Doomed to Fail - Ep 257: A Tragedy on the Ground - The Collapse of Terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle Airport

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

We checked, and the bars at Charles de Gaulle open around 7am - which means the people who were killed in the collapse of Terminal 2E on May 23, 2004, were probably just annoyed to be there. Today, we'll dig into what brought on the collapse, from the French government to a history of concrete; it's a ride!   Please let us know if you have ever once felt safe on a jet bridge.  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In the matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortlandall James Simpson, case number B.A. 096. And so my fellow Americans. Taylor, we are back. We are alive and we're recording. How are you doing today? Good. Still good. Still good.

Not much deviation from last time to this time. We'll keep the banter of light then. Do you want to go ahead and introduce us? Yes. Hello, everyone. Welcome to doomed to fail. We bring you historical disasters and failures. and I am Taylor, joined by Fars.

I'm Fars. I'm here to tell you a tale. We have noticed pretty dramatic uptick when we talk about engineering disasters versus anything else. I think the true crime stuff is overly saturated at this point, and so I'm doing a little bit of a hibit

over to the engineering side of things. I think y'all enjoy that, and if you do, tell me, and if you don't tell me, ad do nifalpadajima.com, but that's what we're going to be digging into today. an engineering disaster and I went, I did a side quest that I probably showed up, but it just piqued my interest. So you're also going to learn a little bit about the French Constitution today. Great.

It's kind of like, we're kind of all over the map. But it's, it's core in engineering disaster. So, as I said earlier or inferred, it's going to be in France. We're basing this off of France. We're going to base it off of the events that happened at the third busiest airport, in Europe, Charles de Gaulle Airport, which is just outside of France. I looked at the city it's actually in. It's got three words in it with hyphenations, and so I'm not even going to try and pronounce it. It's just outside of Paris. That's all you need to know.

In front of this airport? Yes. Interesting. Okay. Thank you. Exactly. So before we get into the disaster, let's talk about the airport itself, but also it kind of touches a little bit on the French and their philosophy around design and the French way the way that French people

do things that is more pomp in circumstance let's say there's some joke um oh god about the French damn there's something really funny where they were like um some um the dictionary I think had a thing that said like um here's things that begin with the one of the things that was the French and they did apologize, but it's just like the way that they said it. Like, you can't, you can't say the French that way. It sounds a little, unjust. But the reason I'm going to start the story where I'm going to start is because it plays into why they are the way they are.

Like, I love you if you're French, but, like, you all are a certain way and it is reflected in your architecture and design, which is great. Yes, very much. You're just one of those beautiful things in the world. So I kind of wanted to figure out, like, what was going on this airport? And so I kind of, they're going a little bit of the history. So the airport itself was conceived in the 1960s. And there was a lot of events that led up to why this airport had a certain gravitas

within the Society of France, which is why they designed things the way they did and why that led to ultimately death and disaster. But let's get into a little bit. So some background. I, again, learned way more about how the French Constitution functions than I really wanted to. But I'm trying to lead up to why this airport is the way it is for the 1970s. 60s and I kind of went backwards a little bit. Basically, anytime there's like some huge political or social upheaval, the French just redraft

their constitution. Like, it almost seems like the U.S. is unique in the sense that we don't really redraft that. We didn't add amendments, but other countries just like tear it up and redo the whole thing. This has happened five times since France has become a democracy, which means we are currently on the fifth republic of France. Fun? Yeah, isn't it?

I don't know that. Cool. in case anybody cares, which is honestly Taylor might be one of them. The first republic was right after, yeah, was clearly, it was right after the monarchy was abolished. And that lasted for 12 years until a little guy named Napoleon declared himself emperor, hence dissolving the Constitution, which was no longer needed in a dictatorship.

