25 Years Before Air India Ahmedabad Plane Crash, A Concorde Takeoff That Changed Flying Forever

NDTV

16-06-2025

When the tailless swan began its ascent to the sky, people on the ground would routinely crane their necks to look up. It was a sight no one wanted to miss. The Concorde, an aviation and engineering marvel, was a vision like no other. The noise was deafening. The liftoffs were spectacular. The flames that shot out of the afterburners on its jet engines were eye-watering.
Till one July afternoon, which grounded the metal swan for a while first, and then forever.
The Crash Of Air France Flight 4590
It was 2.38 pm on July 25, 2000, and a Concorde had just taken off from Runway 26 of the Charles de Gaulle international airport in Paris. Air France Flight 4590 had been chartered by a German tour company for its clients, a group of well-heeled travellers who were to board a luxury cruise ship in New York. The ship, named the Deutschland, was to sail the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, to Ecuador over a period of 16 days.
No one from that ill-fated Concorde made it to the cruise. In less than 90 seconds since it took off from Paris Charles de Gaulle, the airplane dived nose-down into a hotel, burst into flames, and ended up taking the lives of all of the 109 people onboard and 4 people on the ground.
Four days after the crash of an Air India Dreamliner, AI 171, in Ahmedabad; today, the crash of Air France Flight 4590 feels like a chilling throwback. Both the planes took off and crashed in less than two minutes of takeoff. The scenes from Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025, are starkly similar to the scenes from outside Paris on July 25, 2000.
What Happened To Flight 4590
Investigations into the crash of Flight 4590 helped condense the sequence of events on that July afternoon.
A strip of metal fell off a Continental Airlines DC-10 when it was taking off from the same runway, Runway 26, five minutes before Flight 4590's takeoff
The Concorde ran over the metal strip
A tyre blew out
A large fragment of rubber from the tyre struck a fuel tank on the underside of the wing
The impact led to the tank rupturing from within
The fully-fuelled tank of the Concorde ignited, most likely from an electrical arc in the landing gear wiring
The resulting fire caused the engines of the Concorde to fail
When the Concorde took off from Runway 26 of Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, the pilot knew that he had an engine on fire. However, it was too late to abort takeoff. The plane had developed too much power by then to halt its takeoff. The exchanges between the control tower and the pilot of the ill-fated Concorde were terse, and over before anything could be ascertained.
The pilot was told that the flames were spreading when he said that he was going to try turning towards Le Bourget airport, a minute's flight away from where the Concorde then was.
That was not to happen. The plane banked and went into a stall, plunged towards the ground and struck a wooden building, exploded in a ball of flames and killed all its 100 passengers, 9 crew members, and 4 people who were at hotel Hotelissimo.
The Pride Of Europe
That day in 2000 was the first time a Concorde had crashed in its near-25-year flying history. The state-of-the-art aircraft was a joint achievement by the French and the British and a matter of pride for both the countries. For Europe, it signalled that two countries could work together on an aviation project that was the envy of the world.
The Concorde was a symbol of France's high-tech performance too. It was the most ambitious supersonic airliner ever developed. It could reach speeds that were a little more than Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. So, imaginably, the sonic boom was unimaginable. Such was the noise of a Concorde in the air, that it could do only trans-oceanic flights. The noise restricted the Concorde to flights, largely, over the Atlantic.
The initial consortium saw interest from buyers all over the world. The market prediction was 350 and the initial orders went up to 100. Air India too had initially ordered two Concordes in a non-binding option, which were cancelled eleven years later. The development costs shot through the sky and the concept of supersonic travel, while brilliant as an idea, turned out to be a disaster commercially.
A Guzzler In The Sky
By the time the Concorde began commercial flights, there were only two airlines interested in flying it: Air France and British Airways, the national carriers of the countries whose project it was. Only a total of 20 aircraft were ever made, out of which, 14 took flight commercially; seven each for Air France and British Airways.
It was a vanity project that kept the airlines from grounding the Concorde even though the aircraft never really became a financial hit. It ended up being the transport choice for the ultra-rich, from names in business to show-business, who made it their business to tote around transatlantic travel in under four hours. For a regular commercial jet back then, the journey across the Atlantic took seven to eight hours and supersonic travel came at a price. At the turn of the century, a round trip on the Concorde would cost US$11,000.
The Grounding Of The Swan
The crash of Flight 4590 came accompanied with shock. It became the turning point for the Concorde because when it went down, the plane took with it some of France's prestige too.
Air France grounded its fleet of seven Concordes right after the crash. British Airways followed suit the following month. The aircraft temporarily resumed service but in the post-9/11 world, with flying in general becoming a bit of a necessity more than luxury, the Concorde saw fewer and fewer travellers willing to shell out astronomical prices for a ticket.
The Concorde was finally retired in 2003.
A Wistful Memory
Today, 18 of the 20 Concordes ever built are in museums; one was scrapped, and another was Flight 4950.
The aviation landscape is different today. Crashes are still not all a thing of the past, even though technology has made leaps in the way commercial jetliners take off and land. Since 2003, every few years there are reports here and there about prototypes recreating the marvel that was the Concorde.
For now, the swashbuckling swan remains on the ground; and serious supersonic travel, a wistful memory.