Concorde

jonny68

Might be a silly question but has anyone on here ever flown on the Concorde?

Something id love to do but these planes are currently in "retirement", i remember speaking to a friend of my cousins at a party last year, this man was obviously wealthy and had business interests here and in USA, he was telling me he flew with Concorde before from London to NYC and how it took hours less than your average plane and was going on about how cool it was.

According to Wikipedia Richard Branson tried to buy it off BA but they refused, it would be great to see these planes back, im sure in this day and age it would do well with certain people having a lot of disposable income.:cool:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

On 10 April 2003, British Airways and Air France simultaneously announced that they would retire Concorde later that year. They cited low passenger numbers following the 25 July 2000 crash, the slump in air travel following 9/11 and rising maintenance costs.

That same day, Sir Richard Branson offered to buy British Airways' Concordes at their "original price of £1" for service with his Virgin Atlantic Airways. Branson claimed this to be the same token price that British Airways had paid the British Government, but BA denied this[36] and refused the offer. However, although the cost of buying the aircraft was £26 million each, the money for buying the aircraft was loaned by the government - this loan was written off when British Airways was privatised in 1987.

After posting large losses on their Concorde flights in the early 1980s, British Airways paid a flat sum of £16.5 million in 1984 to the UK government to buy their Concordes outright. After doing a market survey and discovering that their target customers thought that Concorde was more expensive than it actually was, BA progressively raised prices to match these perceptions. It is reported that BA then ran Concorde at a profit, unlike their French counterparts.[36] Although BA refused to open the accounts, it has been reported to be up to £50 million per year in the most profitable year and a total revenue of £1.75 billion on costs of £1 billion.[36]

Branson wrote in The Economist (23 October 2003) that his final offer was "over £5 million" and that he had intended to operate the fleet "for many years to come." Any hope of Concorde remaining in service was further thwarted by Airbus' unwillingness to provide maintenance support for the ageing airframes.

It has been suggested that Concorde was not withdrawn for the reasons usually given, and that the airlines discovered during the grounding that Concorde's first class passengers were loyal to the airlines and carrying them on subsonic aircraft gave greater revenue and that this was the real reason for the withdrawal from service.[37]

The small hope remaining for Concorde today rests with a dedicated group of French volunteer engineers keeping one of the youngest Concordes in near airworthy condition. These engineers, working on the Air France aircraft retired to the Le Bourget Air and Space Museum in Paris, hope that one day Concorde will be able to show her majesty again by taking to the skies. Concordes based in Britain, however, have had their fluids drained and their systems have been disconnected, making it even harder for it to regain airworthiness certification.

BuffyBot

Moved to Aviation and Aircraft

pclancy

Was inside the one parked at Duxford museum years ago, amazing how tiny it is inside. Gorgeous plane to wander around the outside of....nothing will ever match it.

Jakey

Club Concorde are trying to get it back in the air see
http://www.clubconcorde.co.uk/

Darren

I flew it on March 13th 2003 - BA001 LHR-JFK, Going to NYC for Paddy's day. Awesome, Awesome aircraft.

I used to work in the Concorde and 747/777 BA hangars at Heathrow so I had had some tours around it off the engineers too. Got to sit in the pilots seat and they showed me all the places where you could get your hand in on the ground but which closed up in cruise.

Davidth88

Darren you lucky sod !

I would have really loved to have flown on Concorde , I now regret deeply that I never took the plunge . At times in the 90s you could get reasonably cheap blasts around the Bay of Biscay organised by some travel club ( who's name escapes me )

My opinion , the greatest airliner that ever flew. IF it had 6 magic letters on the side it would have sold hundreds in the US and still be going ( maybe )....

Boeing

Believe me , the put mighty pressure on the US administration/ airlines to kill this aircraft off , pure envy.

