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This Supersonic Takeoff Almost Ended In Disaster! | The Almost Concorde Crash
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2022
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This is the story of an air france flight, not just any air france flight but one operated by the venerable concorde. The inspiration for this video came from the video real engineering did on the concorde, where he briefly mentions this incident and me being the nerd that I am needed to dig up all the information that I could now that i knew that such an incident existed. Before we go any further though, dropping a like or a comment really helps with the algorithm! So it would mean a lot if you could do that. Now the concorde is known for basically two things, its raw speed and the one major accident that it had in france. Now along with that major accident the concorde had multiple other minor accidents, i convered one on this channel years ago when the channel was a fraction of what it is now. The interesting thing about this accident is that this accident could have very well saved the concorde that crashed in almost 20 years after this incident took place. Before we get started let me just tell you that this video is based on a french report in well french and i had to use google translate, so if there are any inaccuracies yell at me in the comments, you know what yell at me anyway it helps with the algorithm.
On the 14th of june 1979 a concorde was on its way from mexico city to paris with a stope over in washington's dulles airport. The stopover in dulles was quite fast and the plane was taxiing to its departure runway of 19L, now fun fact on most taxis the concorde burnt through about 2 tons or about 4000 pounds of fuel on its taxi. With the plane on the runway the brakes were reelased at 7:29 pm and 33 seconds the the afterburners of the concorde kicked in, starting the concordes climb to its super sonic cruising speed. Just 36 seconds after the breaks were released the the pilots hit 166 knots. Just three seconds after that two explosions rocked the concorde. Three seconds after the explosions the temperature alarms on the left main landing gear was triggered and an overweight waring was also triggered on the left main gear, the first officer who was in control of the plane felt the plane lurch to the left but it was manageable. But despite this the pilots had to take off from the runway as they were going too fast to reject the takeoff.In the cabin of the plane a passenger sitting in seat 23A saw something that they did not expect to see the wing of the concorde breaking apart, as soon as they saw that they went upto the cabin crew member and said “I saw the wing which burst”, unknown to them at that time this was not the wing breaking apart but the tyre instead. So 46 seconds after the takeoff run was started the pilots took the stricken concorde into the skies of washington,not knowing what was wrong with their bird. As the concorde climbed away from the runway the pilots scanned their instruments to try and figure out what had caused the explosion, their instruments were all in the green but ATC had some bad news for them. Their left hand tyres had blown and the engines were on fire. For those of you that know the history of the concorde that should set a few alarm bells ringing. The final report for this accident has some beautiful yet haunting images of the plane in question taking off and ill throw them up on the screen right now. You can clearly see the fuel streaming out from the left hand side of the airplane. But the pilots had no idea how badly their plane was damaged and they needed to know that before they could land this stricken plane, so they decided to do a low pass over the tower so that the controllers could assess the damage to the plane. The controllers could see that tyres 5 and 6 of the concorde had been destroyed. In the cockpit the pilots were having trouble with the gear, when they commanded the gear to retract the doors actuated but the gears would not go up into the plane. The gear status indicators stayed green indicating that they were still down. At this time the pilots are still debating on whether on not they can push onto paris but they decide against it as
The Concorde That Lost It's Rudder: th-cam.com/video/7KAZASViRUY/w-d-xo.html
At 1:10
Yelling in the comments....
YOU WANT ME TO YELL AT YOU IN THE COMMENTS!! FINE!! I WILL!!
Now that that is over....I'll go back to watching the video.
Later gator....
Monte
We both like and subscribe Your sense of accident history is extensive
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I actually hit dislike button, and show menu dots for "don't recommend me this channel again" because I really get upset myself with content holders, whom feels so fucking important to notice watchers too many times to like, and subscribe.
Keep calm, there is a channel, with only on-screen narration, no subscribe invitation. The Flight Channel. Watch that content holder, and learn...
AAAAAHHHHHHH.... there I did it...
Throwing a teenager overboard every second is an... Interesting analogy haha
Im imagining them like a platoon dropping from a plane "go go go go go"
What teenager are you meeting that's only 60 lbs? A 13 year old should weigh 100 lbs
@@SimonTekConley I believe he said kilos (2.2 lbs.)
With the current generation (z list) I'd happily drop several overboard every ten seconds.
