Engine Repair to Concorde Cited in Crash Inquiry

The Air France Concorde that crashed and killed 113 people here underwent preflight repair to the port-side engine that caught fire on takeoff, airline officials disclosed Wednesday.

As French forensic experts began the gruesome task of identifying the remains, President Jacques Chirac headed an ecumenical ceremony for the victims in this Paris suburb, where the Concorde plummeted into a small hotel.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder set the bereaved tone for his shocked nation at a memorial service in his hometown, Hanover, for the 96 Germans who died aboard the supersonic jet en route to a Caribbean cruise.

Schroeder noted in an emotion-choked voice that “they were torn from life at a moment of joyful anticipation.”

In its first reconstruction of events leading up to the tragedy, Air France said the doomed plane had arrived in Paris on Monday with a faulty thrust reverser in its No. 2 engine--the same engine that burst into flames Tuesday.

A spare part was unavailable in the airline’s warehouse, and the captain of Flight 4590 to New York was told that the manufacturer’s guidelines allowed for the plane to take off without the thrust reverser, which helps slow the aircraft on landing.

But Capt. Christian Marty insisted on the repair, and the flight was delayed for half an hour while a spare part was scavenged from another Concorde and installed in the waiting aircraft.

The flight was further delayed by the late arrival of some passengers’ luggage and was finally cleared for takeoff at 4:41 p.m. on an overcast afternoon. Fifty-six seconds later, traffic controllers warned the pilot of fire at the rear of the plane, according to transcripts of conversations between the pilot and controllers.

Marty reported the failure of the just-repaired No. 2 engine and, seconds later, air traffic controllers said the fire was spreading. The pilot replied that he could no longer stop the aircraft because the engines’ thrust was too strong. He said he was heading southwest for nearby Le Bourget airport rather than return to attempt an emergency landing at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

His efforts proved in vain. The beaked plane reared in the sky, spewing flames from its tail, rolled and stalled before plummeting, according to witnesses. It crashed at 4:44 p.m. in Gonesse, a few miles short of Le Bourget, killing all 109 passengers and crew members on board and four people on the ground.

Pilot Apparently Unable to Brake

A French prosecutor leading the judicial investigation into the crash said engine failure appeared to be the likely cause of the disaster.

“The pilot reported a failure on the No. 2 motor, and it seems that he was no longer able to brake, given that the thrust was too great,” deputy public prosecutor Elisabeth Senot said, noting the “malfunction in engine No. 2 during the takeoff phase.”

She said there was no indication of sabotage.

The crash did not appear to be linked to cracks found recently in Concordes belonging to British Airways and Air France. The jet had been inspected and deemed free of the cracks that caused British Airways to ground one of its seven Concordes before the crash.

Air France has grounded its five remaining Concordes until the crash investigation is complete. British Airways canceled its two Concorde flights Tuesday but resumed supersonic service Wednesday.

However, Air France may resume Concorde service “in the next few days,” Transportation Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot told a news conference Wednesday.

Gayssot said information from the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders was expected to be analyzed sometime today to give investigators a better picture of what might have happened.

The two airlines deploying Concordes may be able to ease any fears that the hairline cracks had anything to do with Tuesday’s accident if the data and voice recorders validate the engine problems.

Besides the 96 Germans, there were two Danes, an Austrian and an American retiree on board. All nine crew members were French.

Four people on the ground died when the plane plunged into a small hotel, but the toll there could have been much worse. Forty-five Polish tourists staying at Hotelissimo had left earlier to go sightseeing and returned after the crash to find the building obliterated.

Throughout a day that dawned in a gray drizzle that only added to the misery of the scorched accident scene, medical examiners and investigators combed the incinerated rubble and were able to identify 81 of the victims. Those remains--still relatively intact after the crash and conflagration--were moved to a morgue in nearby Paris.

Relatives of the victims began arriving on special Air France flights and were taken to a secure location at Charles de Gaulle Airport, where a team of German-speaking grief counselors was on hand to comfort them. Police erected barriers around the crisis center in a terminal known as T-9 to keep the kin separated from journalists and other travelers at the busy airport.

Several of the tearful relatives gathered with Chirac for a brief memorial nearby and heard messages of condolence from around the world, including one from Pope John Paul II. The grieving relatives, escorted by Air France officials and German diplomats, could be seen comforting each other amid the official expressions of sympathy and sorrow.

The airline offered transportation and accommodation to relatives who wanted it, said German Embassy spokesman Joachim Boettscher.

Germany ‘Shaken and Speechless’

At the Hanover memorial, Schroeder described Germany as “shaken and speechless.”

“The brute force of sudden death shocks and confounds us,” Roman Catholic Bishop Josef Homeyer told mourners at an interdenominational chapel at the Expo 2000 fairgrounds.

Other German leaders also attended the service, and Interior Minister Otto Schily ordered flags across Germany to be flown at half-staff.

Gunter Pleuger, the German Foreign Ministry official in charge of the crisis response team, confirmed in Berlin that family members of the crash victims had all been notified. He declined to say when or where a list of the dead would be published. Air France likewise did not issue a list of the passengers.

Unlike most luxury Concorde flights that cater to the rich and famous, the German charter appeared to be carrying mostly upper-middle-class vacationers on a pricey holiday package.

As the immediate shock of the disaster wore off, Germans sought to honor the victims with private memorials across the country, including one planned today in the Baltic Sea port of Neustadt, home base of Peter Deilmann Reederei, the cruise line that organized the Concorde charter.

Among the victims was a six-member Munich family, including two children, and 13 friends from the western town of Moenchengladbach who have vacationed together as a group for years. Four others in the group took an earlier flight.

Germany’s ARD television identified another victim as Angelika Stuehn, a nightclub owner from Cologne whose husband gave her the cruise as a present for her 60th birthday. “She visited me last week and was telling me about the trip. And that it has ended in this way--it’s unbelievable,” Stuehn’s friend Gerda Hamacher recalled tearfully.

“We are still in shock,” Peter Deilmann, owner of the $100-million-a-year cruise line, told journalists.

Overbooking Saved Lives of 33 People

Thirty-three of the German passengers he had booked on the Deutschland, a luxury liner headed for a Caribbean cruise, were unable to get seats on the Concorde and had traveled ahead of the rest on other aircraft--an overbooking problem that saved their lives.

The Foreign Ministry said the passengers included 49 men, 47 women and three children, but it provided no further details except their state of residence. The 100th victim was the U.S. citizen, the only passenger not bound for the cruise.

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Christian Retzlaff of The Times’ Berlin Bureau contributed to this report.