concorde_ban_000801 PARIS (AP) -- French civil aviation authorities said Tuesday the ban would remain in place on flights of the Air France Concorde, the supersonic jet that was grounded last week after a crash killed 113 people.
The Concorde will remain grounded because the sequence of events that led to the crash has yet to be determined and experts have not decided which extra safety measures to put in place, according to the General Direction for Civil Aviation, or DGAC.
Experts will meet Thursday to try to determine the precise sequence of events, French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot announced Tuesday.
Wise decision
"Until we pull together all these elements to establish a chain of events, Air France flights will not be resumed," Gayssot said after a Cabinet meeting. He added that "absolutely no one," including Air France, had pressured authorities to resume flights.
The French Pilots' Union said the decision to keep the Concorde on the ground was "wise" since authorities still don't know why the plane crashed.
The wreckage after the crash of the Air France Concorde, which killed 113 people.
"We believe this decision is very wise," said Patrick Auguin, union vice president. "It is very important for Concorde pilots to have confidence in their planes."
Air France Flight 4590 crashed shortly after takeoff on July 25 just outside Paris, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground.
Lengthy investigation
Investigators said Monday it could take 18 months to determine what caused the Concorde to crash minutes after takeoff.
"We have a certain number of elements that are certainties or quasi-certainties," said Alain Monnier, head of a special inquiry commission investigating the crash. "But we still don't know how to construct a scenario that links all the events together."
These include evidence that one or two of the Concorde's tires exploded and one of the plane's engines shut down, followed by the partial shutdown of another engine.
In addition, the plane's undercarriage did not pull up and it had difficulty climbing into the sky, never achieving a sufficiently fast speed, said Paul Louis Arslanian, head of the Accident and Inquiry Office. The Office is working with the inquiry commission, along with U.S. experts from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Authority.
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"We also found evidence of fuel leakage. It was this leak that eventually caught fire. This was the cause of the fire," Arslanian said.
The Accident and Inquiry Office said Sunday that the flames spewing from the side of the aircraft before it crashed had most likely come from a "major fuel leak" and that part of the fuel tank had been discovered on the runway. The office had said earlier it believed the fire did not start in the plane's engines.
In a separate meeting Monday in Paris, British and French aviation officials examined how to improve safety in hopes of getting the grounded Concorde fleet airborne again.
An Air France supersonic jet spews flames before crashing near Paris on July 25.
Representatives from the DGAC, British and French engine manufacturers Rolls-Royce and Air France attended the meeting, which was to continue Tuesday.
Immediately following the crash, Air France grounded its fleet of five remaining Concordes. British Airways, the only other airline to operate Concordes, resumed flights on most of its seven supersonic jets the day after the crash.
On Sunday, a British Airways Concorde flying from London to New York with 57 passengers and nine crew members had to make an emergency stop in eastern Canada after the plane's captain smelled fuel in the cabin, the airline said.
It was the second problem with one of British Airways' supersonic luxury jets Sunday and the third in two days. Despite the weekend's incidents, British Airways said it expected to continue operating regular service out of London and New York.
Some victims identified
"We wouldn't be flying unless we thought it was safe," said British Airways spokeswoman Jemma Moore in London.
Xavier Salvat, the prosecutor in charge of the judicial inquiry, said 90 victims had been autopsied and 21 had been identified. The bodies will be released to the families upon identification, a statement said.
Prosecutors have questioned a number of people in connection with the inquiry and a "great number" of pieces of the aircraft have been recovered, Salvat said.
In 1981, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board reported five "potentially catastrophic" incidents resulting from blown-out tires during Concorde takeoffs between June 1979 and February 1981.
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