Christian Marty (16 December 1946 – 25 July 2000) was a French pilot who served as the captain of

Air France Flight 4590 On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde passenger jet on an international charter flight from Paris to New York, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground. It was the only fatal Concorde a ...

. Prior to the crash, Marty was an athlete in extreme sports.

Athletic career

Marty specialized in long-distance windsurfing, as well as rally driving, cycling, skiing, and hang-gliding. In 1980, Marty windsurfed from Nice, France, to Calvi, Corsica, windsurfing . In 1981 Marty became the first person to windsurf across the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

, using a specially equipped sailboard and accompanied by a supply boat. His first attempt was on 28 November 1981. He left Dakar, Senegal, but was unsuccessful. His second attempt was on 12 December 1981 during which an incident occurred when Marty fell off his sailboard at nighttime. However, his flashlight on his sailboard was on, and Marty was able to swim back and climb back onto his board safely, and continued the trip without any other incident. The second attempt was a success, with Marty arriving in

Kourou Kourou () is a commune in French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France in South America. Kourou is famous for being the location of the Guiana Space Centre, the main spaceport of France and the European Space Agency (ESA). It i ...

, French Guiana, on 18 January 1982. Marty had traveled a total , in 37 days, 16 hours and four minutes. Marty had previously lived in Guadeloupe for two years, and had previously windsurfed from Guadeloupe to Martinique in the Caribbean.

Aviation career

Marty had been a pilot since 12 July 1967. In 1969, he got his commercial pilot's license and started working for

Air France Air France (; formally ''Société Air France, S.A.''), stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the flag carrier of France headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. It is a subsidiary of the Air France–KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global a ...

. Marty served as a pilot and flight instructor on various aircraft, including the

Boeing 727 The Boeing 727 is an American narrow-body airliner that was developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. After the heavy 707 quad-jet was introduced in 1958, Boeing addressed the demand for shorter flight lengths from smaller air ...

and 737, as well as the

Airbus A300 The Airbus A300 is a wide-body airliner developed and manufactured by Airbus. In September 1967, aircraft manufacturers in the United Kingdom, France, and West Germany signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a large airliner. West ...

A320 The Airbus A320 family is a series of narrow-body airliners developed and produced by Airbus. The A320 was launched in March 1984, first flew on 22 February 1987, and was introduced in April 1988 by Air France. The first member of the fami ...

, and

A340 The Airbus A340 is a long-range, wide-body A wide-body aircraft, also known as a twin-aisle aircraft, is an airliner with a fuselage wide enough to accommodate two passenger aisles with seven or more seats abreast. The typical fuselage d ...

. He became a Concorde captain on 16 August 1999.

Death

On 25 July 2000, Marty served as captain of

from Paris to New York City, accompanied by first officer Jean Marcot and flight engineer Gilles Jardinaud. However, during the take-off roll, the aircraft's landing gear ran over a metal strip on the runway dropped by another aircraft, which punctured the tire and ruptured the fuel tank, causing an in-flight fire. The aircraft subsequently lost control and crashed into a hotel in

Gonesse Gonesse () is a commune in the Val-d'Oise department, in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. The commune lies immediately north of Le Bourget Airport, and it is six kilometres (four miles) south- ...

, near Charles de Gaulle Airport, killing all 109 people on board and four more people on the ground.

Bibliography

References

External links

Christian Marty
at

Find a Grave Find a Grave is a website that allows the public to search and add to an online database of cemetery records. It is owned by Ancestry.com. Its stated mission is "to help people from all over the world work together to find, record and present fi ...

Pilot had surfed to fame
– ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

''
A Man at Home with Danger
– ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

''
La tragédie du vol AF 4590.
he tragedy of flight AF 4590(in French) – ''

Libération ''Libération'' (), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Initially positioned on the far-left of France' ...

''
Il pilota del Concorde: «Non riesco più a fermarlo»
he Concorde pilot: "I can't stop him anymore"(in Italian) – ''

Corriere della Sera The ''Corriere della Sera'' (; en, "Evening Courier") is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average daily circulation of 410,242 copies in December 2015. First published on 5 March 1876, ''Corriere della Sera'' is one of I ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Marty, Christian 1946 births 2000 deaths Sportspeople from Paris Aviators from Paris Concorde pilots Aviators killed in aviation accidents or incidents in France Pages with unreviewed translations Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 2000 French windsurfers