France Salutes Crash Victims

Hundreds of blue-uniformed Air France personnel joined weeping relatives and dignitaries from Germany and France as tiny white candles, each representing a lost life, lit the altar at a memorial service Thursday at Madeleine Church in Paris.

A choir filled the church's great nave with Johann Sebastian Bach's plaintive "Passion" as Paris remembered the 100 passengers, nine crewmembers and five people killed on the ground.

"Concorde is one of those works of human genius," said Pierre d'Ornellas, Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Paris. "But a failure brought such a brutal disappearance of so many loved ones."

The distinctive Madeleine church, built in the style of Roman temple, was filled for the ceremony conducted by religious leaders from various Christian denominations together with Jewish and Islamic representatives. With over 1,000 people in the church, several hundred members of the public who had hoped to attend waited outside to show solidarity with the bereaved families.

"This tragedy seems to have affected everybody," said Parisian Alix Ponthes. "This is a way to show the families they are not alone. Nobody can remain unaffected by something like this."

In a painful quirk of geography, the Rue Royal leading from the main entrance of the Madeleine church leads directly to the Place de la Concorde at the heart of the French capital. Facing people leaving the church was a prominent street sign bearing a single word: "Concorde."

The grief in Paris was tempered by gratitude in the town of Gonesse.

Seconds before the doomed plane slammed into a small hotel in Gonesse and engulfed it in flames, the pilot veered the plane away from the town center, the mayor and other residents said Wednesday.

Investigators said the pilot was trying to turn so he could make an emergency landing.

The pilot spared their town of 23,000 from a disaster.

"At the last moment, when the plane was about to fly over the hospital and the town, the pilot directed the craft over the field," Mayor Jean-Pierre Blazy said at a news conference. "We avoided catastrophe thanks to the pilot's presence of mind."

But alongside relief that more people had not been killed in the disaster, a sense of outrage was also simmering in Gonesse -- fueled by a long-standing feud over the nearby Charles de Gaulle Airport and its rapidly growing air traffic.

"We live about 500 meters (yards) from the crash. For us, it's a nightmare," said Laurent Vadel, a 29-year-old teacher.

French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot told France-2 television Wednesday that the decision on whether to build a third airport in the greater Paris area would be made by the end of the summer. Such a move had been requested by Gonesse residents to lessen pressure on the Charles de Gaulle airport.

At the airport on Wednesday, volunteers and psychologists struggled to find the words to help families shattered by the crash. The first family members arrived at the airport late Wednesday morning after flights from Germany, where most of the victims lived.

"The most difficult thing is making contact with the families, and to find the right words to speak to them," said Patrice Saoulle, who volunteered to help Air France with the grief counseling even though he works for another airline.

Gray skies and a constant drizzle underscored the sadness that engulfed the sprawling airport best known as the gateway for millions of tourists on their way to carefree vacations in Paris.

French authorities erected barriers and stationed a line of police to keep the family members away from the news media and curiosity-seekers.

About 50 psychologists were at the airport to greet the families, who were being escorted to counseling sessions by officials, health workers and priests.