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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Last Concorde Flight
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Daryl C. W. O'Shea
Film God
Posts: 3977
From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from)
Registered: Jun 2002
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posted 10-24-2003 07:41 AM
The time has finally come... ![[Frown]](frown.gif) I wonder how much they'll go for on eBay. ![[Smile]](smile.gif) I'm sure there will be a few air museums bidding.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/10/24/concorde.final/index.html
quote:
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Concorde, the world's only supersonic airliner, has taken off from New York for its last passenger flight.
The jet, conceived more than 40 years ago when supersonic planes were thought to be the future of flight, climbed away from John F. Kennedy airport heading towards the edge of space, where it would accelerate to twice the speed of sound.
Tens of thousands of enthusiasts are expected to line the roads around London's Heathrow Airport to see the aircraft arrive.
A trio of Concordes will make a special choreographed landing at the airport, signaling the end of commercial supersonic flights.
A list of 100 specially-invited guests will be on the British Airways Concorde making the last journey from New York to London, sipping Champagne, and eating smoked salmon and lobster fishcakes.
Two other Concordes will immediately precede it, one from Edinburgh and the other taking a journey around the Bay of Biscay.
A 1,000-seat grandstand has been constructed at Heathrow for fans of the supersonic jet, but authorities are warning of traffic jams as an estimated 250,000 enthusiasts try to catch a glimpse of the planes as they touch down at about 4 p.m. (1500 GMT).
The plane, with its pointed nose -- and £8,000 ($11,000) a seat price tag -- was the choice of celebrities and businessmen, before ordinary passengers were given the opportunity of claiming a ride during its last months.
Concorde, which travels at twice the speed of sound, made its first commercial flight in January, 1976. A joint Anglo-French enterprise, the aircraft has been lauded for its technical innovation, but condemned for being too expensive to make as well as too noisy and uneconomic to run.
Only a handful were ever made, and only Air France and British Airways flew the planes.
Concorde failed to recover from a series of disasters, beginning with a crash outside Paris in July 2000 when an Air France plane crashed, killing all 109 people on board as well as four people on the ground.
Although Concorde was back up and running after an expensive safety overhaul, the timing coincided with the fall in passengers caused by the September 11 attacks, and a general economic downturn.
British Airways' Concorde never resumed its twice-a-day service between London and New York, and was limited to one daily journey.
Air France had five Concordes remaining after the crash, while BA had seven, although only five flew once services resumed in November 2001.
It is believed the Concordes will be distributed around the world to various museums after their retirement, but one might be kept for air shows and fly-pasts.
British Airways Chairman Lord Marshall said: "The decision to retire Concorde was a tough one, but it is the right thing to do at the right time."
CNN's Richard Quest, a passenger on Friday's flight from New York, said: "This is the first time in history that aviation history is taking a step backwards. Everyone on today's flight is well aware of that fact."
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 10-24-2003 10:38 AM
Not on Ebay, but various Concorde spare parts are for sale by auction, in was on the news a couple of evenings ago. There is a web site somewhere where you can register, and you will be notified when a lot comes up for sale. Among the items shown were: a front wheel, a 'Black Box' recorder and various electronic modules which looked as if they would have been more at home in a '50 military aircraft.
In some ways it was ahead of its time, but in others it was behind them. It was introduced at a time when cheap air travel for the masses was becoming commomplace, but it offered luxury, expensive travel for the few, something which belonged more in the age of the great airships.
Concorde was really the end of an era, as much as the start of one. If they had gone on to develop a larger, cheaper to operate version then it might have stood a chance, but there,s no way most people could afford £8000 one way to New York.
Has anyone here ever flown on Concorde? If so, what did you think of it?
Sadly, the QEII is also ending its London-New York sailings soon.
There is talk of BA retaining one Concorde in flying order, for use at air shows etc. Maybe it will be available for private hire to anybody with enough money.
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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!
Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000
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posted 10-24-2003 04:45 PM
A sad but inevitable day for aviation, engineering, and technology. Inevitable in that at some point Concorde would have to be retired. Sad in that we have nothing, and will continue to have nothing for a very long time, that can replace it. The difficult decision to start the Concorde project was made in a very different time, a time when visionaries could still call the important shots. The easy decision to stop Concorde and any R&D on its replacement was made by accountants, i.e. short-sighted, bottom-line-fixated people that are anything but visionary. Such people make only the easy calls, and "progress" gets defined only in terms of what is profitable this fiscal quarter. It's a sad comment on our society today that we deliberately choose such people to define and shape our future.
I never got to go aboard Concorde but did get to see it a few times with my own eyes. It made occasional charter flights to Las Vegas, and was a fixture at the annual Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I made a photo of its first landing here (British Airways ship G-BOAA), touching down on runway 25 at LAS with the Circus Circus Learjet flying chase. I'll look into getting it scanned and posted if anyone's interested.
One of my old bosses did get to ride on it. At the time he was chief pilot for the corporate flight department at Southwest Gas, and flew to England aboard Concorde in order to ferry SWG's then-new turboprop twin (a Rockwell Turbo Commander 690B) back to here. Quite the contrast in trips--3.5 hours eastbound across the pond--many more hours than that coming home.
[ 10-28-2003, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Paul Mayer ]
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 10-25-2003 03:52 AM
One report I read said 60,000 feet, 15,000 more than conventional aircraft. 45,000 sounds rather high for a conventional plane though. When I flew last year, Boeing 777-200, I think we reached about 36,000, and back in the '60s when I flew in a Vickers Viscount I seem to remember that it was only about 20,000.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 10-25-2003 05:10 AM
Concorde very nearly didn't happen, and at least once came very close to cancellation. It was conceived during a warm period in the relations between Britain and France; those relations go through fairly frequent rather cooler periods, during which there were many people who saw it as something those 'nasty French' were involved in, and therefore Britain shouldn't be.
On a more serious level, there were many who, correctly, saw it as a financial black hole. There never was any commercial justification for Concorde as it was built. It could, perhaps have been justified as a prototype to bigger and better things, but this never happened. The very large, low cost per seat passenger aircraft which were all sub-sonic proved to be the future of aviation. Things were made even worse by the '70s oil crisis, and the subsequent almost overnight tripling (I think, it's a long time to think back now) of oil prices in Europe. At that time Britain had very little home produced oil, and I don't know if France had any.
The main reason for building Concorde was political, To show that Europe could be the first to get such a plane into commercial service. The expected competion, from America, never appeared, and I believe the TU-144, mentioned by Elena, was the only similar plane ever developed. The TU-144 was not well known in the West, and few people here had even heard of it before the sad events, after which I don't think it ever made a comeback. The TU-144 was almost certainly built for the same reasons as the Concorde, political prestige, something which is not seen as being so important today as it was then.
There were reports some years ago of one of the large American aircraft builders developing a much larger 'super Concorde' which would be commercially viable, but nothing came of it.
Today it is much quicker and cheaper to send information around the world than to send people of course, so, while it might be a nice thing to have, a very fast air service is probably less necessary today than it was in the '70s. How many people really need to pop over to New York for a quick meeting today?
The only country which I think might do something similar in the future would be China. They would certainly like the prestige that comes with it, though they would have to outdo Concorde in some way, faster, bigger, further. They almost certainly have the technology to be able to do it, and with a very rapidly growing economy they could probably afford to do it. I think their recent launching of a manned spacecraft shows they have all three requirements. Whether they will choose to do so is up to them.
I would like to be able to fly over to New York in three and a half hours, at an affordable price, but I doubt that it will happen in my lifetime.
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