British Airways admits delay in getting Concorde back in air
( 2001-05-08 11:18 ) (7 )

British Airways has admitted that its plans to get its grounded fleet of Concorde supersonic airliners back in the air have fallen behind schedule, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.

The British flag-carrier admitted that it now had "no timescale" for test flights and that modifications to the first Concorde, were only "two-thirds" complete.

An Air France Concorde flew from southern France to Paris on Saturday after undergoing new test flights sparked by the fatal crash which grounded commercial flights by the supersonic airliners last July.

"The tests went well overall," a spokesman for Concorde manufacturer EADS, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company said.

Last year's crash is believed to have been caused by a tyre blowout on the runway which sent shards of metal and rubber into fuel tanks, setting them alight and causing the jet to crash into a hotel in a suburb near the airport.

Concorde's certificate of airworthiness was withdrawn after the crash of an Air France aircraft in which 113 people died. The British and French regulators grounded the remaining 12 aircraft.