A bird falls from the sky Analysis/Commentary The Concorde regularly completes a Paris-New York flight in three and a half hours. But on Tuesday, events took a tragic turn after approximately three minutes in flight. Air France 4590 dashed to the earth, killing all aboard and four on the ground. The passenger jet began to burn almost immediately after leaving the runway. Possibly, the pilots sought to gain enough altitude to turn the craft around and bring it down in a controlled landing. They failed, and the huge hulk fell hard into the checkerboard landscape outside of Paris. It crashed into a hotel, killing four people in the pulverized building. The Concorde has a pristine twenty-five-year safety record, marred only by this tragedy. The white aircraft has a gawky, implausible appearance and requires fifty percent more speed than other commercial jets to lift off. In the air, it cruises at 1,350 miles per hour and at 50,000 feet, completing a transatlantic flight in half the time needed for jumbo jets. While it is able to carry up to 140 passengers, the fateful craft carried only 109, with three children included among the victims. Having begun flying in 1980, Air France 4590 was one of thirteen planes manufactured jointly by the British and French. The Concorde first appeared in the mid-to-late seventies and never quite grew to widespread acceptance, since its maintenance costs were high, engines noisy, and it produced unacceptable pollution in keeping with standards imposed by many airports. Nevertheless, the passenger jet generally appeared safe, although there were concerns about the fragility of its tires and about fuselage temperatures at supersonic speeds. A signpost in the law of progress, the Concorde was luckless, commercially, since it was manufactured when fuel was expensive. Filling a luxury niche, it lives on as a modest splendor, a pilgrimage into progress. July 26, 2000