Air France Flight 4590
On 25 July 2000 at 16:38 CEST, Continental Airlines Flight 55, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 (registration N13067), started its takeoff roll from Runway 26R at Charles de Gaulle Airport, bound for a scheduled flight to Newark International Airport. During her takeoff roll, a small titanium alloy wear strip that was part of the engine cowl, no bigger than a standard school ruler, approximately 17.1 inches long by 1 inch wide, fell off the DC-10 and came to rest in the middle of Runway 26R. Oblivious to the shed fragment, Continental Airlines Flight 55 continued on its way towards Newark Airport.
Four minutes later, the graceful delta-winged Air France Concorde, an aircraft that had not only ushered the world into supersonic commercial flight but whose beauty and scientific marvels had come to symbolize mankind's triumphant progress in the modern world, took position at the end of the runway. With winds reported light and variable that day, the crew advanced the Concorde throttles on what was supposed to be a chartered cruise flight, with all passengers scheduled to board the cruise ship MS Deutschland in New York for a 16-day cruise to Manta, Ecuador.
As the Concorde ignited her four massive Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojet engines, the graceful white supersonic bird quickly accelerated down Runway 26R, and the crew commenced back pressure to raise her nose.
At precisely 16:42, as the Concorde reached a ground speed of 185 mph, she came into contact with that small strip of titanium that lay waiting on the runway. The strip slashed the No. 2 right-front tire of the left main wheel bogie, sending a 9.9-pound chunk of tire debris straight into the underside of the left wing at an estimated speed of 310 mph.
The impact of the 9.9-pound chunk of tire debris did not directly puncture the fuel tanks, but initiated a pressure shockwave that managed to rupture the No. 5 fuel tank just ahead of the left landing gear well, at its weakest design point. Fuel began to gush from the bottom of the delta wing, and it was then that an electrical arc in the landing gear bay, caused by exposed landing gear wiring or fuel vapours exposed to the heat of the Olympus engines, reached its ignition point.
Engines 1 and 2 both surged.
The ingestion of hot gases into both Olympus engines, and tire debris FOD (Engine 1 only), caused an immediate loss of power. Engine 1 managed to slowly recover over the next few seconds.
At almost 200 mph, a large plume of flame developed behind the Concorde; the crew received a fire warning, and the flight engineer shut down Engine 2. The aircraft had already passed V1 speed, "Decision Speed," the point at which takeoff conditions are considered unsafe to abort. She was committed to continue.
Engine No. 1 surged again and did not fully recover.
The aircraft commenced a slow roll to the left as the right wing lifted due to asymmetrical thrust, increasing to a bank angle of over 100 degrees.
In an attempt to level the aircraft, the crew reduced power on Engines 3 and 4, but sadly, in a situation where there was no possible win, the resulting deceleration caused the Concorde to stall.
She struck the ground left wing low after a heading change to the left of nearly 180°, crashing directly into the Hôtelissimo Les Relais Bleus Hotel.
Sadly, 100 passengers, 9 crew members, and 4 people on the ground lost their lives that day.
It was the first fatal accident in Concorde's entire history.
Concorde's commercial operations were suspended until November 2001, and the remaining supersonic birds were officially retired in 2003, a full 27 years after commercial operations had begun...a single crash had ended her career.
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