Part 5: Rising from the Ashes

In the late afternoon of July 25th, 2000, a Concorde crashed into a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport. Air France flight 4590 was carrying 100 passengers, most of them tourists from Germany, along with a crew of nine. All perished, including four people on the ground. The incident shocked the globe, and halted Air France Concorde operations indefinitely. On this episode of Teamistry, host Nastaran Tavakoli-Far and lead producer Pedro Mendes sit down with the team of engineers who played a leading role in piecing together the evidence from the crash site, hoping to learn exactly what went wrong. We gain insights through cockpit recordings and an interview with a friend of the pilot who tells the story of the crash – and its aftermath – truthfully and respectfully. We also address a common myth that the crash spelled the end of Concorde.

Guests in this episode:

• Jonathan Glancey, author of 'Concorde: The Rise and Fall of the Supersonic Airliner'
• Michel Polacco, French aviation reporter, and author of a book on the Concorde in French
• Mike Hall, Chief Engineer for Concorde Support Operations
• Katie John, Editor of Mach 2 magazine
• John Britton, Chief Engineer of the British Concorde fleet
• Dudley Collard, member of the Aerodynamics Design team at Concorde
• Yves Gourinat, former Airbus employee during Concorde’s last decade, and currently an Aviation professor at the University of Toulouse.
• Ricky Bastin, Technical Liaison Engineer at Concorde.

For more on this episode, visit: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/podcast/teamistry/season/season-4/rising-from-the-ashes.