@@PauperJ 30 kilos is not 100 lbs. Its 66lbs
I like that fuel dumps are measured in TPS: Teenagers Per Second.
Smirk has made an arrival.
how much does a teenager weigh?
@@harrisonofcolorado8886 1/2 way between a child and an adult.
@@harrisonofcolorado8886 In 1979 I would guess about 120 lbs. Today about 220 lbs.
Boomer logic. But now nobody to pay their pensions.
A very similar incident happened to a BA Concorde, that must have been back in the 80's or 90's. Cannot remember where it was taking off from, either JFK or Dulles, and it too suffered from a tyre explosion that ruptured a wing tank. Luckily they did not suffer any fire, but they did notice the loss of fuel from one of the tanks, so they returned back to the airport. When they finally landed and came to a stop, the plane was sitting in a large pool of spilt fuel. I think it was after this incident that BA made some minor changes to the landing gear to hopefully prevent a tyre burst from hitting the tanks in future. All of these incidents make you realise that both BA and Air France had had a few warnings about what could possibly happen in the future. Such a shame they never took more drastic measures to insure the safety of the wing tanks earlier - like they finally did after the Paris disaster. Because the liners they finally fitted to the tanks would have no doubt prevented the Paris crash.
The Germans devised a special self-sealing substance to line the fuel tanks of their WW2 bombers: was such a precaution ever considered for Concorde ?
@@None-zc5vg It wasn't that special. Just raw latex, which swells to 4 times it's volume when exposed to fuels.. Made the tanks twice as heavy tho, and it only held leaks for a bit. Quite practical when AA guns or another plane are turning your wings into swiss cheese, not so practical for extended civilian flights.
Remember this flight was considering crossing the Atlantic with broken gear until they figured they had a leak. Be a shame if a self sealing tank eventually just started leaking over the mid Atlantic.
It would have been far cheaper to just spend the $15 or whatever it costs to put a slightly longer wire harness out of the way of the tanks to prevent fires.
BA devised, and fitted to their Concorde's, a "mudguard" that prevented tyre debris from hitting a wing should a tyre burst on take off. The French refused to even contemplate this.
@@None-zc5vg most modern cars have this on their fuel tanks
"All of these incidents make you realise that both BA and Air France had had a few warnings about what could possibly happen in the future."
True to some extent. But I think it more likely than not showed how differently BA and Air France treated their Concordes. While not extensive modifications, BA at least did something about it to prevent a similar incident from happening. Air France did nothing at all.
I used to live in Warrenton Virginia, right underneath an approach to Dulles. I heard (and felt) whenever a Concorde was on final. Those engines were LOUD! I'm glad that no one was injured in this incident and sad for the casualties in Paris, both in the aircraft and on the ground. Great video.
Same here! Used to love watching (and hearing) it fly over.
Same here. I lived dead south of Dulles in Centreville, Va.
@@jjquinn2004 Ii lived there.all my ) I live in culpeperVA now I was living in manassas and Catlett
Same here in London. I have double glazing and still had to increase the volume on the TV when Concorde went over. All worth it to see this beautiful machine in the air.
Incredible. Back in 1979 this incident occurred, and they have stated the risk of fire caused by a damaged wire in the report, but did not do anything, or almost nothing, to prevent that from happening? Btw, you say that during that take-off roll also an overweight alarm was triggered. But I guess it was triggered because the left main gear was damaged, otherwise that overweight alarm should have gone off before take-off. I say this because I know that overweight was a contributing factor in the Paris Concorde crash..
But Concorde was a very special plane. It looks astonishing. In 2019 I was at the Brooklands museum just outside of London. There is one Concorde on display, and I have been on board. I do not suffer from claustrophobia, however the fuselage of the Concorde is very narrow, combined with the very small windows I felt a bit uncomfortable. Did you know that the windows were cooled by a system with pipes and cooling liquid. If not, passengers would burn their hands when touching the window while in cruise at Mach 2.0!
I love those little bits of unknown info. Thanks for sharing.
I didn't know that! Amazing engineering!
I have been there as well. The Brooklands museum is well worth a visit anyway, not just for Concorde. However, as I marvelled at the beauty of the plane as I stood under it I also felt sadness at it's demise and seeing this video just emphasises that. Becauae if they had followed through on their report as they should have done the other incident may well have never happened.
