Justifiable outrage or justifiable prosecution, French bashing of a US company or US bashing of France -- whatever angle you take, this story has "legs", and will probably be in the media for a while.

Concorde has a special place in aviation - for having tapped the public fascination with air travel, much the same way that the upper deck of a 747 is still "special". I think we're going to see a lot more of this story...

*****

FWIW, my $0.02 is that there should not be criminal liability where, like here, the chain of causality has so many intervening steps.

I can't imagine how you prove that a titanium strip instead of aluminum was criminal, and I can't imagine the precedent of "any" FOD leading to criminal liability being one that stands.