The second republic happened after Napoleon's exile and death, which we do have an episode about, and I don't remember the name of it, but you can go listen to that at some later date. that was when Napoleon's nephew, a guy named Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, established the next working constitution. So we're in the second republic. The third republic was from 1870 to 1940, and that one fell obviously because of Nazi occupation. Then you have the fourth republic, which is like the incident that led up to where we are today, which is why Charles de Gaulle Airport became what it became. So the fourth republic, that led to a ton of political instability. that lasted from

1946 or right after the Nazi occupation until 1958 when French military leaders who were stationed in Algeria because back then Algeria was a part of France or was colonized by France and so in theory it reported

to the French executive power but the people there were in active revolt against French occupation and the military leaders that were stationed in Algeria were like these people in France were a week. They cannot control this. This is not going to go good for us. And so we need to figure out a way

to get rid of that, essentially. And this is a very, very long story. Like, I'm really just cutting to the chase here. But what they really wanted was just like a super strong leadership in Paris, at the executive branch. And so they revolted in their own way against the government of Paris, which led to the ascension of a guy named Charles de Gaul to leadership to the presidency of France at that time. And that was when that fourth republic dissolved. And Charles Duell established the Fifth Republic, which is what we're currently living through.

Makes sense? Charles de Gaul was exiled to England during the war, right? Yes. Yeah. He was also in this, like, state of they're going to realize these guys are idiots. And I will eventually find my way back. Yeah. I could, we should do an episode on Charles de Gaulle because this guy's a badass.

Like, he seems like a hardcore dude. Like, he's really, like, he doesn't seem French at all. It was really interesting. Sorry. Wow. What a, what an indictment on the French that was. We love the French. Your baguettes are incredible.

So the story in France's history was it one of, like, deep pride, essentially, because they surrendered their Nazis, like, almost immediately. There was, like, national embarrassment after national embarrassment. This, like, colony in Algeria is about to, like, topple. They actually thought they were going to go into France and topple its own government. Like, that's how bad things were. And so there was a lot of desire amongst the people for national pride. And a guy like Charles de Gaulle was the kind of guy who was going to bring them that national pride, essentially.

That's what that background is. Part of that were these huge projects nationwide, like municipal projects, including a massive airport that could rival the biggest and the best in Europe. specifically Heathrow and Frankfurt. Those are the two kind of competing airports in Europe. So they had this architect. He was a young guy who was in his 20s at that time. Paul Adrew. And from the very start of designing this single terminal airport,

up until what it later would become, Paul was the leader architect of it. Apparently, in this situation, it was one entity that did everything. Like it wasn't subcontracted out. So you had the architect, the engineer, the designers, the builders, all kind of working under one umbrella, which is kind of unique. I guess. I have a question.

Yeah. Who pays for an airport? The state, in this case, the federal government. Got it. Yeah. Because I learned, you know how every city's station, trans station are called Union Station? Is that really true? Is that everyone called that?

Like, most of them are. I was like, there's always like a Union Station. There's one of New York. That's true. but that's because the train companies would get together and pay for it themselves. So it was like a united project by all of the different train companies because they were like, well, we wanted to be able to go here. So we're going to build this transition.

So it's curious about how it's interesting. So in this case, the thing called the APD, which is the Aeropostal Paris Authority or department, some variation thereof. And that was founded as the committee to establish where we're going to put this airport in route funding. It was basically a bureaucratic organization. Just basically take money in, find people, give them money, and then you get an airport at the end of it. That was the idea. So as I mentioned before, obviously because this is France, as they're envisioning this airport, they're envisioning a lot of pop and circumstance

because this is a national pride thing. This is years of embarrassment on the national stage, and this is their return to kind of grace and glory. And Paul, This young 20-something-year-old architect is the one in charge of all this design. The airport opened originally in 1974 with just one terminal. By the 1980s, that was kind of when wide-body jets became more and more of a thing. And so the amount of space you would need for them was dramatically different, a single terminal. In this case, if you look up aerial photographs of the airport, there's like one wheel in the middle, and that was like the first terminal.

