Most of you probably remember this picture from the Concorde crash in 2000. Killed 109 on board and 4 on the ground. Amazingly, the fire in the picture isn’t what brought the plane down. Had they done other things right (or not done them wrong, as was the case here), the fire apparently would have extinguished itself and they could have brought the plane back safely. Very interesting read.
There’s no denying the jet ran over an errant piece of metal that caused a tire explosion and a resultant fire. But while the fire was visually spectacular — caught on camera, it trails behind the plane in a hellish rooster tail — experts say that aside from damaging the number 2 engine, it was very much survivable, and likely would have burned itself out in a matter of a few minutes. Not only was it survivable, but it was probably avoidable as well, had it not been for a chain of errors and oversights that, to date, nobody wants to talk about — particularly not European investigators.
The plane went down not because of any fire, directly, but because 1., it was flying too slowly; 2., it was several tons overweight and beyond its aft center of gravity limit; 3., two of its four engines were damaged or erroneously shut down.
http://www.askthepilot.com/untold-concorde-story/
