Timehost: Thanks for coming to our TIME auditorium today. Our topic is not a happy one ... the crash outside Paris of an Air France Concorde, the first crash ever of a Concorde. All109 people on board were killed as were four on the ground, in a French hotel. The investigation is just beginning, but there are lots of questions about the history of the Concorde, and what happens next that we can discuss with our guest today, TIME aviation reporter, Jerry Hannifin. Thanks for being our guest online today.

Jerry Hannifin: Hi

misty38_ms asks: What do you think happened?

Jerry Hannifin: From only early evidence, which of course is under very serious study at the moment, it appears as if there was a catastrophic engine failure on takeoff. The French have advised that there are engine parts literally littering the runway -- which would suggest that there were problems when the plane took off. The next clear indicator that it is indeed engine trouble -- Concorde engines are contained in the big nestcell, like a nest, two on each side of the British and French manufactured engine, called the Olympus. When one blows up, one of the turbans is destroyed under heavy pressure, which often destroys the other. It appears from the 200-meter strip of flames French observers saw, the engines were on fire. That is one side. Apparently the pair of engines on the left was burning. And that is why there was a long streak of fire behind the aircraft. The fuselage was not burning. It was the engines. This is what the engine makers call an uncontained failure -- a catastrophic event. I think that apparently the pilot on the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder will almost certainly indicate that they struggled valiantly to get the aircraft under control to land somewhere and lost control at the last few second. That is what all the early indicators suggest is what happened -- engine failure, fire from the destroyed engines and then the crash.

goaskalicenow asks: If the plane's engine was smoking on take-off, why wasn't it reported to the pilot not to take off?

Jerry Hannifin: The process of taking off in one of these machines -- in any aircraft -- is a procedure known as velocity steps - v1, v2 and v3, and velocity rotate - vr. Rotation means lifting the nose off and flying. If the tower had spotted the flames, it depends on which stage the flight was in -- stage 1, just closing the throttles and moving forward, v2, being able to stop the airplane on the runway. The tower, if they indeed signaled the crew, it was at or about vr, v rotation, at which point the plane is committed to flight and would be unable to stop on the available runway. It would have to continue to fly, and that is apparently what happened.

tgonewtw asks: Did the Concorde have digital or analog commands?

Jerry Hannifin: The Concorde, the cockpit, and its original design were analog. The French are extremely innovative where electronics and avionics are concerned, and over the 30-odd years the Concorde has been in operation, a number of digital-type avionics have been installed. The Concorde does not have the French -- and also the Boeing American -- digital and elevator rudder controls -- that's called the electric airplane. The Concorde is not an all-electric airplane. It has been modernized with many new avionics which are digital. But the aircraft is not like the new Boeing 777 and French Airbus 340 -- electric airplanes that are controlled digitally.

zooey_franny asks: How long has the Concorde been flying?

Jerry Hannifin: Off hand, I'd have to look that up. '69 I think was the first flight. That's 1969. Actually, my wife just informed me that 1967 was the first flight but it didn't go into commercial service until a few years later.

aria2005 asks: Have there ever been any other problems with the Concorde?

Jerry Hannifin: Only this week the French announced that a number of their Concordes had shown some metal fatigue cracks in the wing structure. But the airplane never has had a fatal crash. The airplane has had an extraordinary record. Both the French and British Concorde have had a marvelous maintenance record. They are maintained meticulously -- because of the criticality of every component. The Concorde is an immensely complex aircraft -- like a space shuttle which is given meticulous care and maintenance and rechecked on every operation.

waltridgwell asks: Obviously there was a fire in one or more of the engines; did the pilot communicate with the tower prior to crashing?

Jerry Hannifin: I cannot say. The French have that data. And whatever the pilot said or whatever the tower said to the cockpit crew is on the flight data recorder. Both recorders are being retrieved, even now this evening. And you have to wait for a readout on exactly what transpired.

industria_vfx asks: How fast was the Concorde traveling at the time of impact?

Jerry Hannifin: It was definitely subsonic, below the speed of sound. It was just taking off, and the Concorde takes off like a boot in the pants -- you really feel a surge of gravity as it shoves you forward. You're pressed back in your seat -- like I'm sure you would feel in the space shuttle. The VR or V rotation is somewhere above 200 miles an hour, and he was accelerating on takeoff as he always does. With after-burner which gives him an extra boost to get started. But he was not yet moving to a higher speed en route to the 1400 mile-an-hour cruise speed, which is Mach 2 as they call it. The plane was well below the speed of sound, probably 2-300 miles an hour. That is a guess.

adrenalinr asks: What would have happened to the passengers and crew? Were they recognizable or virtually vaporized?

