Partial Deal In Concorde Crash

After months of legal wrangling, lawyers agreed Friday on a partial deal to compensate the families of those who died in the fiery crash of an Air France Concorde near Paris three months ago.

Lawyers for the victims' families and lawyers for Air France agreed on a provisional compensation payment to be awarded in the next few days and said they would meet again to discuss a final deal. They also agreed on a range for the final settlement but declined to disclose figures.

Air France said it would seek to persuade other parties implicated in the crash to join the talks.

"We agreed on some elements which could lead to an agreement in a short time," said Gerhart Baum, a former German Interior Minister, who represents 60 families.

Baum was speaking after an eight-hour meeting in Paris. It was the fourth meeting between lawyers for both sides since the Concorde crashed shortly after takeoff on July 25th, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground. The dead were mainly German tourists.

The partial deal removes the risk, at least for the time being, that lawyers for the victims' families will take their case to the United States, where damages in such cases tend to be much higher.

"Air France will pay the legal beneficiaries ... a provisional compensation, that means a bit more money, while waiting to see if we succeed in reaching a global solution which will bring into the talks all the other companies that could be responsible for the accident," said Fernand Garnault, a lawyer for Air France.

In a joint statement, the lawyers for both sides said the initial payment would be awarded in the next few days. They did not disclose the amount involved.

The statement also said that Air France and its insurers would "do everything possible" to include other parties in the compensation talks between now and February 2001.

The statement cited French group Aerospatiale Matra, Continental Airlines and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., both of the U.S., and unidentified "others."

Continental Airlines has been implicated in the crash, because investigators believe a stray metal strip, which punctured one of the jet's tires as it hurtled down the runway, fell from a Continental plane which took off on the same runway just minutes before.

Aerospatiale is involved in the construction of Concorde jets and Goodyear provides the tires.

Air France is suing Continental, which has said that its plane has not been definitively linked to the debris. Continental is based in Houston, Texas.

The statement said that the other parties would be involved with a view to "finalizing a global, definitive, compensation solution."

"There are a lot of items that have not been solved, but we are now on a better way to something," Baum said, adding that he expected new talks by the end of the month or in early December.

He also said that the deal meant that the lawyers for the victims' families wold not take the case to the United States "for the moment."

Garnault said he hoped a deal with all parties would be possible before the end of February.

"From now until the end of February, there will be no case in the United States unless ... we see that we cannot agree on the global, compromise solution desired by everyone," he said.

The horrific accident cast a shadow over the future of the supersonic jet, which was once the pride of French aviation. All Concordes, which are operated by Air France and British Airways, are still grounded as investigations continue into the exact cause of the crash.

Investigations are likely to last several more months as French and British experts try to reconstruct the wreckage and decide whether the jet should fly again.