AN Air France Concorde crashed into a hotel near Paris shortly after takeoff this afternoon.

Initial reports indicated none of the 109 passengers and crew have survived.

One eyewitness said the hotel in the town of Gonesse was in flames.

Another eyewitness spoke of the aircraft's left engine having been on fire before the crash, which happened two minutes after take off.

It comes just a day after British Airways revealed one of its supersonic jets has been taken out of service when a 76mm crack developed in its wing structure.

Another eyewitness described hearing the noise as "like a mini-atom bomb going off".

The aircraft had been chartered from Air France by a party of Germans, who were bound for New York.

Six more British Concordes are still in service despite the discovery of 60mm cracks in the rear of their wings. British Airways issued a statement immediately after the crash, saying it was undertaking a review of its fleet in light of the accident.

But the Civil Aviation Authority and British Airways have declared they are "no risk to safety".

The supersonic aircraft was developed in a joint British-French project in the 1960s and 1970s.

John Wiles, a retired aeronautical engineer formerly in charge of the British Airways Concorde fleet, told the Evening Press it was the first major accident involving the aeroplane, which has been in service for 25 years.

He said the cause of the crash could have been a major malfunction of the plane's Snecma/Olympus(CORR) engines.

But he said the power plants had been designed so that in the event of a failure the moving parts would be contained within the engine, and could not penetrate fuel tanks leading to a fire.

He said one of the BA Concordes had been grounded earlier this week after small cracks were discovered on one of the plane's delta wings, but that this fault was unlikely to lead to a crash and would have been no more than an unfortunate coincidence.

Mr Wiles said: "Being on fire would not necessarily lead to a crash but it could damage the flying controls and make the plane impossible to fly.

"It could also have damaged the structure of the wing and prevented the pilot from being able to bring the plane back to the airport safely."

Mr Wiles said a time-consuming and detailed technical analysis of the wreckage would be needed to find the cause of the disaster.

He added that, until today's disaster, Concorde had had an excellent safety record.

PICTURE: A British Airways Concorde similar to the Air France Concorde that crashed in France earlier today.