Goodyear Tire asked to assist in Concorde crash probe

Fifth body found in hotel rubble; death toll now at 114

In this story: Little time to react Air France Concordes remain grounded RELATED STORIES, SITES

PARIS (CNN) -- French investigators probing Tuesday's Concorde crash that killed 114 people have asked Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. for "basic" information about its tires, a company spokesman confirmed Friday.

The French Transport Ministry said earlier that a burst tire could have caused the first-ever Concorde crash.

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Goodyear spokesman Chris Aked said the Akron, Ohio-based tire maker, which supplies Air France tires for its Concorde fleet, provided French investigators information about its tires' specifications. Investigators had requested the information to determine if tire debris found on the Paris runway came from the supersonic jet, said Aked.

Aked said Goodyear's tires were not involved in an incident 20 years ago, when two tires on an Air France Concorde burst on takeoff, hurling metal debris into the wing, fuel tanks and an engine. The Akron, Ohio-based company, the world's largest tire manufacturer, did not become a Concorde supplier until the mid-1980s, Aked said.

The request to Goodyear comes as French investigators were trying to determine if a tire blow-out may have crippled the doomed Concorde as it roared down the runway - perhaps damaging engines or ripping open fuel tanks. Such a possibility was bolstered Friday by a photograph showing the Concorde's left wing spewing flames as the plane lifted from the runway.

"Those flames confirm that the fire was a very big fire from outside the engine," said Patrick Amar, a technical adviser to the French Transport Ministry. "And that goes along with the last reports that probably a tire exploded while the aircraft was accelerating."

Amar said French investigators already know that one or two of the Concorde's tires exploded as it raced down the runway at 250 mph -- perhaps knocking holes in the aircraft and spilling jet fuel near the hot engines.

In a statement, the French Bureau of Investigations (BEA) said no engine debris had yet been found and identified. "Whether the origin of the fire was external to the engines remains to be determined."

Investigators produced the tire blow-out theory Thursday after finding tire debris on the runway the jet had used.

The supersonic jet never got more than 66 meters (200 feet) off the ground during its final flight on Tuesday before plunging two minutes later into a small hotel-restaurant complex in Gonesse, a northern Paris suburb, investigators said.

All 109 people on board the plane and five people on the ground were killed. Searchers initially found four bodies in the hotel's rubble, but on Friday they recovered an additional body, bringing the crash death toll to 114.

Little time to react

Air France Flight 4590 took off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport with 100 passengers and nine crew members on board, bound for New York. There, the chartered flight's passengers -- mostly German tourists -- were to board a ship for cruise to Ecuador.

But the pleasure flight went horribly awry -- and the disaster was filmed and photographed by a number of amateurs along the way.

The doomed jet's crew may have had little time to react to the events unfolding outside their plane -- all coming after the accelerating aircraft had reached the speed known as V-1, the last moment a Concorde can be aborted.

"After that speed the crew must take off," Amar said.

The crew was aware that the No. 2 engine, inboard on the left wing, had failed, and that the left wing's outboard engine, No. 1, was losing power. They also reported trouble getting the landing gear retracted. An air traffic controller told the pilot there were flames coming from the rear of the plane on take off.

The pilot, veteran Capt. Christian Marty, told the tower that he would try to get the plane to nearby Le Bourget airport, about eight kilometers (five miles) away. Just over a kilometer and a half (one mile) short of the airport, the Concorde pitched to the left and slammed into the hotel.

Air France Concordes remain grounded

Air France said Friday that its Concorde flights would remain "suspended for the time being" as investigators focus on the possible causes the crash.

British Airways, the only other airline to fly Concordes, had resumed flights.

Air France also denied reports that mechanics had replaced an afterburner pump in the No. 2 engine on the morning of the crash. The French daily Le Parisian cited unnamed sources in its story, reporting that a problem with the pump could turn the back of the engine into "a real blowtorch."

Mechanics did replace a thrust reverser on that engine, at the behest of the pilot, just before the plane's departure. Investigators said the mechanics appeared to have followed proper procedure during the operation.

Investigators for the French Bureau of Accident Investigations said the details released in the aftermath of the crash were based on initial information, including readouts from the plane's flight and data recorders. A more thorough "preliminary" report will not be ready until the end of August.

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

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