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Concorde Crashes Into Hotel Outside Paris
Investigators have recovered both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the Air France Concorde that crashed Tuesday near Paris, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground, according to CNN. France's transportation minister called for Air France's five remaining Concordes to be grounded after the crash of Concorde Flight AF4590, the first for the supersonic jet. British Airways, which owns the other seven Concordes, grounded its two remaining flights for Tuesday night. Flight AF4590, which was en route to New York, crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff and slammed into a hotel restaurant. All the passengers were German except for one American and two Danes, Air France said. The plane had been chartered by a German tour company and was carrying tourists to New York to join a cruise ship. The jet crashed at 4:44 p.m. local time, leaving the 72-room Relais Bleus hotel in the town of Gonesse in flames. Two people on the ground said they saw the jet, with its left wing in flames, veer sharply to the left as if to avoid crashing into Gonesse. On Monday, British Airways said it had found cracks in the wings of some of its supersonic aircraft but said there was no danger to passengers, although it had grounded one of the planes. Air France also had reported finding hairline cracks in the wings.
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