person can not refrain from turning a technical question/discussion on the 787 in a A vs B issue, there is nothing new and surprising here. Been going on for years.

The nuclear sub contract does NOT involve nuclear reactor technology. I think the current treaties forbid that kind of transfer. Brazil already has a nuclear power plant prototype.

Both correct and incorrect. Correct in the sense that the sub-contract does not involve nuclear reactor technology for the planned Brasilian nuclear powered sub. But not correct when you state that France is be legally barred from cooperating with Brazil on nuclear reactor technology.

Under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, France (as a recognised nuclear weapons state) is barred from transfering nuclear weapons or assist any country in developing one.

But the NPT does not prevent any export in the field of nuclear power generation, provided the recipient has demonstrated it does not intend to use the transferred technology to produce nuclear weapon (technically, it requires that the recipient has concluded a safeguard agreement with the IAEA (NPT article III), a step Brazil has long taken).