World

Like 'A Tiny Atomic Bomb'

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

July 26, 2000 / 12:15 PM EDT / CBS

From their offices at Charles De Gaulle Airport, several Air France workers, including airline President Jean-Cyril Spinetta, saw the first signs of trouble with the airline's doomed Concorde flight.

"I was in my car behind the line of the runways, and I saw the Concorde take off in front of me with a big, big flame, 50, 60 meters (yards)," Air France worker Jean Paul Lanciaux told CBS News Early Show Anchor Bryant Gumbel.

The inferno grew as the plane struggled to gain height, engulfing the four engines and fuel tanks, and the pilot began to lose the battle for altitude and appeared to turn the plane. As it twisted, it turned over and slammed into the small hotel in the town of Gonesse, in an area nine miles northeast of the French capital, at 4:44 p.m. local time.

Flight AF4590

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"For those who were witnesses, of whom I was one, it seems that there was a fire in one or more of the engines on takeoff," Spinetta said.

Spinetta and fellow Air France worker Nora Hajoui said they heard strange noises coming from the Concorde even as it taxied for takeoff. The plane made a brief ascent before crashing into a hotel, killing 109 passengers and five people on the ground Tuesday.

From his seat aboard another aircraft on the tarmac behind the Concorde, British businessman Darren Atkins saw flames and heavy smoke as the plane made its final ascent.

"As it accelerated down the runway the engine was already smoking," Atkins said. "Before it started to take off the left-hand engines were visibly on fire. They were burning very heavily, so much so in fact on the tarmac was some debris that had clearly fallen off the engine."

Sylvie Lucas of Paris, who was at the airport waitig for her children, also said she saw the plane on fire before it lifted off.

"The plane was ascending and the rear of the plane was all engulfed in flames," witness Judy Chiancola told CBS News Correspondent Drew Levinson. "You could see the tail was all in flames."

The Concorde struggled to gain altitude, then banked. The pilot reported engine trouble and was trying to make an emergency landing. Frederic Savery, 21, was driving on a nearby highway when the stricken plane flew over.

"It passed 30 meters (30 yards) above us, the whole back end of the plane was on fire," Savery said. "We saw it start to turn, but we didn't hear a noise when it crashed. All of a sudden, everything was black. We stopped right there and called the firefighters."

The plane's final seconds were horrific. One eyewitness described the impact as being "like the explosion of a tiny atomic bomb."

"We saw flames shoot up 40 meters (120 feet) and there was a huge boom," said Samir Hossein, a 15-year-old student from Gonesse who was playing tennis. "The pilot tried to yank it up, but it was too late."

The pilot appeared to have tried to turn the aircraft back for an emergency landing before, in the words of one onlooker, it "flipped over like a pancake."

When the plane hit, people in the Air France offices, which are about 125 yards from the tarmac, panicked, Hajoui said.

"All the people in my office were shouting and one of my colleagues just collapsed, because then we saw the big, big smoke, like big column and we just could not believe that," she said.