It took only 91 seconds to ground nearly three decades of leading-edge aviation engineering. On July 25, 2000, as an Air France Concorde carrying 109 passengers and crew begins its runway take off at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, something goes terribly wrong. Unaware of the flames engulfing the delta wing until alerted by the control tower, the pilot faces a no-win situation: Taxiing at 320kph and without the three-kilometre stretch of runway needed to stop safely, Flight 4590 is going too fast to abort take off. He has no choice but to try and get airborne. On Sunday, July 25 at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. PT, Discovery Channel presents CONCORDE, a 90-minute special that investigates the devastating crash that killed 113 people – and the future of the Concorde.
Since taking to the skies in 1969, the Concorde had an impeccable safety record. This special chronicles the meteoric rise of the world’s first supersonic passenger jet, designed to transport the world’s rich and famous across the Atlantic in under four hours – and in style. Killing all 109 onboard and four people on the ground, the Paris 2000 accident was so devastating that it scrapped all future plans for the luxury jet. But what exactly happened on that fateful day to so dramatically change the course of aviation? And why are the accepted theories of what caused the accident still stirring controversy 10 years later?
Produced by Darlow Smithson Productions, CONCORDE explores the defining moments of the jet’s history and reveals the untold story behind the crash of Flight 4590, which led to the Concorde’s ultimate retirement. Using the official report, this definite special pieces together the clues that investigators used to solve one of the biggest and most complex investigations in aviation history. With so much of the airplane destroyed, there was little evidence to work with – but what they did have points to a tragic and largely coincidental chain of events. They find a 43cm strip of metal on the runway – which didn’t belong to the Concorde – which matches destruction on a 4.5lb piece of rubber from one of the plane’s main tires. >From there, evidence of a damaged, leaking – and ultimately explosive – fuel tank, severed power cables and broken undercarriage overcome the fatal flight. The chilling voicebox recorder captures the pilots’ desperate struggle to keep the plane in the air.