@@moreheff Yes, I forgot to mention, Brooklands is much more than Concorde alone. Indeed very worth the visit! But still the Concorde was a big fuel user. Very uneconomically and in today's light of climate change it would likely not be in use no matter what happened in Paris back 2000. The crash and 9-11 a year later did just accelerate the end of Concorde. I read a book about Concorde from the first plans till it being withdrawn in 2003. Did you know that during development, and construction the whole project has been very close to shut down? So it was a miracle it has flown for so many years at all!
My guess is that the overweight alarm was triggered when the tire exploded and the plane dropped down onto the wheel hub as a result.
As a former teacher throwing one teenager overboard every second is a measurement I could only dream of when I was working!
ROFLMAO
Yell? Well, how about a shout-out to mini air crash investigation for your outstanding work and channel? Great job! 👍 It would have been great for the tragic Air France flight if they had done more with this incident.
I remember as a kid seeing a short documentary back in 1995 stating that the Concorde was the safest plane of the time, because it have not had any fatal accident during its service time so far. Looking at the findings from this accident, it seems that it was an overstatement.
I remember our last day of college, and our Logic Design lecturer proclaiming that he wouldn't fly on Concorde because it had never crashed, so nobody knew how safe it was. Not two months later, AF4590 happened.
They didn't learn a thing from the unsinkable Titanic did they
@@MrBrno Was it the same design team?
For flight 4590, the tank wasn’t punctured, the piece of tire actually bounced off the tank but because it was overfilled, the energy from that impact wasn’t dissipated and opened up the tank .
You might want to look into the 4590 crash as their was more to it than just the debris hit. First, the captain allowed way more fuel and luggage(6 tons)than was acceptable, changing the aircraft's center of gravity and requiring more speed and fuel burn during takeoff. Second, the day before 4590 took off Air France did some shoddy maintenance, they left off a wheel spacer which allowed the wheel to wander side to side and when the DC10 part punctured the fuel tank the Concorde's missing wheel spacer caused the aircraft to veer to the left, taking out a runway light. The debris from the destroyed runway light destroyed one engine. Third, the flight engineer made a huge mistake by turning off a good engine against procedures and without Captains permission. That engine was still providing thrust and could have saved the aircraft. Without that engine the Captain had to apply rudder to compensate, which reduced the wing's capacity to provide lift. If that engine would have been left running the aircraft would have continued to climb, plus the fire would have went out soon when the fuel was exhausted. The resulting climb would have missed the hotel, the pilot could have then turned the aircraft around, performed an emergency landing thus saving the aircraft + all passengers and crew.
One more thing, 4590 barely missed hitting a 747 that had the french president onboard.
The fuel leak altered the centre of gravity which reduced handling.
The fire began a slow disintegration of the wing reducing lift.
Even with 3 engines operating the plane would have still crashed.
I worked for a contracting company which serviced AF in the late 80's at IAD. The Concorde flights at that time were all specials and not regularly scheduled. But I spent quite a bit of time in literally every inch of the plane, from the cabin to the cockpit and especially the baggage holds. Those areas were quite different from other planes I worked on as the doors were on the bottom of the fuselage and in the case of the rear hold was at the bottom of the section that sloped up to the tail. The inside surfaces of the hold were always damp with fuel which made them slicker than snot. With the sloped floor and the door on the bottom you were forever slipping down toward the door and a considerable drop. There were nets that sectioned off the hold and you would use those for handholds as you loaded bags above them and then close them off. The area around the doorway was also closed off by the nets to keep bags from ending up on top of the door during flight. It was a very interesting plane to service and I am glad I got to do so but the gaping hole in the bottom was the stuff of nightmares. The front baggage hold was at least flat so you weren't always sliding toward certain injury.
A minor amendment for when you stated that in both incidents, pieces of tyre ruptured the fuel tanks. I recall that in the case of the July 2000 accident, pieces of tyre did strike the fuel tanks, but the rupture was caused by the internal pressure waves created by this. As a result, on all the other Concorde aircraft, the fuel tanks were strengthened by the addition of material such as Kevlar. If this additional material had been included after the 1979 incident, maybe the tanks could have withstood being struck by pieces of tyre in the later incident, preventing leaking fuel being ignited by an electrical short.