However if you look at the price of oil now , it looks like this may even kill the HSS ( the shipping equivilent to Concorde in many ways ) perhaps its a good thing they were able to retire gracefully .

el tel

I've flown on Concorde, Nov 1997 LHR-JFK. Noisy aircraft, very cramped, very old-skool. Windows warm to the touch, nice curvy horizon. I have $hit loads of Concorde tat which I took from the plane. In every seat-back there was a pack containing a grey leatherette folder containg a pen, tags, postcards (all marked/embossed with Concorde logos) and an 'I flew at Mach 2' certificate for siging by the crew. As most of the pax were frequent fliers they didn't bother with taking these folders so I helped myself to 20 of them.

Saruman

I think they were taken out of service because they lost money etc. Nothing to do with safety. Cant be since there was only ever 1 fatal concorde accident where as every other type of plane has crashed somewhere at some time.
It was an excuse to take them out of service after the crash.

pclancy

Nice one el_tel

True their safety record was very high compared to other airliners. It was 9/11 and rising fuel/maintenance costs killed them off. Passenger numbers never really recovered after 9/11 and the crash so both airlines had to pull the plug. Of course the image of the plane was tarnished forever too..

The crash in Paris was such a disaster, obviously the loss of life in the air and the ground but in everyones head the image of the concorde grasping for height with flames pouring out of the aft will stay forever, I think her image was always going to be ruined after that. Any crash of such a high profiel plane was going to be bad, how many 737s have gone down and we all hop on them without fear? Terrible that a little strip of metal from a continental dc10 began the death of the supersonic age.

Davidth88

Guys it was never the crash in Paris that killed Concorde, it was money pure and simple. Oil prices went through the roof , the advent of easy /reliable video conferencing etc etc .

AF were wanting to retire their fleet for years , even back in the 90's they had 3 that they had ' mothballed ' because they hadn't a clue how to run them and make a profit. BA used them for charters , made a fortune.

I think to be honest BA made a huge mistake , it was the one big difference between them and any other airline, they are now just another airline.

It's incredible to think these babies were designed basically in the late 50's early 60's ... just think with modern materials what you could do. The Russians tried and failed to build an equivilent , and thats with huge amount of experience building supersonic bombers ( Blinders/backfires etc ).

el tel

When I worked in BA the concorde fleet had just undergone an interior refit and all talk then was that the plane would be operational until at least 2015. Mechanically this was well within the bounds of the planes' serviceable life span. It's true maintenance costs were high however the plane had broken even by 1986 and was regarded as the most profitable in the fleet. Once Airbus stated they'd end support by 2003 that was the death knell. Shame it's gone as I feel that now there as many high-rollers as there have ever been and these people are willing to splash huge amounts of money on frivilous and not-so-frivilous products, including flying to NY in just under 3 hours.

junkyard

I would have loved to have flown on it too, I remember seeing it taking off in Heathrow a few years ago and it was just awesome. Pity it's gone.:(

Oilrig

Branson's gesture was pure publicity - once Airbus pulled the plug on maintenance it was all over for everyone.

Fantastic aircraft, amazing achievement considering all the calculations were slide rule etc. It may have cost a fortune but it pushed the bounderies and led to the current day Airbus.

PS Oilrig's Dad was involved in the Concord Project, can remember being dragged around BAC as it was then, to look at a wooden mock-up.

BrianD3

I never flew on it but saw a few takeoffs and landings, including the last ever landing by G-BOAF at Filton. There were many people balling their eyes out at the last landing. Many British people are extremely proud of Concorde so it wasn't surprising

The chances of seeing a Concorde fly again in a "heritage role" are virtually nil. There would be massive regulatory, maintenance, training, support and probably poliitical hurdles, Vast quantities of money would have to be ploughed into it and it woud require a major effort on the part of BA, AF and Airbus. Not going to happen.

I have been taking an interest in the XH558 Vulcan to the Sky project for a few years now, looks like they are close to completion. A truly amazing project. This week on the History channel there is a good programme about the Vulcan and its role in the Falklands war. As large and complex as a Vulcan is to return to flight, Concorde would be another matter altogether

jonny68

Nice one el tel and Darren...el tel i was under the impression that there would've been plenty of space on the Concorde you mentioned that it was cramped, if your going to be paying top dollar you would expect there to be plenty of space onboard.

