I recently attended a seminar on the crash of the Air France Concorde Flight 4590 on July 25, 2000. This crash ended the planes used for both Air France and British Airways. What I found stunning was the lack of any footage of the crash, other than amateur video shot by a person in another plane. I was wondering why it would not be routine to tape take-offs and landings at airports to use in crash investigations; it seems like a simple solution to figure out what exactly happens.  

With the Concorde, the French tried to blame a piece of titanium that apparently fell off a flight operated by Continental Airlines just prior. The French, who neglected to check the runway for any debris (a required procedure at that time for the Concorde) claimed that the strip cut the Concorde tire and sent rubber toward the fuel tanks, causing a rupture. There were all sorts of errors made, including overfilled fuel tanks, too much weight and a wrongly assembled wheel in the landing gear.

But eyewitnesses said they saw the plane on fire long before where the tire would have hit the titanium strip. So, with cameras at airfields, would this not help solve issues and investigations like this?

— Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO