Paris - A stray metal sliver on a runway at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport may have led to last month's Air France Concorde disaster, French officials said yesterday.
A 40 cm strip of metal on the tarmac probably ripped open one of its tyres, the French Accident Investigation Bureau said in its first attempt to explain the July 25th crash which killed 113 people.
Investigators believe pieces of the tyre - several of which were left on the runway in the wake of the Concorde - could have pierced a fuel tank or damaged one of its engines.
The statement still leaves questions surrounding the cause of the crash, however, as the reasons why one of the two engines on the left wing failed and the other malfunctioned remained unclear.