Fatal Seconds

By Sally B. Donnelly and Thomas Sancton

As Air France Flight 4590 taxied into position on Charles de Gaulle Airport's Runway 24, Captain Christian Marty's eyes would have carefully scanned the 1960s-era round gauges in the Concorde's cockpit for any signs that the No. 2 engine was acting up. He didn't need the engine's thrust reversers--which are used to slow the plane on landing--during takeoff, but Marty had ordered them repaired just before leaving the gate. The engine, on the left side, would bear watching. Marty and his co-pilot, Jean Marcot, and the flight engineer ran through the normal takeoff checklist--engine power, hydraulics, radios--as they taxied onto the runway, setting the plane's iconic needle nose straight down the center line.

As all jet pilots do, Marty and Marcot would have taken one last, careful look down the runway, looking for objects on it--anything from a stray airport truck to the dreaded flocks of birds, which have caused problems for pilots at Charles de Gaulle for years. Marty knew the delicately engineered supersonic engines on the Concorde are particularly vulnerable to what the aviation community calls FOD: foreign-object damage. A piece of stray garbage, or rubber from a blown aircraft tire, passing through a high-speed turbine can cause the engine to fail--or worse. That is why military personnel usually scour runways before jet fighters take off and why commercial pilots check their tires. As he prepared the engine for takeoff, Marty's adrenaline may have surged a bit. Like any other Concorde pilot, he knew that takeoff for the big, beautiful marvel is the most demanding phase of flight.

There are three key speeds that jet jockeys worry about when they are rolling down a runway: V1, VR and V2. Marcot would have called out the speeds as they passed by: V1, the "takeoff-decision speed," at which pilots decide to continue or abort their takeoff; VR, the speed at which the pilot lifts the nose; and V2, the speed at which the plane leaves the ground. After passing V1, pilots are trained how to continue the takeoff--even if an engine fails or a tire blows. Somewhere between V1 and V2, things went wrong for Flight 4590. As his passengers felt the gentle tug of takeoff G forces, controllers in the tower urgently radioed one of the most terrifying warnings in aviation to Marty: your plane is on fire.

But at that point the plane was well past the go/no-go point, traveling at more than 210 m.p.h. A red light--perhaps a cascade of them--should have lit up the Concorde's flight-control panel. The flames coming from the two left engines suggest that they still could have been providing some power, but clearly not enough. A significant loss of thrust on the left side not only pushes the plane left (because the right engines are the only ones pushing forward) but also causes the dead engine wing to drop. As the Concorde struggled to gain altitude, its dead wing began acting like a weight, slowly turning the plane left. The heroism later attributed to Marty for flying away from the nearby village of Gonesse may have been misplaced. By that point, the jet was probably out of control.

The crew's exhaustive simulator training would have kicked in as soon as the problem emerged. Marty would have tried to hold the plane steady, but it would have been a wrestling match. Someone in the plane reported that they were unable to retract the landing gear. With the gear down and dragging on the plane's aerodynamics, and with two engines apparently failing, the Concorde's fate was sealed. "The Concorde is a technical masterpiece, but with two engines failing and a fire on takeoff, the crew had little real hope," says former pilot Manton Fain. About a minute after lifting off, four miles from the runway's end, the plane rolled left and slammed into the ground. Its more than 31,500 gal. of jet fuel erupted in an instant inferno. All 100 passengers--mostly German tourists--and nine crew members were killed, along with five people who were in the small hotel the plane plowed into. It was the first fatal accident for a Concorde and--because the plane's final, desperate struggles were captured in dramatic photos and videotapes--a gripping reminder of how unforgiving the laws of physics can be.

Unlike many recent airliner crashes--most notably the crash of TWA Flight 800 four years ago last month--investigators seem likely to find a cause for the Concorde crash quickly. Both black boxes were recovered, and the wealth of witnesses should make it easy to reconstruct the plane's final moments. Just what went wrong with the left-side engines remains a mystery for now. Authorities will seriously look into the possibility that a blown tire on takeoff sent scrap rubber screaming into the engine inlets, triggering a fire. In 1981 the National Transportation Safety Board in the U.S. warned Concorde operators about blowout risk after four takeoff incidents. Pilots say a fully loaded Concorde's takeoff speed and maximum tire speed can come perilously close.

Among the witnesses to the crash was French President Jacques Chirac, who had just returned from Tokyo on an Air France flight. Chirac's plane had been taxiing toward the terminal but paused to let the Concorde take off. As Chirac and his wife watched the pride of French technology speed down the runway, they were appalled to see flames shooting from its left side, then the cloud of smoke that followed the crash. Chirac's first instinct was to rush to the scene, but he decided his presence would complicate rescue efforts. He returned to the presidential palace, where he telephoned his condolences to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder.

The tourists on board--bound for New York City, most of them to board a cruise to the Caribbean--were remembered at the crash site late in the week by family members, who, in their sadness, leaned on one another and knelt on the ground, sifting the sand. Air France gave each family roughly $20,000 and covered burial and counseling expenses.

Concorde was always more than just another way to travel. In our Net-speed age, it was the embodiment of everything modern. Though designed in the 1960s, it still looks fresh long after the decade's other design fads have worn into cliche. The plane is abysmally expensive to operate--it takes three times the maintenance of a 747 and burns 50% more fuel despite carrying 100 passengers to the 747's 400--and in recent years Air France and British Airways, the only airlines that operate the plane, have taken to using gimmicks to fill the seats. But the romance of safely breaking the sound barrier while sipping champagne and eating caviar remained intact--until last week.

Check our website for crash updates from TIME aviation correspondent Sally B. Donnelly