Jerry Hannifin: Well, the fireball, as the French described it, on impact of this highly combustible, high-energy fuel, certainly cremated or incinerated all on board. Unquestionably.

ecopoli2 asks: Could the pilot have tried to land the plane in the field rather than try to turn back to the airport which was reported earlier?

Jerry Hannifin: That is a question whose answer would be revealed when we get the readout on the cockpit voice recorder. I would guess that he must have known, because all his instruments would have said: You are in trouble. You have lost both engines. This is very easy to read on your fuel gauges, on your exhaust pressure reading and on your throttle settings. You knew that you were in trouble. How do you respond to that? Only God and the crew know -- they may have made a decision to get down in a straight line, and not try to turn to de Gaulle, the airport. I think they were trying with all human resource and a lot of prayers to try to find a place to land. But in the last few seconds, and you can read this in the picture that is available of flames streaking out of the engine and the plane going down, in that stage the last few seconds of flight, he could not control the airplane. It was out of control and as it lost air speed, it lost lift and he was going to hit whatever was right ahead -- he was going to hit.

goaskalicenow asks: Let's say it was the 2 engines that caught fire, can the other 2 engines run without the 3rd and 4th?

Jerry Hannifin: The engines as I observed from the picture, the 1 & 2 engines in the cell on the left under the wing, operated individually and separately from engines 3 & 4 on the right wing. They're separate throttles and they can move all throttles together as they do on takeoff, but I'm guessing that when he knew he was in trouble, he fired his fire suppressant bottles of freon in those engines. And the freon I'm sure, will show in the flight data recorder, he tried to use. It was a catastrophic fire in the engines. Two engines out on the left and he was left with 3 & 4 on the right and they apparently were functioning.

mrod27 asks: How long until the Concordes will be up and running again?

Jerry Hannifin: It will be up to Air France and the government and to the findings of the investigative board. They will make the decision. Yes, the Concorde will fly again in my very best estimate. And by all estimates, the British, French and our own, the FAA people, estimate the Concorde is good for another decade at least, because of the way it is maintained and because of the way the engines and airframes have performed -- with a high level of reliability and safety. As to when -- that is a judgment call -- left to the French and British.

windozeisfordummys asks: How safe are the remaining Concordes?

Jerry Hannifin: My judgment is if I were summoned to Paris or London tomorrow and a Concorde flight were available and it was important enough personally, I'd go on a Concorde. At 9 or 10 thousand dollars I couldn't afford it. It's become a great success aerodynamically, if not commercially. Both the British and French have marketed it so that it does make a little money. It is a matter of national pride. The Russians were in on the SST business in the beginning. The Russians flew their TU144, they one-upped the French, and flew a few days before the French flew their maiden flight. The Russians abandoned commercial flights long ago. But three years ago, NASA leased two Russians TU144s for use in a now abandoned program, which is called the High Speed Research Program. Time Magazine in its Time Asian edition in June of 1998, reported on the status of that proposed new supersonic. And an estimate from NASA's manager of research at Langley, VA was that in the first few years of the 21st century, there would be orders for about 500 new SSTs worth $200 billion. But all that has settled down. NASA is concentrating on space, which is the wish of NASA management. They concurred with Boeing when they, who had been cooperating in this new research which meant a new US SST, withdrew its support for the High Speed Research Program. NASA took the funds, however many hundreds of millions of dollars, to study and exploit a new potential US SST - and diverted it to space. Some engineers believe the small A in NASA is aeronautics - but NASA is not much interested in airplanes, not as much as it once was. And the money is being diverted in the direction of space, which provides a great window of opportunity for Europe to take the lead in conventional flying machine technology.

windozeisfordummys asks: When the remaining Concordes are retired in 2007 or thereabouts, how long will it be until we have another supersonic commercial passenger jet?

Jerry Hannifin: I think, once again I'll refer to that piece in Time Asia June 1998: they go into detail about a super SST President Reagan talked about, the Orient Express - a lot of money was put into it and it was abandoned. The new proposed Orient Express would be a new highspeed hypersonic, not supersonic, airplane, flying at 6 or 7000 miles an hour. It would fly like a low flying space shuttle with a speed of 25 times the speed of sound. President Reagan cited at that time that it could fly from NY to Tokyo in 2 hours. In 1989, NASA and the defense department began research on such a plane. Some version of a hypersonic jet eventually will be produced. The problem is fuel -- what are you going to use for fuel? The argument in the industry is whether it should be hydrogen -- which is what is used to boost the shuttle off. And there aren't many airports in the world where we can store fuel at -400 degrees Fahrenheit The trouble is the Orient Express, flying from LA to Tokyo would spend time getting up to orbit - 150 miles. By the time they cruise at supersonic speed, you'd need a bigger world in effect. A hypersonic jet would go too fast for you to really enjoy. You g-et up to altitude and soar above earth at mach 7 -- 10 000 miles an hour or so - you're already in Tokyo. Far out stuff. As a bit of a judgment call, given the fact that the French A3 is a 500 person passenger jet -- and there will probably be an announcement out of Farmborough Airshow this week, where some of the Arabs will announce that they'll buy some of these gigantic jumbo jets for 500 passengers. This may be the future - this huge, mass transportation. Flying machines with less emphasis on supersonic or hypersonic travel. As long as they're flying (supersonic jets), and that's a ten year estimate -- we're going to have SSTs, the Concordes.

russ20852 asks: Could this accident have anything to do with the stress cracks found in the wings of other Concordes?

