Latest news with #Flight4590
NDTV
16-06-2025
- General
- NDTV
25 Years Before Air India Ahmedabad Plane Crash, A Concorde Takeoff That Changed Flying Forever
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.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
San Diego-bound flight from Atlanta blows tire, causing engine damage: FAA
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A San Diego-bound Alaska Airlines aircraft sustained engine damage Thursday after blowing a tire during takeoff in Atlanta, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The flight, which had more than 170 people on board between passengers and crew, continued on to its destination despite the damage to the right tire of the left strut and adjacent engine, per an FAA preliminary incident notice. In a statement, a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines said their flight and maintenance technicians determined it was safe to continue to San Diego, but declared an emergency landing at San Diego International Airport as a precaution to ensure additional support was available. The aircraft, a Boeing 737-900, landed without incident and was taken out of service by the airline shortly after for maintenance. San Diego's airport now accepts mobile drivers' licenses at TSA security The extent of the damage to the aircraft is unknown at this time, as well as what caused the tire to pop. 'While this incident is a rare occurrence, our flight crews train extensively to safely manage through many scenarios. We apologize for any concern this experience may have caused,' the Alaska Airlines spokesperson added. Aircraft tire bursts are relatively rare, but are more likely during takeoff than in landing, according to the aircraft engineering company Aeropeep. The probability of a tire burst as a plane is lifting off is about one in 10,000, as opposed to one in 100,000 in landing. Redundancy in landing equipment and strict maintenance of the aircraft can help with managing blowouts, but Aeropeep notes it can still pose a safety risk to its occupants as it can lead to bigger issues. This was the case in the deadly crash of Air France Flight 4590 back in 2000, which killed 113 people. The French government's investigation into the incident concluded the crash was caused by a rupture of the fuel tank after the plane ran over debris, triggering a tire blowout. With this safety risk in mind, pilots say flights that experience a blown tire during takeoff will either abort or return to land for an inspection once it becomes known a tire is compromised. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
