On the 25th of July, 2000, Air France Flight 4590 from Paris to New York took flight.
The plane was a Concorde airliner – a supersonic jet that, in the years prior, had achieved
almost worldwide fame by offering incredibly swift, luxurious and timely transatlantic
flights.
The distinctive aircraft had come to be a symbol of wealth and success, luxury and ambition…
but on this particular day Concorde would stand for something else.
It would be the beginning of the end for Concorde, and the end of everything for every single
person on board Flight 4590.
The development of Concorde began all the way back in the 1950s.
It was a joint post-war project between the United Kingdom and France… and an ambitious
project at that.
Concorde was the world’s first supersonic aircraft.
Its ability to travel faster than the speed of sound allowed it to carry passengers from
London to New York in just over three hours – an impressive journey time considering
that it would normally take more than eight.
The innovations which allowed Concorde to travel so fast were numerous.
Everything from the brakes to the windows were designed with the aircraft’s unique
characteristics in mind.
A distinctive “drooping” nose cone allowed greater visibility when landing.
A narrow frame and slender wings reduced drag.
Even the paint scheme of the plane was unique – every Concorde was painted predominantly
white to help manage the heat generated by air friction.
All of these design choices made Concorde instantly distinguishable from other planes.
It was sleek, elegant, and futuristic, drawing comparisons with a space shuttle.
Concorde very quickly became a favourite of the general public – people saw it as a
symbol of innovation and brilliance.
Supersonic travel was the future, and Concorde was the vessel that would lead the world into
it.
The experience of being on board the plane was also unique… as it would have to be
given the sky-high ticket prices.
Passengers often likened a flight on Concorde to attending a private club.
There was champagne, caviar, specially branded cutlery, and dedicated private lounges at
your departure airport.
Concorde flew so high that passengers could see the curvature of the Earth, and so fast
– faster than a rifle bullet, in fact – that it could overtake the sunset and arrive at
a local time that was earlier than the local time when it had departed.
Aesthetically and symbolically, Concorde was a shining beacon of success… but behind
the scenes all was not well.
The development of the record-breaking aircraft had been an arduous process, with costs spiralling
out of control – originally projected to cost £70 million, it ended up costing £1.3
billion.
Added to this, Concorde originally anticipated that they would sell at least 100 aircraft…
but ended up manufacturing just 20.
Despite the prestige and speed of Concorde, airlines weren’t sold on the concept.
The planes were expensive to run, with very high fuel consumption.
They were also loud – the ear-splitting boom they made when breaking the sound barrier
meant that they couldn’t really be flown at full speed over land, only over open water.
And they were small, seating only around 100 people in relatively cramped conditions.
Concorde, then, was something unique.
A graceful, distinctive, almost universally admired aircraft that seemed to many to be
the future of air travel… but which at the same time was struggling commercially.
It is likely that, as costs increased, these graceful planes would have slowly disappeared
from the sky… but that process was hastened by the events which took place on the 25th
of July, 2000.
On this day, Air France Flight 4590 was due to fly from Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Paris
to JFK airport in New York.
The flight had been chartered by a luxury holiday company to carry tourists to the starting
point of a fifteen-day once-in-a-lifetime cruise.
For those travelling, the day began in style, as they mingled in a private lounge and met
the pilots who would be flying them on their journey across the Atlantic.
Shortly after 4:00pm, all passengers had boarded, and the aircraft was ready for take off.
Despite a stormy start to the day, the weather was now clear, and passengers and crew were
relaxed and happy, expecting an uneventful and pleasant flight.
At the controls was Captain Christian Marty, an experienced pilot with more than 13,000
flight hours to his name.
At 4:42pm he asked his co-pilots if they were ready to go, and then began the very last
take off that he would ever oversee.
The plane picked up speed as it moved down the runway, quickly passing the point at which
take off could be safely abandoned.
Just moments later, things went wrong very, very quickly.
With no warning and no apparent cause, flames erupted from the wing, creating a comet tail
of fire behind the aircraft.
Controllers contacted Captain Marty urgently to warn him… but there was little he could
do.
If he tried to abandon take off now he risked crashing into other waiting aircraft…
including a nearby Air France B747 which happened to be carrying the French President Jacque
Chirac.
Captain Marty did the only thing he could in the circumstances – he pulled the burning
plane into the air.
With flames still roaring from the wing, it struggled for height.
Vital parts of the control system were already damaged, and the plane was becoming unbalanced
and loosing speed.
As it passed the boundary of the airport, it was skimming along barely more than 60
metres (or 200 feet) above the ground.
For a little less than 90 seconds, Flight 4590 was airborne… but with control becoming
more and more difficult by the second it could not possibly remain so.
While the pilots still wrestled with the controls it ploughed into the side of a hotel, exploding
in a fireball that instantly killed every single person on board, as well as several
people inside the building.
Alice Brooking, a British tourist, was inside the hotel, talking on the phone when the crash
took place.
She later described it in vivid detail: “There was this huge explosion.
I remember turning round after the phone line went dead and seeing the walls of my hotel
room caving in, and the pictures coming down from the wall.
As soon as I opened the door, of course, I was totally engulfed in flames.
The heat was phenomenal.”
Ms Brooking managed to avoid death by jumping from her hotel room window.
She would be one of relatively few people who received survivable injuries in this disaster.
In total 113 people were killed in the crash – 100 passengers, 9 crew, and 4 hotel employees.
In the aftermath of the crash, an investigation was launched, and a chain of events was uncovered.
Just five minutes before Flight 4590 had lined up on the runway, a small metal strip had
fallen from the fuselage of a Continental Airlines DC-10 airliner as it took off.
This thin scrap of titanium had lain on the runway, barely visible, until the Concorde
passed directly over it.
The strip pierced a tyre, sending a chunk or rubber hurtling into the fuel tank on the
wing.
As fuel gushed out, an arc from the landing gear ignited it, starting the fire that ultimately
doomed the aircraft.
The titanium strip which had fallen from the DC-10 had, it turned out, been fitted incorrectly
during recent maintenance.
The mechanic who had fitted it and his supervisor were charged with manslaughter, with the mechanic
receiving a 15-month suspended sentence for his part in the disaster.
Continental Airlines was also fined 200,000 euros, and ordered to pay one million euros
in damages to Air France, and to cover 70% of the compensation claims from the public
relating to the disaster.
All Concorde aircraft were grounded following the crash, and numerous design changes were
made to improve their safety.
Kevlar armour was added to fuel tanks across the fleet, along with burst-proof tyres to
prevent a repeat of the same accident.
The crash had, of course, come as an immense shock to the public.
Concorde’s safety record had been excellent until that point… but the devastating loss
of Flight 4590 shook public confidence in the supersonic plane.
When Concorde did take to the skies again, passenger numbers were significantly reduced.
Although it continued to fly for a few more years, on the 26th of October 2003 Concorde
made its final flight from New York’s JFK Airport to London Heathrow.
Despite the horrifying accident which sealed Concorde’s fate, the jet is remembered fondly
by many who flew on it.
Retired Concordes are on display in aviation museums around the world, and even to this
day branded items from the service are traded online by collectors.
A small but dedicated group of enthusiasts continue, on and off, to campaign for Concorde
to be returned to flight.
There are currently no plans to restore Concorde, and any plans for other commercial supersonic
aircraft are still in their very early stages.
Even decades after its final flight, Concorde retains the record for the swiftest crossing
of the Atlantic… and will likely do so for many years more.
Whether remembered for this, for its iconic design, or for the devastating tragedy which
ended its reign, Concorde is unlikely to be forgotten.