And that was good enough for what they had then, but it had to. to obviously expand beyond that to become kind of a European mega hub for airport traffic. Terminal 2 was the answer to that. So we're up to two terminals at this point. And eventually, Terminal 2 would have expansions from 2A to 2G. So it became one of those terminals that had multiple prongs that came off the side of it. Terminal 2E was really meant to be like a huge statement. It was like it was also part of this national private.

thing for the industry and for travelers, mostly because this was going to be Air France's, like the flagship Airlines Terminal, and it's a big deal. And it was also about the time that Air France joined the Sky Team Alliance, which kind of showed the world

that they had that kind of gravitas. And 2E was supposed to be kind of the central hub for all that to facilitate fast transfers of incredibly high volumes of international travelers. One thing that's interesting is apparently Charlottesagall Airport, I've heard of this number one or two, but it's like a top, most delayed,

most misplighted airport to this day, which is not good. Yeah. So Paul, the architect, obviously wanted this new Terminal 2E specifically to be this design marvel. And if you look a picture of it, the way I kind of,

looked at it and described it to myself was it looks like from the movie event Horizon when they go to the umbilicus remember that? It's like this like oblong tubular thing and it just has windows all around it looks really cool. It looks really mid

century but like also modern and cool. It looks like what a spaceship would be designed in like the 70s and 80s. Yeah, yeah. Really fun. But that's basically it. It's like a tubular design and there's windows from the floor

all the way above you in the ceiling. That's the idea. Structurally, it was designed with curved precast concrete, which is going to be a sticking point for us later. Precast is just like not poured. Like they did do it

somewhere else. They ship it in, basically. It also had a lattice of steel struts and a skin of glass over the whole thing. That was kind of the structural piece of it. main piece of all that being that there was nothing that broke it up on the inside. There was no support beams, no support columns, nothing.

It was all just wide open, empty space on the inside. Getting back to the concrete part, we just talked about, again, the outer shell was not poured concrete. It was precast. So it was basically a concrete mold, like a curved concrete mold that was poured into place somewhere and then later on brought on site and assembled into this old. ultimate outside frame. That's actually a really good technique.

If the fabrication is done correctly, if it's not, and let's say you have rebarreds on the inside that are supposed to support the concrete, if they're misplaced or the joints are misplaced, then you don't know that because it's all inside. So you could potentially have an invisible flaw within the design of these precast concrete molds

that you would never know until it's too late, essentially. that's a little bit of a spoiler alert there. Also, that's going to happen? Stop. Who would have thought on this episode? So by the early 2000... It's just like a restaurant, restaurant review.

They have great restaurants in there and let's wine. That's very nice. Exactly. So by the early 2000s, construction had fallen behind for 2E. They rushed to finish this job, basically. And there was some issues on the safety side. One really fun fact that reminded me a lot of my own life. was when they're going through the inspection phase,

the builders are walking the safety people through it. And a giant like chandelier falls from the roof, like right in front of the inspectors, which also reminded me of when I was living at that lakehouse. And I had a scorpion infestation. And the exterminators wouldn't believe me that had a scorpion infestation. And so he meets me at the garage and we're inside the garage and we're talking to each other like just like normal humans

are away from each other. And a scorpion, no, no joking, falls right between us as we're talking. I was like, I keep telling you guys, there's a problem. He's like, I've never seen that happen. This is exactly the same story. I had not heard that story. That's pretty great. It was horrible.

Oh, my God. Yeah, I used to catch them on my master bedroom. They used to fall from the fixtures, light fixtures. What late did you live next to? Lake Travis? Oh, in Texas? Yeah. Gross.

Yeah. Um, anyways, long story short, these guys failed their initial inspection, but they were given like a week to correct problems with fixtures and they did that. And the thing opened in June of 2003. So that's the timeline we're at. 11 months later on May 23rd, 2004, uh, it's Pentecost Sunday, which I actually didn't even know what that was until I researched it, but it's a religious holiday. It's 50 days after Easter. And for some reason, it's a religious holiday. which actually worked out pretty well because it meant that very few people were actively traveling at that time. So good on that. At around 7 a.m., there was a bunch of passengers that were in Terminal 2E at a gate. And they would report hearing cracking sounds. They would report feeling like they were in an earthquake.

