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Britain and France Suspend Concorde Licence
British and French aviation authorities suspended Concorde's certificate of airworthiness on Wednesday, casting renewed doubt over the future of the world's only supersonic airliner.
Sir Malcolm Field, chairman of Britain's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), said the suspension would remain in effect "until appropriate measures are taken to ensure an appropriate level of safety as far as tyre destruction is concerned."
France's civil aviation authority followed suit later in the day.
The suspensions came just over three weeks since an Air France Concorde crashed near Paris, killing 113 people.
According to preliminary conclusions from the investigation, the "primary cause" of the July 25 crash was a burst tyre.
British Airways (BA), which operates seven of the jets, remained bullish, saying it would resume Concorde flights as soon as possible.
The CAA took the measure after receiving a recommendation from the French and British investigators probing the crash.
BA and Air France are the only airlines in the world to operate Concordes. The French airline now has five of them.
Air France grounded all Air France Concorde jets immediately after the crash on the orders of French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot.
But BA only stopped Concorde services for a day after the accident before pledging complete confidence in the jet and resuming a full schedule of flights.
However on Tuesday, acting in anticipation of the CAA's decision to ground the aircraft, the British airline said it too was halting Concorde flights.
BA said Wednesday it was even considering a multi-million pound refit of the aircraft's cabin.
But it was unclear on Wednesday how long the modifications would take or if Concorde's operators were willing to foot the bill for getting the ageing jet back in the air.
"It will be a finely-balanced financial question whether to do these modifications or not," said Kieran Daly, editor of aviation website Air Transport Intelligence.
Mike Bell, head of the CAA's design and production standards division, said it could be "months rather than weeks" before the necessary work is completed.
The CAA suspended the licence because, under certification guidelines, a burst tyre alone should not be enough to cause such an accident, Field told a news conference in London.
The letter containing the recommendation, submitted to the CAA and its French counterpart by investigators, states that the tyre burst on take-off, "probably because it ran over a piece of metal."
Fragments from the burst tyre led to the rupture of at least one fuel tank and a "major fuel leak," according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.
The leaking fuel caught light, resulting in an intense fire, followed by a loss of thrust in one and then two engines.
Field on Wednesday defended the CAA's decision to wait until now to ground the aircraft.
"We looked very carefully at the time of the accident and reached the conclusion that there was no justifiable reason to revoke the certificate," he said.
"We maintained our position that until we received the first evidence from the joint investigations team, we were happy for them (BA) to continue operations."
However, several aviation industry figures in Britain suggested BA's Concorde fleet was safer than that of Air France and grounding might not have been necessary.
The British pilots union said it had "very real doubts" about the decision because BA had introduced safety modifications while Air France had not.
An aviation industry analyst, who did not want to be identified, also suggested that the British airline maintained its Concorde fleet to a higher standard than its French counterpart.
The aviation authorities may have been lobbied to ground Concorde to help Air France save face, he said.
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