So, was there something in the magnetic field, wind currents, or some other unknown force that effected all three airmen to such an extent that it is no longer safe to navigate an aircraft in that region?
No. The airmen were inexperienced on the route and inadvertantly flew into a mountain slope. This type of accident is known as a “controlled flight into terrain” and can occur due to suboptimal visibility, cockpit workload, bad crew resource management, inexperience with a route, ATC error, pilots being distracted while performing an unexpected approach into an airport, and of course these accidents were even more common before GPS technology enabled TCAS, Terrain Collision Avoidance System.
Now, bearing in mind that commercial aviation is extremely safe and has a culture of safety, I would note that controlled flight into terrain is one of the more common causes of aviation disasters.
I fail to see how the one crashed Concorde halted that program.. you stated the reason.. declining traffic that would make it unnecessary and therefore.... too costly to build new aircraft.
Building new aircraft would have been neither necessary nor possible; it should be remembered each airline had seven aircraft to cover two daily three hour Atlantic crossings, and the aircraft were the most precisely maintained in the BA and AF fleet. This meant the aircraft when retired had very low hours and pressurization cycles and had not been allowed to deteriorate in condition since delivery in the late 1970s. Ironically, the DC10, some in rather bad condition, and which began being delivered since 1971-72, along with its competitor, the Lockheed Tristar, but the DC10 proved to be an exceptionally good freighter, and passenger airframes were refurbished with a modern cockpit and sold by Boeing as MD-10s around the same time as the accident. So basically, while Concorde is extremely special, the consensus is that the aircraft type had at least another decade of service life. I think had one not crashed, the oil price crunch in 2007-2008 and the widespread adoption of “green” enthusiasm at the same time, and the concurrent global financial crash and housing market bubble bursting would have lead to a 2009 retirement.
Rather, what happened was the decline in traffic on Air France Concordes post-accident proved lasting, because of the fear it had caused in travelers, but British Airways did not take as much of a hit. The two airlines had an agreement that Concorde would remain in service only while both operated the type, so when Air France discontinued Concorde in early 2003, it forced British Airways to end the program in October of that year. The
Both airlines, but especially British Airways, had found the aircraft extremely profitable, with flights typically selling around $15,000-$20,000 per seat, about the cost of buying an automobile, so that in airline terminology is very high RASM (Revenue per Available Seat Miles) vs. CASM (Cost per Available Seat Miles) which while more expensive than for other airliners in the fleet, was not dramatically more expensive. It also helped that the airliners were sold at a very low price to BA and AF by their national governments in order to save face after most orders for Concorde and other SSTs were cancelled due to the oil shortage in the early 1970s combined with concerns about sonic booms on overland routes basically limiting the type to overwater flying.
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