Some updates and modifications to the airframe and systems were discussed because of other incidents that occurred besides tire damage. Don't know exactly why they weren't implemented. A heavy price was finally paid in Paris. No aircraft is without faults. The key to survival is to address those faults quickly with robust fixes.
I never knew about this accident. Thank you for sharing. I saw the Concorde the first time it arrived in Toronto Pearson Airport. The noise of the jet🤯. I have also been inside a British Airways Concorde that is located in Seattle. Really cool!
I have a little connection to the Concorde that was interrupted by another series of tragic accidents for United Airlines. I worked for a defense contractor during Gulf War 1 in 1991. I was scheduled to fly on the Concorde out of New York city in March. I recall going through a series of cultural sensitivity training for the Middle East (Saudi Arabia) at the same time I was briefed on our flight on the Concorde I was supposed to take. The program manual I was given contained pictures and stories relayed from previous passengers had me very excited. Unfortunately, just 10 days before from my trip a 737 crashed in Colorado (UA 585). At that time no one knew the cause of the crash. Due to our involvement in the war terrorism was heavily suspected. So the liability of a loss to our group along with the accelerated peace talks between Iraq and the USA resulted in the cancellation of our trip. I was very disappointed.
And just like this Air France flight could've possibly prevented the Air France 4590 disaster we'd learn a few years later that the UA585 crash was caused by a sudden malfunction of the aircraft's rudder power control unit after UA 427 crashed under identical circumstance just three years later. Because of my connection to the UA585 crash I never forgot about the link so to see this Air France video is quite startling. For years I asked myself "why weren't the tires re-engineered?"
Alas the tyres (tires) were re-engineered, Concorde shed her thread from the tyre carcass on multiple occasions, and in strengthening the tyres, the resultant debris chunks were then potentially larger & heavier. What they failed to do was recertify the lower wingskin as compatible with the new & improved tyres..
Totally off-topic, but were you stationed at KKMC by any chance?
I went there for orientation before I went off SCUD-hunting.
@wjatube With the 737s was it that thing, that the rudder servo out of nothing "froze" in the opposite position, meaning the harder you (as pilot) intended to go left, the harder the plane turned right? That made two (or three) planes crash, and another one almost crash in less then 10 years.
You're right. This was a missed lesson for Concorde design that could have saved 4590 because this one had no loss of life but all the clues of how it could go south were there. I guess we were still too mesmerized with the magnificent feat of engineering
I already watched this 3 times from different channels like aircrash investigation but still gonna watch this again from here
According to another source on the one that crashed the other difference between this flight and the flight that crashed was that the captain of the crashed flight had ordered the fuel tanks filled to the top which was not normal procedure. Had they been filled as usual with an air space the tank wouldn't have burst when struck by the tire. The fuel had no where to go but out.
The tanks were full as the plane was theoretically at max takeoff weight. Actually there were extra bags on board, plus several tons of fuel were not burned off on the ground, so the plane was several tons overweight. Add to that some rough spots on the runway, plus a missing spacer between the wheels, and it was too much for the tires and tanks.
Great episode! You always make things easy to understand
Best analysis yet, MACI! You get better and better, finding something like this and cogently explaining the what ifs. Drawing the lines to the Paris crash is ace detective work.
I'm glad that you enjoy researching incidents and creating entertaining presentations, because I enjoy learning about incidents through entertaining presentations instead of intensive research. It works out well! Good luck with the algorithm 😁
My favorite line in the video: "That's like throwing one teenager overboard every second" 😅
A deflated tire is also the cause of an accident in Saudi Arabia where a DC 8 took off, it popped on takeoff and a fire caused it to crash
I absolutely love your channel. Brilliantly narrated and quality production. Thank you.
