LAST WEEK, A FRENCH APPEALS COURT overturned a manslaughter conviction against Continental Airlines for its role in the crash of an Air France Concorde outside Paris twelve years ago.
Flight 4590 was a charter destined for New York's JFK airport on July 25th, 2000, carrying mostly German tourists headed to South America. As it neared takeoff speed, the Concorde struck a thin metal strip on the runway, causing one of its tires to burst. The strip had fallen from the underside of a Continental Airlines DC-10 that had departed minutes earlier, bound for Houston. Chunks of the burst tire impacted the Concorde's wing at tremendous velocity, resulting in a powerful shock wave within the wing's fuel tank that ultimately punctured it. Gases from the engines then ignited leaking fuel, touching off a huge fire.
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