Last Days of the Concorde

October 8, 2018
In this highly detailed history, Chittum (Southern Storm: The Tragedy of Flight 242) explores the only fatal crash of a Concorde luxury jet and the ensuing investigation. The book draws mostly on contemporaneous media accounts, chilling transcripts of cockpit conversations, and the final report of the French investigating body to tell of the Concorde’s short and tragic flight on July 25, 2000. The plane, engulfed in flames upon liftoff from Paris, crash-landed into a nearby hotel, killing all passengers and four hotel employees. The majority of the book details the forensic investigation following the crash, which concluded that debris glanced off a wing to rupture a fuel tank; the rest provides historical context for the Concorde in aviation history and considers where supersonic travel might go in the future. Overall, the book proves enlightening about the post-accident investigative process, showing “how happenstance and entropy can conspire to wreak havoc.” Chittum has a gift for making the complex details easily understandable. The level of detail (“airport workers had discovered a square 32-by-32 centimeter (12.5-by-12.5 in) piece of aluminum debris at 1,800 meters (5,905 ft.)—just 20 meters (66 ft) in front of where the fuel stain appeared”) may put some readers off. Nonetheless, this technical account is surprisingly gripping.