A Difference in Noise Levels

When a French accident inquiry concluded in December that the prime cause of the fatal July 2000 crash of a Concorde jetliner near Paris was a titanium strip which had fallen off a US Continental Airlines plane on to the runway, the French media kicked up a huge fuss.

Now that a former head of the Concorde division at France's Aerospatiale has been placed under judicial investigation over the same issue, the commotion in the French press is far less loud and replete with far more, shall we say, nuance…