PARIS, July 26 -- Air France said Wednesday that the ill-fated Concorde's reverse thruster on engine number two was found to be defective after a trip from New York on July 24.
The engine was the same one that caught fire before crashing during take-off on Tuesday and the one which the aircraft's crew wanted fixed before their New York-bound flight.
"After returning from JFK July 24, it became apparent that the reverse thruster on number two engine wasn't working," said an Air France spokesman. "A replacement to make the repairs wasn't available in the parts warehouse. The plane could have left without the repairs, in line with practices authorized by the manufacturer. But seeing that the flight was full, the captain requested that the non-functioning piece be replaced before the flight departed. The part was immediately taken from the Concorde held in reserve."
Meanwhile, the airline said that the plane's crew had asked for "technical intervention" before the flight took off for New York. Air France also said that Concord Flight AF4590, the crash of which killed 113 people, had been delayed as one of its engines was being worked on. A part of the reverse thrust mechanism was replaced before the flight at the captain's request.
As the plane was taking off, the pilot reportedly told the control tower, "Problem; failure with engine two," CNN reported. The control tower, in turn, told him that his engine was on fie, CNN said.
Meanwhile, investigators returned to the scene of the crash at first light Wednesday, working to determine why the supersonic aircraft plowed into the ground.
The aircraft had just taken off from Charles De Gaulle International Airport Tuesday afternoon en route to New York with flames shooting out of the left engines. The plane, according to witnesses, rotated left and nearly inverted before hitting the ground in a ball of flames. A total of 109 people on the plane and four people on the ground were killed.
French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot told French radio: "This may take two or three days. Obviously, if the decryption is not sufficiently clear, I expect a certification process for the engines to be carried out again before flights are resumed."
According to the British Broadcasting Corp., the victims bodies, most of which were badly burned, were being taken to a makeshift morgue in a theater in the town of Gonesse, the town north of Paris where the crash occurred. Relatives of the victims were to be met by De Gaulle Airport where a crisis center was established.
Air France officials said most of the 47 men, 50 women and three children who were passengers on the plane were German tourists flying to New York to board the luxury cruise ship M.S. Deutschland for a 14-day cruise that was to have taken them to the Galapagos Islands. The passenger list included an American, and a number of Danes and French. The crew of nine was entirely French. Four people on the ground were killed when the plane slammed into the Hotel Hotelissimo, in Gonesse.
The presidentof Air France, Jean-Cyril Spinetta, who witnessed the disaster from his office, said the aircraft "had a motor in flames as it was taking off." Spinetta said the first fatal accident for the Concorde since entering service in 1976 was caused by "an engine problem" and was not linked to the recent discovery of hairline cracks in the wings of four of the other Concordes.
The plane took off shortly after 5 p.m. Capt. Sid Hare, a pilot for Federal Express, who was in an airport hotel, saw the Concorde take off with flames trailing from 200 to 300 feet behind the left engines of the four-engine aircraft. The pilot was having trouble gaining altitude. Then the nose pitched up almost vertical, the plane stalled and then crashed, he said.
"It was a sickening sight when it hit, just a huge fireball like a mini-atomic bomb," he said.
French President Jacques Chirac was heading from the airport after his arrival from the Group of Eight summit in Japan. He has said he would attend a memorial service for the crash victims Wednesday near the crash site.
German investigators Tuesday night flew to France to join officials from the Bureau d'Enquetes des Accidents, the French equivalent of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, to start the investigation into the causes of the crash. For a start, they were looking for clues among smoldering wreckage strewn on an area about the size of a football field.
The Concorde has an almost impeccable 30-year record of safety. However, news of hairline cracks in the wings of several of Air France and British Airways Concordes had raised questions about the condition of the planes, which have been in service for 24 years.
Air France officials stressed Tuesday that the crashed plane had been overhauled recently and had shown no signs of cracks.
Sometimes called the "bird of paradise" because of its exotic form, the Concorde travels at twice the speed of sound and crosses the Atlantic Ocean in about 3hours. The craft, however, is a rich person's means of air transport, with the New York-Paris round trip fare costing $9,000.
