Concorde crashes near Paris; 113 dead

GALLERY Images of the Air France Concorde, Flight AF 4590

From staff and wire reports

PARIS -- French officials said 113 people were killed Tuesday when an Air France Concorde en route to New York City crashed into a hotel shortly after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris.

Air France said Flight AF4590 carried 109 people -- a full load of 100 passengers, all Germans, and nine crew members. Authorities said all aboard were killed along with four people on the ground at the hotel, identified in French media reports as the 72-room Relais Bleus.

Police said about a dozen people on the ground were injured.

The Concorde, loaded with fuel for the trans-Atlantic flight, went down shortly after takeoff, crashing near the town of Gonesse, about 10 miles (15 km) north of Paris, at 4:44 p.m. local time (1444 GMT / 10:44 a.m. EDT).

INFORMATION HOTLINE Air France inquiries 011-331-48-62-49-49     AUDIO Eyewitness and Federal Express pilot Sid Hare tells his account of the Concorde crash into a hotel near Paris 2.3 MB/55 sec. AIFF or WAV sound     INTERACTIVE Recent plane crashes     ALSO Concorde: Charter company 'deeply shocked' Schroeder leads condolences Concorde safety in the spotlight Concorde: The supersonic airliner Concorde: Luxury at 60,000 ft    Concorde info: The Concorde jet is capable of traveling from Paris to New York in three hours, 45 minutes at a cruising speed of Mach 2 or 1,370 miles per hour. Capacity: Its seating capacity is 100 passengers and it usually has a crew of nine. Daily service between New York and Paris started in 1977. The Concorde holds two world speed records for commercial flights. In 1992, it circled the globe from east to west in 32 hours, 49 minutes and three seconds. Three years later, the Concorde flew west to east in 31 hours, 27 minutes and 49 seconds.   MESSAGE BOARD Air safety

"It was a sickening sight, a huge fireball," eyewitness Sid Hare told CNN. "The airplane was struggling to climb and obviously couldn't get altitude."

The plane had been chartered by Peter Deilmann River and Ocean Cruises, a German tour company, and the passengers were on their way to New York to join a cruise ship.

The Air France flight was due to arrive at New York's Kennedy Airport at 2:21 p.m. EDT Tuesday, according to airport officials there.

Deilmann's U.S. office, based in Alexandria, Virginia, confirmed that the passengers were scheduled to embark Thursday in New York on a luxury cruise aboard the MS Deutschland. The cruise was scheduled to end on August 8 in Manta, Ecuador.

A German government spokeswoman said Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had been shocked when he was told of the accident.

"The chancellor has been informed of the crash, he extends his sympathy to the victims and their families and out of shock has canceled his remaining engagements for Tuesday," the spokeswoman said.

Huge clouds of black smoke could be seen for miles (kilometers) around, and police blocked off all roads leading to the scene of the crash, an area of farmland, crisscrossed by highways. Dozens of fire trucks and ambulances rushed to the scene.

Frederic Savery, 21, was driving home when he saw the plane go down. "I saw the plane, it passed 30 meters (60 feet) 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."

Samir Hossein, 15, a student in Gonesse, was playing tennis with friends when they saw the plane go by, its rear motor on fire. "We saw it lose altitude. It chopped off those trees and headed to the ground. The pilot tried to bank but the plane rolled over and smacked into the hotel nose first and turned over," he said.

"We saw flames shoot up 40 meters (120 feet) and there was a huge boom," Hossein said.

Hare, a Federal Express pilot who was at a hotel near de Gaulle airport, said he could "see smoke trailing" from one of the plane's two left engines before the crash.

"It started rolling over and backsliding down to the ground. At that point it was probably two miles from me," he told CNN.

Eyewitnesses said the aircraft was not able to gain sufficient altitude before it crashed. Hare said the Concorde had reached an altitude of about 200 feet before flames started shooting from a left-side engine.

"He (the pilot) kept raising the nose ... and the airplane stalled, the nose went straight up into the air and the airplane actually rolled over to the left and almost inverted when it went down in a huge fireball when it hit (the ground)," Hare said.

Tuesday's disaster was the first time a Concorde jet has crashed since the plane went into service in 1969. Now, 13 of the needle-nosed supersonic jets are operated by Air France and British Airways.

On Monday, British Airways said it had found cracks in the wings of some of its seven Concordes, but said there was no danger to passengers.

After the crash Tuesday, the airline canceled its two Monday night Concorde flights between London and New York.

Asked whether the airline would ground the planes, a BA spokeswoman said: "We have pulled together all the senior management of the Concorde to review the situation. An announcement will be made shortly."

The Concorde, which crosses the Atlantic at 1,350 mph, has been considered among the world's safest planes. Its only major scare came in 1979, when a bad landing blew out a plane's tires. The incident led to a design modification.

An official looking over debris

On January 30 of this year, a Concorde aircraft made an emergency landing at London's Heathrow Airport -- the second such landing within a 24-hour period by one of the supersonic jets.

A cockpit alarm had sounded, warning of a fire in the rear cargo hold, but engineers found no problem.

The previous day, one of four engines had shut down on a Concorde as it approached Heathrow.

The plane is popular with celebrities, world-class athletes and the rich. It flies above turbulence at nearly 60,000 feet, crossing the Atlantic in about 3 1/2 hours, less than half the time that regular jetliners take.

A round-trip Paris-New York ticket costs $9,000, roughly 25 percent more than regular first class. A London-New York round-trip runs $9,850.

Air France officials have said in the past that their current fleet is fit to fly safely until 2007.

Paris Bureau Chief Peter Humi, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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