STATES OF EMERGENCY - Patrick Lagadec

134 Technological crises and the actors involvedAfter all, we hoped we'd have some time. "You've really got to frame up aproposal on how we should be organized. We've got no crisis room, ouroffices are spread across Paris, we have to define the roles everyone will play.In the present case, we're behind the front line, and we only have a fewaircraft involved. But what if it happened here?" We parted company, atabout 7.00 pm. I took the metro. At home, my daughter said to me, "TheVice-President of flight tests at Airbus just called from Toulouse[headquarters of Airbus]." What was going on? I called back. "You know thatThey (the Americans) have grounded Airbus?" I was speechless. I'd been toldwe had to prepare for a crisis one day, but I'd been given three months tothink about it. Thirty-five minutes later, bang! the crisis was there.L. DU BOULLAY: The director general of civil aviation was still in hisoffice, where he'd gotten the news. Immediately, he tried to gather togetherhis troops. His feeling was, "That's completely off the wall, we've got to seeabout this fast." He was able to reach us.CL. FRANTZEN: "The Americans have grounded Airbus." It quicklybecame apparent that they wanted to extend to Airbus the measures they wereproposing for the DC-10, i.e. simply a reinforced inspection, but to be carriedout immediately, which would immobilize the fleet.L. DU BOULLAY: The basic argument was, since Airbus had "the sameengine," we had to apply the same measures.CL. FRANTZEN: Right away we could flair the mistake. The specific partthat had been incriminated in the Chicago DC-10 was not the engine itself, butthe pylon that connected the engine to the wing. This pylon was completelydifferent on Airbus. We could see where the confusion came from. But wethought, "It would be too stupid to confuse the two. Maybe there's somethingelse, some new technical elements. Maybe the rupture actually was due to anengine failure" (like a projection or vibration). So our first concern was toget information, to get the network moving. Actually, we were very lucky. Ithink it took all of an hour or two to bring together, in Toulouse, all thetechnically competent people for the part in question, the pylon, along withthe people in charge of certification. And there were four of us from thegovernment side of things, including a director general who was starting tohave a lot of experience.CL. FRANTZEN: Very rapidly, we got confirmation that the part that wasapparently implicated in the Chicago accident was completely different onAirbus. We got ahold of the Airbus technical documentation exceedinglyquickly, thanks to an intense effort in Toulouse and to the quality of thepeople involved. Simultaneously, we were also trying to get in touch withWashington to know what they were up to (it was still a decent hour there,since it was about 9.00 pm in France). We also tried to reach the FAA'srepresentative in Paris.That's when the media aspect of the business cropped up. No one knowswhy, but at that moment, the transportation minister's cabinet decided to hold