I watched a documentary the other week and the Russian copy was bigger, the failed Boeing concept was quite a bit bigger.
A reminder of when we really were on top of the world
- Thread starter Foxyboy43
- Start date
enfieldspares
Well-Known Member
There were two rows of seats on either side. There are two, maybe three, Concorde at the French Air Museum at Le Bourget. A test bed one and another plus I think a third.
As a kid I remember the ridiculous projections on a BBC Tomorrow's World that by such and such a date there would be a hundred, nay two hundred (yes two hundred) Concorde in service with the world's major airlines. That once British Airways and Air France started using them that their competitors would have to do so also.
I think there was also mention (but that may be memory tricks) of the Concorde being used for routes not only across the Atlantic but also to the Middle and Far East? But even back then there were some that thought that this was nothing more nor less than an electoral bribe to ensure that the then Labour Minister Tony Benn would be elected in the Bristol Parliamentary Constituency that he'd been parachuted into.
But be that as it may it remains probably the only commercial airliner that people would actually stop and look up at as it flew by. I remember where I was when the Roissy crash happened. On route to Tours in the Loire Valley and walked in to the Holiday Inn at Tours to see on the France 24 channel an almost continuous loop of the thing crossing the A1 Autoroute in flames.
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte summed it up years before (about the mitrailleuse in fact)...as I used to later tell my clients when passing the Concorde that could be seen just off the A7 near Orly Airport...he said "Any invention ahead of its time is useless."
Anyway here's locations to see what remains:
As a kid I remember the ridiculous projections on a BBC Tomorrow's World that by such and such a date there would be a hundred, nay two hundred (yes two hundred) Concorde in service with the world's major airlines. That once British Airways and Air France started using them that their competitors would have to do so also.
I think there was also mention (but that may be memory tricks) of the Concorde being used for routes not only across the Atlantic but also to the Middle and Far East? But even back then there were some that thought that this was nothing more nor less than an electoral bribe to ensure that the then Labour Minister Tony Benn would be elected in the Bristol Parliamentary Constituency that he'd been parachuted into.
But be that as it may it remains probably the only commercial airliner that people would actually stop and look up at as it flew by. I remember where I was when the Roissy crash happened. On route to Tours in the Loire Valley and walked in to the Holiday Inn at Tours to see on the France 24 channel an almost continuous loop of the thing crossing the A1 Autoroute in flames.
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte summed it up years before (about the mitrailleuse in fact)...as I used to later tell my clients when passing the Concorde that could be seen just off the A7 near Orly Airport...he said "Any invention ahead of its time is useless."
Anyway here's locations to see what remains:
Locations of Concorde Planes
List and map of the locations of Concorde planes in the world
www.daftlogic.com
Dunwaters
Well-Known Member
It wasn’t just the US, no one wanted supersonic flights over their land areas, that killed a lot of potential routes to Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It’s a sad fact that even operating at 60,000’ Concorde generated one heck of a sonic boom.The USA pretty much killed it with noise and possibly pollution regs - some have a view that the green-eyed monster was at work…..
It was noisy, very noisy on departure and it was quite tight on fuel for transatlantic hops, I seem to remember that the alternative airport for flights to JFK was still Kennedy, just a different runway.
I doubt we’ll ever see another civil supersonic aircraft, certainly not a commercial airliner.
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John Gryphon
Well-Known Member
Did he really say that ?
enfieldspares
Well-Known Member
Yes. But in French. It was about the failure of the mitrailleuse in the Franco Prussian War of 1870-71. It is something along the lines of "That any invention ahead of its time is useless as neither the intelligence (as in mental intelligence) on how to use it nor the knowledge of how to deploy it exist."
In effect the mitrailleuse was revolutionary as a machine gun but the French rather (with hindsight after his own death) than use it as in WWI and later a machine gun would be used they used it as if it were an artillery piece. With the result that the Prussians simply used counter battery cannon fire to destroy the French mitrailleuse batteries.
Mitrailleuse - Wikipedia
Heym SR20
Well-Known Member
A good friend of a friend was one the last BA Captains on Concorde. They still had plenty of life left in them and there was a consortium backed by another airline that tried to buy out the business and keep them flying.
BA were having none of it and took an angle grinder and acetylene cutters to all the specialist tools and jigs needed to keep them operational- effectively consigning them all to museums for ever.
BA were having none of it and took an angle grinder and acetylene cutters to all the specialist tools and jigs needed to keep them operational- effectively consigning them all to museums for ever.
Two memories, A tv interview with Barnes Wallace where he said, the Delta shape is dated! No further talk or discussion has always left me wandering what he had in mind? An engineer I worked along side used to be employed at Heathrow on the Concord section, told me it was not unusual to be asked by the test pilot, "Who' was working on Concord number whatever, to come with him as he was test flying it now, and you can come with me as you worked on it", Quick dash over the Bay of Biscay and home. Always amused me to think of him telling his wife where he had been today.
BC
BC
8x57
Distinguished Member
They were taken out of service for three main reasons -
1. The work necessary to protect the fuel cells in the wings was prohibitively expensive as it almost entailed a complete rebuild of the wings. (Damage to the fuel cells from runway debris was the cause of the Paris crash).
2. The routes that they could fly were severely limited. Countries simply didn't want them to overfly their land because of the noise and pollution. Where we live you could set your watch each day at 09.50 a.m. by the boom that Concorde made as it went supersonic over the Irish sea on its daily flight to New York.
3. By that time the technology in the cockpit was extremely dated with old fashioned gauges and dials, almost nothing digital. (1960s technology).
In addition it was only for a very brief period of time that the fleet actually made a profit. For many years they ran at a heavy loss. Also there was an agreement that both France and the U.K. were a party to regarding the manufacture and supply of spares, basically both parties had to be involved and the French simply decided not to continue.