And it would report stuff just drifting down from the ceiling, like just like dust coming down. You know what I hate, and I feel like you probably hate it too, but I hate being in that like thing between the plane and the airport. Yeah, it's always awful. That like terrifying moving tube of people. And like, that was like, you're like, hurry up and get in there. And you get in another line. And there's more people. And you're like, we're just in a terrifying tube of people on our way to this plane.

I hate it. My biggest fear. And the way to another terrifying tube of people. My biggest fear has always been when you're at the end of the jet bridge, right where it connects the plane. and if you look at that thing, it looks like it's on a swivel. I need it. It looks at a joint there.

And I'm like, if this thing like just decides to fail, like it's meant to swivel. So there's something holding it in place, it's not structurally designed to stay in place. But if it does that, you fall like 30 feet. Like it's like... Yeah, onto cement.

It's really dangerous. Yeah, I hate them. It happened to Jim and Terry a dumb and dumber, but he made it. So whatever. He fell off the, the, Shepard. You remember that?

So we're just before 7 a.m. in 2004, when a hundred foot length of the ceiling lost its shape and came crumbling down. And four people were killed. Like I said, it was a hall. It was like, it was in the 6 a.m. hour on a holiday. And so it wasn't like a packed area. But four people did end up end up getting killed. They were just sitting in the airport lounge, which is like the worst way to go. Like, I hate travel anyways.

If I die, like, man, that would piss me off so much. Like, you're going to be getting a fun, not a fun. You don't have to be getting, like, a new experience. Like, if you die, like, in a plane crash, at least it's like, wow, I've never felt this sheer terror before in my life. Like, at least, like, there's an experience to be had with that, right? But, like, if you just are sitting there waiting and you have, like, a Starbucks coffee in one hand, and, like, you're reading your phone on the other hand, and then, like,

a ceiling collat, like, it's a, I don't know. It's not a good way to go. No, I would hope that. at least be like in the bar like a couple of blood of Mary's deep and then go. Yeah, 6.30. Yeah, that's the right way to do it. Yeah, that's the airport rules. Airport, airport rules. So, Brantz initiated an independent study of what could have potentially gone wrong. And this guy, Jean Berthier, he concluded in February 2005 that basically everything went wrong. So he didn't conclude that there was one fault with the structural design of this,

of this terminal. He basically said there was a little bit of of weakness everywhere. And one thing I was reading a lot about was that we always talk about, like, safety margins. And essentially, if you're trying to create something that is just beautiful aesthetically, then it fits together in a way where, like, the safety margins can easily erode. And the whole point of the safety margins is because you assume they will erode, right? You assume that, like, maybe, like, the guy, this guy is going to pour the concrete a thousand miles away, might be drunk that morning.

you assume that when they install it, maybe that guy had merit problems. Right. It was cheesy stuff. Exactly. So it's cheesy stuff, exactly. So some of the findings were the steel struts that supported the shell. They were embedded in the concrete, but they're embedded too deep. So they basically pierced the concrete instead of like holding it in place. That was obviously a problem. You don't want that to happen.

The reinforcement inside the precast concrete was insufficient. So the rebar they put inside of it. if it was badly positioned from the fabricators. And so it made the concrete structure itself weak overall in general. Then you're piercing it. How safe is concrete? So we're going to talk about that. Okay, thank you.

Yes. I'm ready. There was a horizontal concrete beam that this whole shell kind of rested on. But that was weak in because the H-VAC guy was like, there's no holes in this. So let's she twist cheese it with holes to make the H-FAC work. the overall conclusion was basically that the whole thing had no margin for safety errors, and as a result, you have one big massive flaw within the entire design system here. Then there was a question of what actually triggered it that day,

and the details are that the day before, the week before the collapse happened, Paris was unusually warm for February. It was around 77 degrees. So many of these stories are the weather is not. is weird. Well, usually the weather being like this wouldn't be a problem. It's the fact that you have all the other flaws here that you have to attribute to. So you have a week of unusually warm weather in February, about 77 degrees.

