Concorde - join the campaign

Mike Lindsay wrote:
In article ,
John A. Weeks III writes
In article op.tcfi56vzj9nxpm@clive,
Clive wrote:

But, The concorde crash was caused by something outside the control of the
concorde crew i.e. debris from another aircraft (also the same for the
Lockerbie 747), So had it not been for that it's record would have been
100%.

That is a totally unrealistic line of thought. There will be FOD on
the ramp or runway as some point in an airplane's operating life.
Had that small piece of metal not been on the runway the day that
the Concorde crashed, it would have been on some other runway some
other day. An airplane that is designed to crash, burn, and kill
over 100 people when it its a small piece of FOD is an aircraft that
is both flawed and an accident waiting to happen. The only curious
thing is why it took so long. In fact, a previous time that a
Concorde hit debris and punctured the fuel tanks, the aircraft managed
to survive without crashing. That is probably the true wonderment.

-john-

SMALL piece of FOD? Or a big chunk? Whatever, it shouldn't have been
there.

It shouldn't have been there in the sense that even in the real world
airplanes aren't supposed to shed small pieces of themselves, or in the
sense that this is just a bad thing? In the first case, the idea that
a piece of metal might have been on the ground was not only wrong, but
unforseeable. I've yet to hear anybody say that this is the case, and
that there's no realistic way that such bits of metal would find their
way onto a runway - therefore, regardless of the misconduct (if it was
misconduct) of the flight that left the offending piece of scrap, the
possibility of such scrap would appear in a spot that would threaten
Concorde was forseeable and should have been a design consideration.

In article ,
Mike Lindsay wrote:

SMALL piece of FOD? Or a big chunk? Whatever, it shouldn't have been
there.

You still miss the point. It doesn't matter if it should or
should not have been there--sooner or later, there is going to be
FOD on the runway or ramp. If you could make a rule that prohibited
FOD, then the USAF wouldn't have to do a FOD walk every morning at
each of the US airbases. The fact is that you have to design for
FOD, or you crash and burn, just like the Concorde did. In comparison,
one F-15 lost half a wing, and an A-10 came back with a missile lodged
in the wing, and both planes lived to fly again. That is the difference.

As it turns out, for many years, the Concorde flew with an on-board
FOD generator in the form of the main landing gear. Time after time
the tires would shred on take off or landing, and spray debris all
over the bottom of the aircraft and all over the runway. It wasn't
supposed to happen, but it did. At least until a better tire design
was made available.

-john-

--
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John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
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"Mike Lindsay" wrote in message
...


SMALL piece of FOD? Or a big chunk? Whatever, it shouldn't have been
there.
--
Mike Lindsay

Frankly that doesnt matter. No single failure should result in the
loss of an aircraft and the FOD simply burst a tyre, something
that is always a possibility. It was the tyre fragments that punctured
the wing tank and the armouring of the tank that removed the
hazard wasnt exactly rocket science.

Keith