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Of course they are trying to lay blame, if they wernt they wouldnt be naming specific people from one airline they wanted to summon.

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Thats a rather strange thing to say. I agree nonone would of  ever thought it would have hit the fuel tank, so your right on that point. But the landing gear is one of the most crucial parts of an aeroplane, Punctures happen, i have seen two so far on the concorde, one resulted in the crash we'r talking about. It's rather silly to assume that there will never be punctures if you are designing a supersonic airliner.

Thats a good point, i remember watching a documentry on this as well, it says the fuel tanks already were reinforced once before, in the 90's.

Also, my understanding is that the titanium strip from the continental struck the tire causing a punture and the fragment s form the tire flung up and hit the fuel tanks causing them to break, thus leaking fuel into the engine and causing an explosion.

What i'm worried about these days in aviation is that economics seems to come before safety. The cost of grounding aircraft to fix faults and things is great enough for the airlines not to do it.

This is true with that 747's cargo door that burst open killing about 23 people. The airlines did not fix the problem because of the loss of bussiness over the time it would have took to fix the door, that decision resulted in many people getting killed and the aircraft being written off.

I jst think it's getting out of hand. And airlines are thinking deaths and accidents are just the cost of dong bussiness

I don't think there's any doubt as to what caused the accident. The original accident investigation report in 2000 identified that. All Concordes were immediately grounded pending the investigators report. The purpose of this report was to investigate the cause & make recommendations to prevent it happening again.  These recommedations were implemented by BA at great expense, although none of their aircraft had ever been invloved in a similar incident. The suitably modified Concorde returned to service on November 7, 2001.

The present inquiry is quite different & from the news reports is intended to apportion blame. It's not a safety investigation as that was completed long ago & the aircraft is no longer in service. This can only result in law suits from interested parties. It seems fairly obvious to me where the finger will be pointed.

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Having unfortunately been involved in a similar law suit back in the 70s I know that everybody possible will be sued. After an accident in the US, fortunately nobody was hurt except their pride, a company sued everyone in sight. This included the aircraft manufacturer - De Havilland or Hawker Siddeley as it then was, Dunlop the manufacturer of the component & the company I worked for who overhauled it. I actually did the work myself. The fault was found to be with the fitter who had installed the component but this made no difference as he had little money. Everyone else was completely blameless but we were advised to settle out of court to avoid further legal expenses which could easily have put my company out of business. This was my first experience of the "compensation culture".

Did the companies have to ground the Concorde??  Was there a bann on Concordes or what? I don't understand why they all went out of service when BA could have easily fixed the problems and continued with the service.

There was no quick fix. It's common practice to ground all aircraft after a serious accident awaiting the report. A similar thing happened after the BOAC Comet crashes. The Concorde accident report recommendations took several months to complete, almost a year I believe.

I think they were grounded once the investigation started. However Nobody wanted to fly on her after the accident. And when tickets cost thousands, without the back up of tourists who are more interested in saving money than the safety of an aircraft sometimes. It just couldnt survive. So BA saw they could save themselves the money and embarressment and took it out of service. They then reinvented her, got everything read for its certification, so they could attract new customers. Again sadly it didnt work