The Concorde, such a beautiful plane brought to be by a fine group of designers and technicians. The only supersonic passenger carrier to this day. Unfortunately it came out with many problems that were not correctly assessed at the time: The impact of the sonic boom, the change in the market needs and most of all, the operational costs in the midst of not one but three different oil crisis. Fourteen almost identical Concordes went into operation between 1976 and 1979, they were barely modified during all the time they were operative. In the meantime other aircrafts like the 747, 737, Dc-10, DC-9 (later MD-11 and MD-80) and Airbus 300 were overhauled ever 5 years or so. It became the weird guy, well maintained but as a relic. Nobody was interested or dared to take it one step further. It was clearly way ahead its of times, a prototype left at stage one. Therefore it comes as no surprise that major problems in this airplane were never addressed. Like many other ventures of the time it stalled before it could give the most of it. I can only immagine how the 2000's Concorde would have looked like if they had overhauled and redesigned it in the same way they did with those many other planes.
One more thing, the crash of flight 4590 has been the centre of disputes and argumentations for at least ten years, most of them inspired (dare I say) by insurance claims and political strategies more than facts. The pilot, maintenance workers (both from Air France and the Airport) were badly treated. The fact remains that this airplane had a flaw that was detected as you said, 21 years before and nobody cared enough to make the right and costly changes that it needed.
It's on its way back though... kinda!
@@skylined5534 Yes, I know. It’s the “kinda” that is kind of disturbing. The why’s and how’s if you know what I mean.
We'll see what Boom Supersonic comes up with. AA and United have already pre-ordered some of their Overture planes. To be built in Greensboro, NC.
Airlines quickly realised that carrying more people slowly was far more profitable than carrying few people quickly. Only the very wealthy would pay several times the ticket price in order to cut their journey time by a few hours. And the percentage of time saved was not in any case that much when you factor in the time spent getting to & from the airports, and the wait for security and other procesing in the airport before & after the flight. Added to which many people will in any case prefer to sleep through an 8 hour flight in a business class dreamliner seat that folds out flat and wide to make a comfortable and quiet bed than spending 3 hours in a relatively uncomfortable seat on a noisy aircraft.
"The only supersonic passenger carrier to this day" - yeah, if you ignore Tu-144 Soviets made before it. I like usual western arrogance and ignorance, thinking only the west counts...
Since the accident happened in Washington, how come the report is in French? Didn’t the NTSB investigate the accident?
I'm a retired pilot and thouroughly enjoy your videos. Just curious, do you fly yourself? Ever take any lessons?
He is flying various kinds of planes for a company called "Microsoft".
@@hmtest9024 the great thing about those aircraft is you can bury them into the ground, then wish all the pax a safe and enjoyable day while you pop yet another lid off a nice cold brew!🍻
@@hmtest9024 If he wants to try the real thing I'm sure there is a seat in a cockpit available for him.
So your a real pilot. That's very cool.
I remember where I was the date of the Concorde crash. I won’t yell friend I love hearing your histories and hearing how you honour each accident. Bill
Need to find a reason to comment! Love your content man. You're the only channel I try to make sure to like every video. Keep up these awesome aviation videos
"That's like throwing one teenager overboard every second!"
-Mini Air Crash Investigation
which is 270 hamsters/second
Wow - Like many othets listening here, I am an afficionado of Air crashes and tgis one is completely new to me, well Done. The similarities are just Tragic
Having seen reports about AF4590 this gave me the chills. If only...
Tombstone mentality. I've seen other documentaries about issues with Concorde (such as leaking fuel). It could have been modified. This is much like McDonald Douglas airplane (I think it was DC11) that had the cargo door open in flight twice: A gentleman's agreement was used instead of an air worthiness directive concerning the cargo door locking mechanism. Without forcing the issue a second crash happened.
Here I am, yelling at you in the comments for the algorithm! These are my favorite videos to do my hair to. Your voice is very calming and I love seeing the MSFS footage. Been here since 60k and so happy to see new vids from you :)
Here’s a comment to help the algorithm, and to thank you for the great job that you do!
Concorde was and still is the most graceful aircraft that has ever flown imo
And the loudest and most inefficient.