Then the morning that this happens, the weather is like a four degree drop to 39 degrees. Right. So that's going to make like a change. Yeah. So essentially what I said earlier where the support beams were instead of like supporting it, they were piercing the concrete beams. These things have been rubbing together on the wrong way this whole time since it was installed. But with the pressure differential, steel and concrete react differently to that.

They say pressure, I meant this temperature. The temperature differential, steel and concrete react differently to that. So one is going to go faster or still than the other. And then they're going to rub against each other even more violently and worse. And so that's also a big piece of this problem. So like I said, the hundred feet of structure. collapsed, but that's actually not the whole terminal. Terminal 2E itself is about 2,000 feet long. So the airport people, the authorities, they looked at this like, so what's the flaw? And the guy was like,

everything. Like, there is no one flaw. The whole thing is flawed. And like, so we can't just go to one section to fix this one section. Like, no. It's really actually demolished the rest of the 1900 feet of this terminal and reconstructed the whole thing. Instead of using concrete, they used steel to your point earlier. They didn't use it originally because it was a lot more expensive, it would have caused more time delays and they were already behind schedule. But after this happened, they're like,

let's just be extra super duper safe and go with steel. And so they did that to cost about $100 million, essentially. Additionally? Yeah, I mean, yeah, because they had to rebuild the whole thing. So eventually this thing

dragged on for 14 years. I think it would have been, like somewhere around 2018 is when this is actually settled, but ultimately the airport authority was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. And according to French law, there's a cap on liabilities. And so the total punishment

for this whole thing was $225,000 euros. Paid to who? Family? Families. Yeah. Yeah. Which isn't a lot when you kill four people. I mean, it's kind of cheap, actually. It's like $50,000 a person. Right.

So, but now Charles Gagall's Terminal 2E is still there. If you look at it, it's gorgeous, beautiful. It's very mid-century modern. It is incredibly reinforced because of everything that happened. Like I said, it's now built with steel instead of concrete. And one thing that was also interesting was that because this airport authority was so focused on design and beauty and all that, they actually outsource or airports outsource their own design to these folks. And so this guy, Paul, was also responsible for a ton of airport designs and terminal designs

other airports. And so I don't think they do that anymore after this. But like up until that point, they were well known as the people to go to for this kind of work. So that reminds me of today as in Big Bear, we talked about this earlier. And have you been to Big Bear? I don't think so. So it's like, it's like an hour and a half where I am in the desert. So it's like, and it's up. So it's cooler. It's like a lake on top of a mountain.

And there's like really pretty trees. And like in the summer you go out and like on the boat and then in the winter you can ski there. But all of the, a lot of the signs for like restaurants look like they've been burned. Like they look like they've been through a fire. Like they have the like black and like hard to see. And like it's weird. And I'm like, I don't understand what's happening. So we looked it up and it's because of the extreme temperature changes and like the ice sitting on it.

And then, you know, during, even during the summer, like the temperature can change 50 degrees between the morning and the night. Because of that plus the moisture, it just like oxidizes the plastic and that's why they look like they're burned. You know? So there's just like so many like environmental things, especially without like change of pressure and change of temperature. And also like big bears like 6,000 feet in like elevations. So it's like the radiation's higher. like so many interesting things that you just like don't think about. That's fun.

I never went to Big Bear. I used to go to Arrowhead. Is it Arrowhead? Yeah, probably Lake Arrowhead. And then Ida Wild. I used to love Idol Wild. It was awesome. Yeah.

But also one of those places where like sometimes you go up there and you'll never go up to get back down because maybe it'll be an avalanche and block the main. Or force fire and then you can get around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do love that kind of living though. That'd be really fun. Yeah.

I feel like I'd be nice and burly for that, you know? yes you'll get like a flannel shirt and like an axe I can cut my Ahi tuna with it burliest thing you can do perfect um so anyways engineering disaster for y'all from Paris I kind of want to do an episode on Charles de Gaulle

because the more I read about this guy the more I was like he's really cool I'm sure he's done horrible things by the way But in terms of like historical figures, he seems like a very interesting guy. Yeah, exactly. Very much like who isn't terrible, but also, yes, I'd love to learn more. We'll see if you figure that out. But if y'all want engineering disasters or more of them or you want bios, let us know at duneipal pod at gmail.com.

