Continental, Design Fault Blamed for Concorde Crash Tue Dec 14, 2004 12:59 PM ET By Gerard Bon CERGY-PONTOISE, France (Reuters) - A metal strip that fell off a Continental Airlines jet and a fuel tank design fault led to the deaths of 113 people in the Concorde air disaster near Paris in 2000, an official report said on Tuesday. Public prosecutor Xavier Salvat said there was "a direct causal link" between the Air France Concorde hitting a titanium alloy strip that had fallen off a Continental Airlines DC-10 a few minutes earlier and the bursting of one of the jet's tires. Continental denied any responsibility and said it would defend itself in court. "We are outraged by what we have seen in media reports that criminal charges may be made against our company and its employees," spokesman Nick Britton said. Speaking to reporters at a courthouse in Cergy-Pontoise, just outside Paris, Salvat said the metal strip played a "major role" in shredding the tire, fragments of which punctured the supersonic airplane's fuel tanks. He confirmed that senior Continental executives have been summoned for questioning by judge Christophe Renard, who is conducting a separate manslaughter probe into the disaster. Under French law, they can be heard simply as witnesses or be placed under investigation after a hearing with the judge. "We strongly disagree that anything that Continental did was the cause of the Concorde accident," Britton, the company's United Kingdom spokesman, told Reuters. "We are confident that there is no basis for criminal action and we will defend any charges in the appropriate courts." Salvat said the 237-page final report into the crash also had highlighted a "serious fault" in the design of the droop-nose jetliner, whose fuel tanks did not have sufficient protection from debris in the event of a burst tire. SUSPECT SPARE PARTS The plane crashed in a ball of flames soon after take-off from Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, on July 25, 2000, killing all 109 people aboard and four people at a hotel in the outer suburbs of Paris. Air France and British Airways took Concorde out of service after civil aviation authorities banned the world's only civilian supersonic airliner from the skies because of mounting evidence of profound structural errors in the original design. Tuesday's report said the fuel tank protection design fault had "not been sufficiently taken into account." The report was handed to families of those killed in the disaster, mostly German tourists on the first leg of a planned Caribbean cruise vacation. Salvat cited a U.S. probe into the disaster which showed that the replacement titanium alloy strip fitted to the DC-10 had not been authorized by the U.S. Civil Aviation authorities. He said Continental had failed to respect the rules governing metal fixtures used in building aircraft, and that the characteristics of the titanium alloy strip "played a major role in the process of cutting the Concorde's tire." Normally, a softer alloy which would not have lacerated the rubber of the Concorde's tyres is used, the daily newspaper Le Parisien reported last week. Separately, some Concorde families have decided to seek compensation in the United States and are to drop out of further legal action in France, Roland Rapapport, a lawyer involved in the case, told reporters. Air France, which operated the ill-fated Concorde, in 2001 agreed a $120 million compensation package with relatives of those killed in the catastrophe. Roger EWROPS