How much did you gents pay to fly Concorde if you don't mind me asking?;)

ch252

I was in it at the air sea and space meuseum in New York, tiny plane, no legroom!!! unbelievable machine though

Darren

I'm 6'4" and wasn't cramped at all. I would describe the seats as narrow with plenty of leg room. The seat next to me was empty though.

pclancy

BrianD3 wrote:

I have been taking an interest in the XH558 Vulcan to the Sky project for a few years now, looks like they are close to completion. A truly amazing project. This week on the History channel there is a good programme about the Vulcan and its role in the Falklands war. As large and complex as a Vulcan is to return to flight, Concorde would be another matter altogether

Yeah I was stuck indoors sick most of the weekend and watched that, very good programme actually. They were very lucky to be able to purchase all the spares and manuals and progress has been good with the airframe stripped down and major parts sent back for refurbishment and overhaul. They reckon someone wants to make a film on the bombing run down to the falklands, that will inject cash and help get her back in the air. I hate the falklands war though. Such a waste of life for a sheepfilled rock.

mobpd

I was also lucky enough to fly on Concorde once to NY. What still stands out for me are the amazing forces as it hurtles down the runway to take off and the braking power as it lands. The climb just after take off was also spectacular. We had quite poor weather on the trip over and experienced some turbulance even at the cruising altitude of 60000 feet.
Got to go into the cockpit during the trip and see the vast array of dials and controls - think there was an engineer in the cockpit whose duty was to constantly shift the remaining fuel around the tanks during the flight.
The cabin was quite cramped - tiny overhead lockers.
Would loved to have flown on her again.....

Deacon Blues

Apparantly, the first BA flight after all the mods were put in place after the crash was full of BA employees, to celebrate the return to service. It never really made much news, because after it left London, it never got to New York. The reason it was turned back was because it was on Sept 11 2001, and US airspace had been closed. Concorde returning to service was very low priority news that day.

One of the biggest reasons for it then never going back into full service was because there was very little demand. BA said that lots of the regular Concorde passengers ... the really frequent Concorde fliers who used it once or twice a week every week for return flights were killed in the towers. Also, many senior managers in financial houses who used to sign off on their employees using Concorde were killed.

It probably could have survived, but with its main customer base decimated it would take too long to build numbers back. Also, the business culture changed, with an emphasis on diversifing offices and using technology to replace face to face meetings.

hobie

I'm fairly certain Alph Fox was the last one in Shannon ..... :rolleyes:

DublinWriter

pclancy wrote:

Was inside the one parked at Duxford museum years ago, amazing how tiny it is inside. Gorgeous plane to wander around the outside of....nothing will ever match it.

I was in that one in Duxford too. It was the British prototype Concorde 001 and had all the primative early computers in the front section for analysing flight data.

Yes, it was tiny, but the lack of leg room was more than made up for by the excellent service and flowing champagne!

I was working about 20 miles from Heathrow just before the Concorde was decomissioned. The sound it made was unbelievable. It was in the weeks just post 9/11 when it started flying again. I remember every Friday before lunch a sound a roaring sound like a 747 starting up in the parking lot outside would kick-off. It really sounded like a jumbo was about to crash into the offices.

As it was just post 9/11, people in the office always got nervous. These were 'soundproofed' double-glazed offices, we'd almost have to shout to each other to be heard!

I'd pop out for a cig and there would be this tiny white elongated triangle really high in the sky zooming away. I couldn't believe how loud it was considering its height and it wouldn't have even been hitting supersonic at that stage.

I did consider getting a return ticket, but they were about £12K Sterling during its final months of operation, as far as I remember.

For something designed in the 60's, it looked so futuristic, even in 2002. I'll always remember seeing the 'Concorde Groupies' parked out just outside the Heathrow Perimeter when I used to fly back to Dublin of a weekend.

Even the pilots' seats cost a staggering £4 million Sterling to design and manufacture at the time.