'Black boxes' recovered at Concorde crash site

Tuesday's disaster is the first time a Concorde has crashed since the plane went into service in the mid-1970s

In this story: 'All of a sudden, everything was black' 'Smoke trailing' from left engines First crash in Concorde history RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

PARIS -- Investigators have recovered both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the Air France Concorde that crashed near Paris today, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground.

The chartered flight en route to New York City plunged into a hotel-restaurant complex shortly after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport.

"The Concorde (was) to our immediate left as he accelerated down the runway, the engine was already smoking," said Darren Atkins, who was in another plane waiting to depart from the airport.

INFORMATION HOT LINE Air France inquiries 331-48-62-49-49    Background: Flight AF4590 aircraft Delivered to Air France on June 17, 1979 Put into service Oct. 23, 1980 Landings by plane 3,978 Flying hours 11,989 Last 'C' check completed April 28, 2000   Fact Sheet Supersonic vs. 'jumbo' jet in Trans-Atlantic travel    VIDEO News conference held hours after the crash by Air France and JFK Airport in New York Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     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 New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani offers condolences to family and friends who lost loved ones in the Concorde crash 430 K/40 sec. AIFF or WAV sound     INTERACTIVE POP-UP Images from the crash site near Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris Take a look inside the Concorde Recent plane crashes     ALSO Concorde frequent flier saddened by crash TIME.com: Time to retire the Concorde? French investigation launched into Concorde disaster Concorde: Charter company 'deeply shocked' British Airways halts Concorde flights following Air France crash 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

All 109 people aboard the aircraft were killed after it burst into flames and plunged into a hotel-restaurant complex. Four people on the ground were killed.

The airline said Flight AF4590 carried a full load of 100 passengers -- 96 Germans, two Danes, one Austrian and one American -- and nine crew members.

Three children were among the passengers, French TV reported.

Air France said it was flying families of the victims to de Gaulle airport on special flights from Germany. Counselors will meet with the families in a room set up at the airport.

A makeshift morgue was set set up in the Jacques Brel Auditorium in Gonesse. Workers placed plastic sheets on the floors where the victims were to be placed. At the crash site, ambulances and hearses were loaded with the first bodies recovered from the accident.

The jet crashed into a building believed to be a hotel restaurant, turning it into "a burned out shell," CNN Correspondent Jim Bittermann reported from the scene. The rest of the hotel complex was still standing. The hotel was identified in French media reports as the 72-room Relais Bleus.

Police said about a dozen people on the ground were injured. French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who visited the scene, said the condition of those injured was "good from a medical standpoint."

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder expressed his deepest condolences. "Germany and France are united in their horror over the accident, in mourning for the victims and in sympathy for their families," Schroeder said in a statement.

The chancellor said his transport minister, Rheinhard Klimmt, was on his way to the scene.

In the United States, President Bill Clinton offered his "deepest condolences ... to the families of those who are lost."

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).

"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.

Huge clouds of black smoke could be seen for miles around the crash scene, and police blocked off all roads leading to the site, 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," Hare 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 the 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 huge fireball when it hit (the ground)," Hare said.

White sheets cover the bodies of the victims

French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot on Tuesday asked France's civil aviation authority to suspend all Concorde flights on Wednesday.

Spinetta later said no Concordes would fly Wednesday and that the day would be used to check the rest of the company's fleet of Concordes.

In a statement released in Paris, Gayssot said the step, which was taken in agreement with Air France, was necessary to allow time for a preliminary investigation into the causes of the crash to take place.

Tuesday's disaster was the first time a Concorde jet has crashed since the plane went into service in the mid-1970s. Now, 13 of the needle-nosed supersonic jets are operated by Air France and British Airways.

Air France officials said the plane that crashed Tuesday went into service in 1980 and received major routine maintenance 10 months ago.

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 British airline canceled its two Monday night Concorde flights between London and New York.

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.

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, Correspondent Jim Bittermann, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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