A STUDY of Concorde鈥檚 engines carried out two years ago found 55 鈥渟ignificant
risks鈥� inherent in their design. Air France and British Airways, the two
airlines that operate Concorde, are halfway through a programme to eliminate
these risks. A spokeswoman for British Airways says: 鈥淚t鈥檚 part of an ongoing
programme of improvements.鈥�
But 快猫短视频 has learned that some of the risks identified
could lead to catastrophic problems including uncontrolled fire and multiple
engine failure. Both figured in last month鈥檚 crash outside Paris when a blazing
Air France Concorde smashed into a hotel two minutes after taking off from
Charles de Gaulle airport, killing 113 people.
The cause of the disaster is still unknown. But one theory being considered
by accident investigators is that debris from a burst tyre was sucked into the
engines. The debris may have caused the engine to break up, which led to the
fire. It is not clear whether any of the 55 risks identified in the study would
have made the effects of tyre ingestion worse.
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British Airways commissioned the risk analysis of Concorde鈥檚 Olympus 593
engines because it wanted to keep the 30-year-old supersonic plane flying until
2012. The risk analysis was done by the airline in conjunction with Rolls-Royce,
which built Concorde鈥檚 engines, and BMT Reliability Consultants of Fareham,
Hampshire.
The study looked at all the problems that could arise with the engines and
examined the history of previous failures to calculate the odds of each event.
It divided the consequences into five classes鈥攔anging from trivial to
鈥渃atastrophic鈥�. The latter included 鈥渘on-containment of high-energy debris,
engine separation, uncontrolled fire [and] multiple engine failures鈥�.
The analysis identified 152 separate risks, but it showed that Concorde鈥檚
engines did not fall short of the safety standards required by the Civil
Aviation Authority in Britain and its counterparts in France and the US. British
Airways emphasises that the CAA has not required it to improve the plane鈥檚
engines. The reliability of Concorde鈥檚 engines has remained constant over the
past 10 years, with each engine being shut down about once in every 600
transatlantic flights due to mechanical faults.
Nevertheless, British Airways and Rolls-Royce 鈥渋mmediately initiated activity
on the most significant 55 risks鈥� identified in the study, according to a paper
given to a meeting of the Confederation of European Aerospace Societies in
Cambridge last year. Both companies established an action plan requiring weekly
progress reports on reducing the risks.
The paper does not give details of the individual risks and neither the
authors nor Air France would comment on its contents, because of the French
judicial inquiries into the cause of last month鈥檚 crash. However, it does say a
quarter of the 鈥渟ignificant鈥� risks identified in the study require design
changes to engine parts and half of the risks are said to require 鈥渇urther
补苍补濒测蝉颈蝉鈥�.