French investigators raised questions Friday about the maintenance of a Continental Airlines jet that rolled down the runway minutes before an Air France Concorde crashed on takeoff here in July.
In their latest report on the crash after six months of research, the investigating agency, B.E.A., said that the most likely reason for the crash, which killed 113 people, remains a piece of metal that fell from the Continental plane, a DC-10 jumbo jet headed for Newark International Airport in New Jersey.
When the supersonic Concorde took off five minutes later on the same runway, the strip of metal sliced one of the plane’s tires, investigators believe, setting off a chain of events that ended in a fiery crash just outside Paris.
The findings on the maintenance of the DC-10 could prove important. Air France has sued Continental, contending that under the civil aviation code an airline is responsible for damage caused by pieces that fall off its aircraft.
The investigators said that experts had examined the cowling of the fan reverser on the DC-10. Their report pointed to shortcomings in repair work on the plane. “The level of wear on the strip adjacent to the missing strip was greatly in excess of the tolerance permitted by the manufacturer,” the report said.
Comparing a similar strip to the one that dropped off, the investigators noted that “in comparison with an original part, this strip was too long.”
The strip found on the runway at Charles de Gaulle Airport appeared to have been attached to the DC-10 during repairs in Houston 16 days before the Concorde disaster, the report said.
In reply, Continental said there was “nothing new or, for that matter, critical about Continental Airlines in this report.” The company said again that it could not be sure that the strip on the runway had come from one of its planes, as the airline “had not been given access to the strip.”
The new report was issued weeks after French and British authorities said that British Airways, Air France and manufacturers of the Concorde were making progress on steps that could allow the SSTs to fly again. They have been grounded since shortly after the crash.
France grounded the jets immediately after the crash. British Airways kept its planes flying until shortly before the jets’ airworthiness certificate was withdrawn in mid-August. Authorities in London have said that tests on fuel tank liners are expected to begin in February on British Concorde planes.