Jerry Hannifin: Apparently not. This is eyeball judgement - the available press stories, AP UPI, Reuters. This was an engine catastrophe. The plane was in very deep trouble from the time of takeoff until the final crash. Until it finally hit.

sstrdi asks: Do pilots need special training to fly Concorde?

Jerry Hannifin: You betcha. To get a rating in an SST is a very special rating. Many of the British and French pilots and a few Americans have qualified just to get the SST rating. It is like, I speak personally when I was very active in flying, the transition from a piston DC6B that I once flew to a Boeing 707 -- it was both the easiest transition I had ever made and the toughest. It's controlling all that great power in the jet. But the Boeing 707 was a lovely thing to fly and easier to take off and land than a DC6, but it does take special training. It is within the capabilities of virtually all pilots who are rated for air transport categories, yes. It's different, more complex. It's a different flying machine and you learn it.

merfjr asks: Do you think that any of the blame for the crash will be put on the age of the aircraft?

Jerry Hannifin: I would sense no. For the reason that these engines are enormously reliable engines built by the British Bristol and French Snecma organizations. These engines have not caused a problem at all. And here they are running on take-off and in acceleration to flight -- they're in afterburner -- and this causes heat stress and stress on the metal. But these are 30 years in operation with no real problems. Yes, as time goes on, and we have had a number of engine failures, you may remember United Airlines that came down in a corn field in Iowa -- that was caused by a catastrophic engine failure -- which brought the airplane down. Two of the engines were out, and the pilot maneuvered the aircraft by using the throttles in the DC10 - where rudders are in the tail. When the engine exploded it destroyed the rudder control. They managed to get the plane down with some casualties, but it was a spectacular rescue.

mrod27 asks: Are there any other possibilities, like sabotage or terrorist actions that may have caused the failure?

Jerry Hannifin: I think not. This is my judgment. When an engine is destroyed, as in this particular case, it is apparent that both engines on the left side were destroyed, this is an event that I can think of no way that a terrorist or a saboteur could arrange. It involves metal fatigue and turban engines in afterburner aircrafts, as it was on takeoff, causes a lot of stress. And very high speeds are involved in the moving parts. Apparently, and this is an observer's guess, the engine just blew apart. It happens not frequently, but occasionally. I cited the United accident in the cornfield. We've had others.

Timehost: Jerry Hannifin, thanks for joining us today. Any closing thoughts?

Jerry Hannifin: This reporter would jump at the chance to fly on the Concorde tomorrow anywhere. I have been in this trade for a while and I can remember as a reporter for Time Magazine in the 1940s, 50s, supersonic time even in the military was measured in minutes. Suddenly by the magic of technology and engine and airframe design, we had a machine 600,000+ pounds -- this marvelous extraordinary machine which spends 2 and a half to 3 hours in supersonic cruise, when the airplane heats up to 2-300 degrees Fahrenheit on the wings and flies most of the way across the Atlantic. Yes it makes a sonic boom, but this machine flies flawlessly -- and has for hundreds of hours. It's routine today if you have a high priority mission, personal or professional, or have money to spare, you take the Concorde because its a trip to Mt. Olympus, the chariot of the Gods. Fortune magazine's Charles Murphy did a report on the French Concorde, it was interesting that it was at the French insistence that the Brits honor their agreement to the Concorde because they were ready to get out of the game -- the Concorde has been a technical success and somewhat of a commercial failure: only 20 were manufactured. Nevertheless, it was a revelation to the Europeans and to the aerospace world, here are the British who think in terms of feet and pounds working 500 miles away on a machine, which is going to fit into an Anglo-French design which uses the metric system. The British and the French, from Britain to Toulouse, where the French built their share of the Concorde, gave us a revelation about globalization -- cooperating and using two different languages and two different measuring systems and it was an extraordinary success. I remember being told that supersonic traffic just keeps increasing year by year. We have to have some faster way is the way the airline people think about it. Hypersonic transport will come -- and I hope I'm still around to fly it. There it is. I think that this is a sad day for all. But the Concorde will fly again. And I'd be glad to fly it.

Timehost: Thanks so much, Jerry Hannifin for joining us today.

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