I know very little about aviation but I don't think one has to "know about the history of the Concorde" for any sort of fuel leak to... "set off alarms". Any fuel leak, on any aircraft, (on any vehicle and/or any piece of machinery really, a fuel leak should "set off alarms"). Also, and again, in my opinion based on very little knowledge about aviation, the investigation that followed this accident, not only "could have" but also "should have" prevented the accident that basically finished off the Concorde. According to your explanation of the investigation of this accident, the remote possibility of any type of fire, even more so a "fuel fire" that could cause catastrophic (or even slight) damage to a wing, needs to be addressed to the point of eliminating any possibility of it happening. Again, in my humble opinion, the way to attack this problem should have been or could have been, not only try to eliminate all sorts of ways for a fuel leak to ignite or better yet to eliminate the problem of tires coming apart and causing a fuel leak. Is it impossible to have tires on the Concorde that will not come apart under the stress, loads and speeds that the Concorde would put on tires.
I think that a tire that does not come apart even under improbable circumstances, is probably not outside of what today's tire technology can achieve. Or maybe it is the maintenance that is at fault. I mean, since the 1990s automobiles have sensors that will tell you not only when a tire is low on air pressure but also which tire is low in relation to the driver. I don't see why that can't be done with aircraft tires. Maybe it is done. Maybe those systems already exist on aircrafts. So the possibility of a crew of a commercial airliner trying to take off with a low or flat tire, should not exist. If the problem is debris on the runway, then airport crews are not doing enough to ensure runways are "debris free". If an airport does not have enough people to check runways for debris...then they should hire more people.
I think accidents like this can be avoided and almost eliminated.
But greed sometimes gets in the way.
🤔🇨🇺🇺🇸
Mic quality has gotten way better and the narration has improved a lot as well. Long way to go mate.
I think the narration is excellent - in fact, one of the best on the internet. The content is fabulous, too. I never miss an episode.
@@mikemoreno4469
Same! His channel is excellent!
Dude, nice video, but 1 point of slight criticism - sort your Yaw channel. I have noticed in multiple videos plane veers left and right quite badly). Keep it along centerline) Keep doing good job!
Ok, this was a serious incident...but the comparison to throwing teenagers overboard? Cracked me up.
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Great stuff @Mini Air Crash Investigation. I did not know about this one, it's a shame that they didn't put the Kevlar plates to stop the debris punching through the wing after this incident. It may be a tedious link but this and AF4590 both had an American twist. Best regards to all.
Dude, good job! Be careful how many “like”s you throw in though! An under-inflated tire means the flight engineer didn’t do a proper walk-around.
Let's get MACI to 200,000 as quickly as possible. Notify everyone you know to subscribe. I've been eagerly anticipating the next live-stream since I myself became a subscriber. We can do it!
The last part gives goosebumps; the potential source of fire identified by the report being the actual source for the fatal crash of the other concorde. This kind of engineering is what we should strive for I guess.
bruh...
how could they just ignore the fact that the fuel could catch fire!?
if they would have changed the tanks there, we may would still have that beauty flying today
Because all sources of ignition (except for the wiring in the wheel well) were either well behind the tanks (afterburners) or self-extinguishing (fuel flying into the intake of an engine would flood the engine, solving the problem automatically by stalling the engine - besides the inside of the engine is the only part of a plane that is made to handle fires ;) ). Since fuel doesn't burn nearly fast enough in free air for the fire to work its way back towards the fuel tanks, even if ignition happened, it would be behind the wing, leading to no significant issues, as long as the plane was moving, and when it would've slowed down enough to cause an issue during landing, firetrucks would have been able to extinguish it, before becoming a serious issue.
Seeing the images of the wounded jet in the air made me feel chills, not going to lie
I know what you mean, it made me cry!
Interesting.
Some years ago I was lucky enough to be shown over Concorde. The engineer mentioned that the hydraulics weren't to his liking, being based on a much earlier design, only two circuits.
He also mentioned that an AF Concorde had made a very heavy landing in Africa, and AF had been unable to fix the bend in the airframe so that it would fly straight again. No, I don't have any reference material for that.
These videos are great. They provide relevant information without being too technical.
I am happy you're an Aero nerd. 😀f
Yes, I kept thinking of the 2000 SST tire burst and fire, with loss of lives
"What if" they made the changes that were made after the 2000 accident before the 2000 accident. Just pondering.
Years ago I read an article that said that AirFrance didn't change the tyres on their Concorde's as frequently as British Airways did on their fleet.
Keep up the research and hard work. It’s paying off.
Counting the concord that crashed by my count there have been two more incidents where a concord was close to disaster. I’m beginning to think that luck was the only reason why there weren’t three crashes. Thanks for the video.
