The method used to transcribe the recording consisted of faithfully reproducing, almost phonetically, what was heard, without interpretation or extrapolation. However, knowledge of procedures and technical terms currently in use is sometimes very helpful for the comprehens"n of certain words or parts of words. This was why several aircrew who knew the voices of the crew, the background noise of a Concorde cockpit and the various alarms joined in with this work. In addition, filtering adapted to the flight segment allowing reduct"n of the parasite background noise was used to improve the intelligibility of the recording.
The beginning of the recording was at 14 h 12 min 23 s. Item 17 on the checklist, "cockpit check" was under way. This was followed by the "pre-start-up" checklist, engine starting, the "post start-up", "taxi" and "pre-takeoff" check lists. The complete transcript of the recording is downloadable from the Final Report's Appendix 2
Of the whole thirty minutes on the CVR, the following elements are of note:
14 h 13 min 13 s, FE "so total fuel gauge I've got ninety-six four with ninety-six three for ninety-five on board".
14 h 13 min 46 s, FO "fire protecton", FE "tested".
14 h 14 min 04 s, FO "ZFW ZF CG", FE "so I've got ninety-one nine and fifty-two two".
14 h 14 min 17 s, Captain "the reference speeds so V1 a hundred and fifty, VR one hundred and ninety-eight, V2 two hundred and twenty two hundred and forty two hundred and eighty it's displayed on the left".
14 h 14 min 28 s, FO "trim", Captain "it's thirteen degrees".
14 h 14 min 53 s, Captain "next the control lever is at fourteen and you'll have N2 of ninety-seven and a bitlt, FE "ninety-seven".
14 h 22 min 22 s, Captain "ok we're going to do one hundred eighty-five one hundred that's to say we'll be at the structural limit", "structural err fifty-four per cent CG (*) see".
14 h 37 min 51 s, FO "hey, you've got the indicators going into Green all the time..."
14 h 38 min 55 s, FE "you're right, we'll stay in Yell....in Green".
14 h 38 min 59 s, FO "we'll stay in Green, eh."
14 h 39 min 04 s, Captain "so the takeoff is.... at maximum takeoff weight one hundred eighty tons one hundred which means four reheats with a minimum N2 of a hundred and three and a failure N2 of ninety-eight", "Between zero and one hundred knots I stop for any aural warning the tyre flash", "tyre flash and failure callout from you right", "Between one hundred knots and V1 I ignore the gong I stop for an engine fire a tyre flash and the failure callout", "after V1 we continue on the SID we just talked about we land back on runway twenty-six right".
14 h 40 min 19 s, Captain "How much fuel have we used?", FE "We've got eight hundred kilos there".
14 h 41 min 09 s, FE "Brake temperatures checked one hundred fifty". The Captain asks "Is it hotter on the left or the right there?". The FE answers "it's about the same".
14 h 42 min 31 s, Captain "top".
14 h 42 min 54.6 s, FO "one hundred knots".
14 h 42 min 57 s, FE "four greens".
14 h 43 min 03.7 s, FO "V1".
Note : the CVR working group had detected a low frequency noise at 14 h 43 min 07 s, during the takeoff roll, which was transcribed in the preliminary transcript. Subsequent advanced filtering work showed that this low frequency noise was in fact present throughout the tape: it is a noise associated with the recording induced by the tape itself or the recording circuit. It was thus removed from the final transcript.
14 h 43 min 10.1 s, noise followed, from 14 h 43 min 11 s to 14 h 43 min 13.8 s, by a change in the background noise. In the same time per"d the FO announces "watch out".
14 h 43 min 11.9 s, an unintelligible sound is heard, then at 14 h 43 min 13.0 s, the FE says "watch out".
14 h 43 min 13.4 s, message from the controller indicating flames at the rear and read back by the FO.
14 h 43 min 16.4 s, FE "(stop) ".
14 h 43 min 20.4 s, FE "Failure eng... failure engine two".
14 h 43 min 22.8 s, fire alarm.
14 h 43 min 24.8 s, FE "shut down engine two".
14 h 43 min 25.8 s, Captain "engine fire procedure" and in the following second the noise of a selector and fire alarm stops.
14 h 43 min 27.2 s, FO "watch the airspeed the airspeed the airspeed".
14 h 43 min 29.3 s, fire handle pulled.
14 h 43 min 30 s, Captain "gear on retract". In the course of the following eight seconds the crew mention the landing gear several times.
14 h 43 min 42.3 s, second fire alarm.
14 h 43 min 45.6 s, FO "(I'm trying)", FE "I'm firing it".
14 h 43 min 46.3 s, Captain "(are you) shutting down engine two there".
14 h 43 min 48.2 s, FE "I've shut it down".
14 h 43 min 49.9 s, FO "the airspeed".
14 h 43 min 56.7 s, FO "the gear isn't retracting".
14 h 43 min 58.6 s, third fire alarm.
Between 14 h 43 min 59 s and 14 h 44 min 03 s, three GPWS warnings are heard and at the same the FO announces "the airspeed".
14 h 44 min 14.6 s, FO "Le Bourget Le Bourget" then a few seconds later "negative, we're trying Le Bourget", in reaction to the instructions given to the fire chief by the controller.
14 h 44 min 31.6 s, end of the recording.
Note: some words in the flight part of the recording, "stop" for example, were doubtful. These portions of the recording were sent to the CNRS linguistics laboratory in Aix-en-Provence. The work on signal filtering and phoneme analysis carried out by the researchers at the lab did not clear up the doubts.
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