Continental Airlines to appeal Concorde crash judgement

A court in Pontoise fined the airline €200,000 (£169,394) and ordered it to pay Concorde’s operator Air France €1m in damages following the trial, which ended in May 2010.

Welder John Taylor was given a fine and a 15-month suspended prison sentence while his former supervisor Stanley Ford and three French officials were found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

The crash killed all 109 passengers and crew and four people on the ground when the airliner burst into flames shortly after take-off from Charles de Gaulle airport in July 2000.

In 2004, French investigation agency BEA concluded that the crash was caused by a metal fragment that fell onto the runway four minutes earlier from a Continental DC-10 plane bound for Houston, and burst the Concorde’s tyres, rupturing the fuel tank and setting the plane on fire.

In a statement, Continental Airlines said: ‘Portraying the metal strip as the cause of the accident and Continental and one of its employees as the sole guilty parties shows the determination of the French authorities to shift attention and blame away from Air France, which was government-owned at the time and operated and maintained the aircraft, as well as from the French authorities responsible for the Concorde’s airworthiness and safety.