Services held for Concorde victims

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Memorial services have been held to mark the first anniversary of the Concorde air disaster.

In the Parisian suburb of Gonesse, where Air France Flight AF4590 crashed on July 25, 2000, townspeople laid wreaths to commemorate the 113 victims of the tragedy.

In a separate ceremony more than 250 relatives of the deceased gathered at the crash site -- now a vacant lot paved with concrete and surrounded by an iron fence.

As the family members got off buses to enter the site where the plane came down, some became weak and at least one collapsed.

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Inside the area, they walked where debris once covered the site. Some cried; others held each other. For many it was the first time they had visited the site.

"We had to come back here," said Sandra Bodrelot , a receptionist at the Hotelissmo hotel which was destroyed in the crash. "We needed to get through this step."

Earlier they had attended a private remembrance service at Roissy-Charles De Gaulle airport where a grey marble memorial was unveiled commemorating all those who died.

A second memorial -- a simple plaque in memory of the 13 crew members who died -- was dedicated at Air France's Paris headquarters. Air France staff worldwide held a minute's silence.

The memorial at De Gaulle airport says in French, English and German: "In memory of the 113 people who lost their lives in the Concorde AF 4590 disaster on July 25th 2000."

A day of remembrance culminated with a multi-faith memorial service for all the family members at Saint-Sulpice Church in Paris, where they were joined by government officials, including French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot and members of Air France's management.

The 12 remaining Concordes have been grounded since the tragedy. An Anglo-French Concorde working group, however, has intimated that flights could resume in September.

The flights are being planned by British Airways, with Air France planning to resume commercial flights a month later.

In an interview with Le Figaro newspaper Gayssot said that "if all goes well" Concorde would return to the skies in the autumn.

"I can assure you that I will be the first civilian passenger on board," he said.

Not everyone is happy about the planned resumption of Concorde flights.

Jean-Pierre Blazy, the Mayor of Gonesse, said more questions needed to be answered before the plane should be allowed to fly again.

"I don't think we have enough assurances," he said. "We're not against the Concorde, but we cannot act as if this accident didn't happen."

In a separate development a report from French investigators has given more details of the burst tyre which led to the crash.

The report said the initial loss of thrust on engine one on the Concorde appeared to be due to the ingestion of tyre debris, while the second loss of thrust, also during take-off, was due to ingestion of aviation fuel and hot gases from the fire which developed.

When the engine had practically recovered normal thrust, a further ingestion, in flight, of hard objects and a mixture of hot gases and aviation fuel led to its final loss of thrust, the report said.

The shut down of engine two resulted from application of the "Engine Fire" procedure by the crew -- which was justified by the almost total loss of thrust.

Tests of the metallic strip found on the runway in Paris and which is thought to have caused the tyre burst have shown that it bore "a close relation" with a piece of engine cowling missing from a DC-10 of American carrier Continental Airlines.

The report added that runway tests with tyres identical to those installed on the crashed Concorde running over a metallic strip of the same shape as that found on the runway reproduced damage similar to that observed on one of the Concorde tyres.

Investigators said that tests to try to reproduce the fuel tank rupture which occurred in the crash had "not managed to reproduce the phenomenon". They hoped to publish their final report "in the coming months".

Equipped with special bullet-proof rubber lining on the fuel tanks and operating with new tough Michelin tyres, a BA Concorde completed a successful three hours 20 minutes test flight last week, reaching supersonic speed over the Atlantic.

"Concorde is unique and for that reason it should continue to flirt with the stratosphere," said a Le Figaro editorial. "For the sake of glory and the force of the myth."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.