And we are here to aim to please. We are here to, we are here. We aim to please. I'll just put it that way. Yeah. better. No criticisms. Cool.

I think the one thing I wanted to mention before we leave is I think one of my friends was there when that happened at Charles Hall. No way. But I just message her because I want to verify that. But I remember that I feel like she was there. I'm going to find out. That's incredible. Yeah.

That's incredible. If she replies, let me know. That might be actually be like an interview episode. we could do. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think, I think I feel like I remember her being there and I just want to get that verified and then talk to you more about it. So interesting. Okay. Because like remember our old CEO at our old job and then the other like the and the president and like her husband were at the airport in LA when there was a shooting and they had to like walk out of it to a hotel. Oh my God. I do remember that now.

You know, so like, what do you do? Like, what does everyone else do? When, like, something like that happens, like, you know, do they stop the planes? Do they, like, you know, what? It doesn't just affect, like, the four people who died. It affects the entire airport plus the whole entire, like, ecosystem of the area because, like, then is your fight canceled? Do you need hotel? How are you going to get out of the airport? Because it's not in Paris. It's like next to Paris. You have to, like, get there somehow. And, like, what's safe? And, like, you know, why is it was it, like, was it a terrorist attack?

was it something someone did? Like what, you know, all those stuff that you don't know, like the first hours of a disaster. Yeah, that's interesting. I think they were on, like, the taxiway too or something when that happened. And they had, like, get on at the taxiway or something. It was some of a crazy story.

And they, like, couldn't get any way. It couldn't get home, even though they were, like, in L.A. Yeah. Yeah, wow. We've had some weird experiences, Taylor. Oh, man. Um, do we have a listener mail? No.

All right. Anything you want to lead off with? Chatting people. No, please. Oh, we did get a new review on Apple podcast. So thank you. Let me find it. It was very nice.

And I really appreciate you. And thank you to everyone who has done that. It's cool and helpful. And sometimes I like, see it places. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. Like someone said that they liked it. Skidipollie said, this is one of my favorite pods. Very well delivered and factual.

Highly recommend. Thank you. Thank you. Very much appreciate it. We'll make the same announcement we made on the last episode. If you do want a sticker, write to us at www.com, and Taylor will mail you some stickers. I will. I love mailing things.

She really does. I get mail. Taylor's the only person I've known in the past 30 years who mails me anything. It's true. It's true. I'll just get something. and it'll be like an envelope that's either peach colored or pink or like pastel green. I'm like, okay, this is Taylor.

I don't even have to look at me from. Oh, my God. Wait, let me tell you this. This is really stupid. So I have your, I'm almost done with your birthday present, but I keep adding things to it. And it's like in a box under my bed, right? Because under my bed, I have boxes for all like the fall birthdays because I've already made everybody everything. You know, I'm on to Christmas decorations.

Like, I'm doing a whole thing. But I pull out the box of your stuff because I printed something for Rachel. and I was wrapping it up and putting it in and then a spider crawled around the box and tried to get in the box and I was like, no! And then Juan killed it, but I was like, could you imagine if I mailed you a live spider?

But I tell her something this really nice package in my birthday and it included a live spider. Oh, man. I killed it. That would have been really funny. But I was laughing. I was like, don't go to the box.

I don't know what to do if you go to the box. I can't mail you to Fars. Also very thoughtful things that kill a spider instead of shipping it to me on brand. Cool. Thank you. Enjoy the Odyssey. Text me after.

I will. I will. And again, find us on all the social to dooflpott and gmail.com or on the social to dovenefal pot. Write to us to dovenithal pot at gmail.com. I'm going to go see the Odyssey. I will let everybody know how that is next time to record. Cool.

And let us know what you thought if you have seen it or not. Okay. That's all God. Thanks, so. Thanks.