It's horrible to think that they saw a preview of the Concorde crash. If they had checked things more closely the crash wouldn't have happened 21 years later. As usual it takes multiple deaths to get airlines to really look at things.
If the accident had been worse, they probably would've stopped the Concorde flights back then. I would've redesigned the bogies to handle more tires, so the weight would be better distributed. Also probably would've considered space shuttle plates below the fuel tanks, or some kind of armor.
Armour yes. Increased bogies no. Extra weight and potentially a huge redesign. The tyres were the thing requiring a huge redesign.
I'm in the midst of a course in Reliability-Centered Maintenance for aircrafts right now. I agree; if only the 1979 report did something to address that one possibility of hitting the specific fuel tank + electrical short circuit, likely a design change somewhere to attempt to reduce the chances of occurrence (was that done? You didn't mention in your video)... But with design changes come additional maintenance tasks which cost labour & materials (+ risk of infant mortality rate, if it's a completely new component design addition), as well as risk of human error that comes with additional maintenance.
Back then (early 1980s), MSG-3 & RCM maintenance planning methodologies were still very new concepts and unlikely to have been considered. So it seems, back then, if the possibility % of failure occurrence was low, they didn't (pls help me verify) do anything to address it, instead of also taking into account the criticality/consequence should the failure actually take place.
We also know from the 2000 accident that the follow-up design changes to prevent the catastrophic reoccurrence proved to be too economically unsustainable, which resulted in the entire Concorde fleet being pulled out from active service altogether.
[I'm leaving my comment open-ended to invite discussion with anyone keen to also put in their 2-cents]
I think it's quite possible that if this jet had crashed as seriously as the Paris disaster, Concorde's career would simply have been even shorter.
I heard that BA implemented some physical modifications in response to this incident that Air France did not implement on its aircraft, notably some strategic reinforcement to the wing tanks and deflector guards on the landing gear above the wheels. Interesting to investigate if a BA Concorde would still have been vulnerable in the 2000 circumstances?
Flat tire = BAD MAINTENANCE! Also, it seems that the entire system was inadequately designed. The tires were too light for the weight they had to carry. The whole thing is a simple case of the designers doing a bad job and never being taken to task for it.
"Heaven help us, we're in the hands of engineers!" - Dr. McCoy, Star Trek Original Series
How did I not know about this! Surely it must have had media coverage at the time. And yes, there are alarming similarities here. I'd like to think that these days a 'slight possibility' would be taken seriously enough to have that possibility removed from the equation.
Thanks for this.
The main gears on the Concorde has 8 Michelin NZG tires size 47X15.75-22 with a pressure rating of 232 PSI
The weight of the Concorde is 173,500 lbs
In comparison a passenger car tires pressure rating is between 32 and 44 PSI and semi truck tires max psi is usually 110 psi.
Love this content. Thanks for all the hard work, and sharing.
I wish they coulda fixed the problem b4 the fire happened, besides the lives that woulda been saved, maybe more of us coulda had the chance to fly in the Concorde.
Accidents that required n holes in the cheese to line up have almost invariably been preceded by at least one incident where n-1 holes did so. Sometimes, lessons are learned, sometimes, not.
Great vlog as always! Keep up the good work! An accident i Norway in march 1987 of a SAS DC-9 41. The captain pulled the speed break to far while still in the air. Both the engines almost fell off.
i love the angle at 1:54. the bending of shaking. awesome.
Great video as always.
So, Air France yet again. Their record of crashes AND near misses is absolutely appalling.
Yes, not their fault on this one maybe, but you can’t say that about most of the others.
Fantastic video!
What if...
You said it well. What I don't understand is why they did not reinforce the wing underneath. The tires were a problem on the Concorde because of the high takeoff- and landing speed, around 400km/h instead of around 250 km/h on non- supersonic jets.
YAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! There. I yelled at you, as you asked. My neighbors seem quite perplexed, though...
Want me to yell at you? I LOVE YOUR CHANNEL, KEEP IT UP, BUDDY! 😉
Fascinating . Never knew about this incident .
ANOTHER GREAT VIDEO! - there, you asked for us yelling at you on here. ;)
Fascinating. Thank you.
