CO has every right to be outraged over a possible criminal prosecution related to the crash of AF 4590. The metal strip that fell off the CO DC-10 minutes before the crash of Concorde certainly played a role in that crash; however, there were many, many other factors that sealed the fate of those aboard the greatest passenger airplane every built. Many of those factors are directly attributable to AF and its employees. Among them:

(1) an overweight aircraft;
(2) a takeoff run with a tailwind;
(3) a missing spacer that cause Concorde to drift off center on the runway, where it impacted the metal strip from the CO aircraft;
(4) a premature rotation with inadequate airspeed (as a result of a probable collision between the drifting Concorde and an AF 747 carrying Jacques Chirac); and
(5) the shutdown of the no. 2 engine -- which was still generating critical thrust -- by the flight engineer.

Anybody who really wants to learn more about the chain of causation leading up to the crash should read David Rose's excellent article "Doomed: The Real Story of Flight 4590".

Ultimately, this was a terrible accident. Captain Marty and his colleagues were faced with a heretofore unthinkable emergency, one that even under the best of circumstances would have been extraordinarily difficult from which to recover. However, before the French point the finger at CO, they ought to take a very good look at themselves in the mirror because a tremendous amount of conditions and circumstances that caused the crash of AF 4590 were directly within their control.