Keeping Concorde Airborne
On the day a Concorde jet took off for the first time since the supersonic fleet was grounded, engineers say they have designed a way to prevent crashes like the one that killed 113 people in July.
An Air France Concorde took off from Charles de Gaulle airport and headed to a military base in southern France for two weeks of rigorous testing.
Concorde flights were stopped after the crash of an Air France flight from Paris to New York. French investigators have now determined it was a blown tire that ruptured the plane's wing and fuel tank, causing the fire.
Many safety experts doubted the Concorde would ever fly again. But, now British and French authorities have come up with a relatively simple fix aimed at getting the world's only supersonic passenger plane out of the hangar and back in the air.
The key is kevlar, the same material used in bullet proof vests. Technicians at British Airways are crawling into Concorde fuel tanks to install kevlar shields — baffled, rubberized mats designed to stop leaks should a hole be punched in a wing.
"The weight of the fuel will settle and cause this thing to push down to fill the hole so that no fuel actually comes out beneath the liner," says Jim O'Sullivan, a British Airways engineer. "Exactly like a plug."
"If we don't have the massive fuel leak, we can't have the massive fire and we can't have the accident again," says British Airways chief Concorde pilot Mike Bannister.
Bannister will put the plane through a series of test flights, and can't believe that Concorde could remain grounded forever.
"I can't personally envisage talking to my grandchildren in a few years time, and saying 'I remember when we used to cross the Atlantic in three hours time and now it takes eight or nine,'" he says.
British Airways is so certain the supersonic jet will fly again, it is not only fixing the fuel tanks, it's also remodeling the plane's interior — aiming to have Concorde airborne again by summer.
CBS Radio News Correspondent Elaine Cobbe reports there were just five people aboard the aircraft when it took off from Charles de Gaulle Thursday, including two flight engineers — one more than is usual, just in case there might be any trouble.
The delta-winged-jet flew at subsonic speed, arriving 50 minutes later at a military base in Istres, near Marseille.
While readying the aircraft for takeoff, the pilot, Edgar Chillaud, leaned from the cockpit window holding a video camera and waved to a group of Concorde enthusiasts who had plastered a banner reading "Concorde, We Love You" against a runway fence.
"The Concorde has always been a myth. It remains a myth," said Arnaud Boisguerin, 41, who said he called in sick to work so that he could witness the takeoff.
The July crash occurred less than two minutes after an Air France Concorde took off from Charles de Gaulle airport, spewing fire from its left wing before lunging into a nearby hotel. All 109 people aboard the plane were killed, along with four on the ground.
Investigators believe the crash was caused when a metal strip lying on the runway gashed one of the Concorde's tires, sending rubber debris hurtling toward fuel tanks and triggering a fuel leak and fire that brought the plane down.
In Istres, technicians from the plane's manufacturer, EADS Airbus, are to conduct 15 days of high-speed ground tests on the aircraft that simulate fuel leaks, Air France executives said at a news conference Tuesday.
The tests are intended to help the plane's owner and manufacturer better understand the chain of events that led to last year's crash.
The aircraft's airworthiness certification was withdrawn after the crash, grounding the 12 Concordes operated by Air France and British Airways.
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