Concorde is one my sweet spots! I would give a lot to see that plane flying! Even better if I would be a passenger!
But I never heard about this accident! Thank you for sharing!
It's beyond frustrating to learn that everything needed to prevent 4590 crash was known for so many years! All the data is in the report you based on! Every single bit! Just nobody connected the dots to fix the weak point!
I wasn't aware that the correct unit of fuel measurement is a teenager.
To fill my fuel tank, from empty, is approximately 2.
Those fuel tanks and wings should have been reinforced with Kevlar from day one
As a commercial pilot myself, i absolutely love your videos but why is your audio always so quiet? Even on full volume you're a lot quieter than most other content makers. Anyone else notice this?
YES! I most certainly have noticed that as well...
Please do a follow-up about tire failures and their consequences. Was the Concorde the only plane with severe tire problems, or does it happen frequently? Do most tire failures end up with perforated fuel tanks and ruptured hydraulic tubes? Is the VR speed of a Concorde a lot higher than in other commercial airplanes, and are the Concorde tires particularly small or otherwise designed to work with a more critical workload?
Flight 054 didn't need to be worse.
They successfully identified a weakness and simply didn't address it. This was a result of investigations not being conservative enough, and I think if even a slightly more careful person(s) was in charge of what changes were implemented, Concorde would have been spared.
All they had to do was move a wire harness away from tanks 5 and 8 and flight 4590 probably wouldn't have caught fire and possibly made a safe landing as this flight did. For a few ounces of copper more...
~2 tons of fuel just to taxi, this was never a sustainable machine~
*yelling at you in the comments about how good your channel is*
Great little documentary. Do you happen to have a list of all the things that needed repairing?
Now I want to yell about those rich people aboard. Turns out they don't really get higher priorities, more thorough pre-flight inspection included, despite the money they have. Great job for bring it here!
I know we can see this clearly from 20/20 hindsight. But for all it's technological marvel, the Concorde was rather disturbingly a disaster waiting to happen that any rational review would not or should not have let near regular commercial passenger airline service. Looking at this report you can see their fixes were missing the forest for the trees. adjustments to tire pressures. Cleaning the runways etc. The core problem with the Concorde was not it's incredible high speed performance. It was it's dangerously problematic low speed performance. It required such a high takeoff speed and such a high rate of acceleration that there was effectively no period from the moment of throttle up that an abort was possible within any of the commercial runways the aircraft used. What was the average time to V1 on a Concorde takeoff run? 2-3 seconds? There was no time for human decision making. The military largely got around this problem because most of their supersonic aircraft were and are a fraction of the weight of the Concorde. It's why there have been very few Supersonic heavy Bombers. And those that were built were extremely limited in their basing. And they were mostly impractical without in flight refueling.
I always wonder what sort of jets we'd have nowadays if the Concorde never got grounded... I wish they'd taken this more seriously...
We would have the same jets we have now. Concorde being grounded had nothing to do with future jets.
I love your pronounciations. I keep imagining you saying “rice crispie treats” and smiling with my eyes closed.
Probably too hard to retrofit but doing something like fenders over the tires to shield the aircraft from shrapnel when one or more blow could have also been a good design change in response to this.
A rectangular bar was mounted in front of the two forward wheels, to deflect tyre debris
Another good one!
I know what you mean... "What if" !! I would be very pissed if I lose a limb because a damm piece of tire debris pierced through it while taking off on an airplane, but If that unfortunate incident, but if that leads to a more through investigation and 21 years later while seeing the news I found out that eventually me loosing arm ended up saving 75+ lives.... then it was not in vain.
5:21 'That's like throwing one teenager overboard every second.' That sounds like a very usual app...
Concorde is known for 3 things: Speed, Beauty, and *finally* the crash at Paris LaBourget.
I never heard this story, thank you for breaking it down and sharing it.
Great video I forgot how great you have been doing with your content
Both informative and entertaining as always. Thanks MACI.
I'm YELLING!
Great video
Can't believe the similarities with flight 4590... 😔
YOUR VIDEOS ARE GREAT! THANK YOU FOR ALL THE AWESOME CONTENT!
(did I do it right?)
The fact of tire failure that almost turned disastrous reminds me of flight 2120
Chew on that TH-cam algorithm. Great informative video.