Concorde at 50: Twice the speed of sound, twice the economic trouble

It is 50 years since Concorde began scheduled passenger flights, with British Airways operating a London-Bahrain service and Air France flying from Paris to Rio de Janeiro. Technically, the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 was the first supersonic passenger airliner, entering service on December 26, 1975. However, Concorde began …

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Ropy?

[MiguelC]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ropy

[Roland6]

It’s also in a ‘proper’ Queen’s English dictionary:

https://chambers.co.uk/search/?query=Ropy&title=21st

[Missing Semicolon]

BA were asshats about it

Branson would have loved to buy the Concordes, but BA refused to release the service records for them. Without those, it was impossible to certify airworthiness. BA were absolutely determined that their precious Concordes would never fly with a Virgin logo on the tail, even if Branson lost a king's ransom on each flight.

[R Soul]

Re: BA were asshats about it

No airline was ever going to be able to fly Concorde after Airbus withdrew support for the aircraft. That's what killed their airworthiness certification. It had nothing to do with access to the airline's service records.

If you choose to believe Beardie's bullshit about BA keeping the planes for themselves, go ahead. The truth is rather different.

His "bid" to buy Concorde was yet another in his very long list of half-assed publicity stunts.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: BA were asshats about it

Don't forget that RR ended support for the engineers too, which was just as much of a death knell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BA were asshats about it

Once you can't get spare parts for your engineers, it's all over. They don't make 'em the way they used to, you know. (I suppose you could always cannibalise some of the newer ones for parts)

[MyffyW]

Re: BA were asshats about it

Speaking as an engineer, I would vehemently resist being cannibalised.

[EvilDrSmith]

Re: BA were asshats about it

Also speaking as an engineer, I have no objection to the proposal, since I am (sadly) not 'one of the newer ones'

[MyffyW]

Re: BA were asshats about it

True. That will probably be my "out" too.

As you were, OP.

[hedgie]

Re: BA were asshats about it

If you've got a friendly Igor around, you can keep engineers going almost indefinitely.

[Annihilator]

Re: BA were asshats about it

Spot on. I thoroughly recommend anyone with a PR-pushed-view that BA withdrew Concorde off their own back would do well to read Mike Bannister's autobiography, not least for the section on how Air France's persistent operational breaches were really the cause of the crash.

Watching "Concorde: A Supersonic Story" on iplayer is also a cracking watch, to fill in the blanks on why only 2 operators came onboard,

[steelpillow]

Re: BA were asshats about it

Interesting to see quite how many Reg commentards know so much more about Concorde than the International Air Transport Association, that they downvoted you:

https://iatanews.com/what-if-virgin-atlantic-had-bought-british-airways-concordes

Takes a lot of ego to turn down £5M for a white elephant - more even that to post ignorant downvotes here. 's why none of you run national airlines, I guess.

[nobody who matters]

Re: BA were asshats about it

That article is basically bollocks - Airbus had already withdrawn support, which meant that the airframes were permanently grounded. To fly them, Branson would have needed to persuade Airbus to either provide the techical support again, or would have had to persuade them to pass the necessary tychnical information and give the necessary training to another suitable aircraft manufacturer or suitable aircraft maintenance company (the word suitable is very important - they would need to be approved by the authority that would issue the Certificate of Airworthiness). This is why Branson tried to pressure the Government to support him, and also the reason why that backing was not forthcoming.

I think it is pretty clear that some of the commenters on this thread know a good deal more about the matter than you think you do ;)

[steelpillow]

Re: BA were asshats about it

You miss the point. Sure Airbus had no support left to offer, the cupboard was bare, and Branson did not realise this at first. Nobody arguing with that.

FWIW the article is basically accurate, pretty much a trip down memory lane for me (remember someone likening the mugshot of him brandishing the Virgin Concorde to the Blind Faith album cover?). A bit exaggerated and speculative in places, but that's journos for you. None of us here would ever stoop so low!

No, what puzzled me then, and still does, is why didn't the airlines try to grab the unexpected windfall and leave the idiot to crash and burn? It can't have been through the goodness of their hearts.

[Roland6]

Re: BA were asshats about it

>” why didn't the airlines try to grab the unexpected windfall and leave the idiot to crash and burn? It can't have been through the goodness of their hearts.”

Would not be surprised if BA were concerned that Branson, with his public profile, would have been able to get government backing to bail him out, something (government funding) they obviously were unable to leverage themselves.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BA were asshats about it

"why didn't the airlines try to grab the unexpected windfall"

Beardie's promises of cold, hard cash never turn into reality. Some businesses - in this case BA - are able to see through his bullshit and PR hype.

[stungebag]

Re: BA were asshats about it

I'm not sure that BA would have cared one way or the other if Virgin was trying to operate a service for a market that BA had withdrawn from.

[Annihilator]

Re: BA were asshats about it

It's a lovely "what if" puffpiece, but crucially torpedoed by the line buried near the bottom of the article

"This is particularly crucial when one considers that spare parts for Concorde had stopped being supplied in 2003"

[anothercynic]

Re: BA were asshats about it

When the manufacturers of your power plants and your tyres and your airframe withdraw their type certificates, you are on your own, and not even Branson would've taken on that responsibility. And his backers, at that time Singapore Airlines, and now Delta and AirFranceKLM, would not have given their OK to such a foolish idea either. Airlines are for the most part pretty risk averse, *especially* when it involves their hardware (when it carries self-loading freight), so yeah, their insurance company would have laughed in their faces if they'd continued.

So as much as there was a lot of coulda-woulda-shoulda, even from IATA, the realities of the situation are that without OEM support, nothing happens.

Sorry to have to burst your bubble there.

[Roland6]

Re: BA were asshats about it

I suspect (from memory of events), Branson’s very public approach forced all parties to review their decision and hence why so much was released to the public.

I also suspect Airbus in their review, also looked at what a future working with Virgin/new operator might look like - which would almost certainly have made people seriously consider the real implications of extending the service life by circa ten years.

So I would suggest Branson did everyone a favour; the last flight of Concorde really was the last flight, there would be no resurrection.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: BA were asshats about it

I suspect (from memory of events), Branson’s very public approach forced all parties to review their decision and hence why so much was released to the public.

Roland6,

I don't think Virgin and Branson were relevant to anything. Airbus were going to stop supporting the aircraft. That meant it could no longer be safely run in passenger service.

I've seen a conspiracy theory, which I at least suspect might have a grain of truth. Which is that Air France had never got back to profitability on Concorde after the accident, which BA had. However for them to retire the type would be embarrassing, when BA were doing fine. So they conspired within the tight-knit French establishment with the government and Airbus management and got them to stop support - so BA couldn't have it either.

Air France were flying fewer of theirs, and BA tried to buy one of their old ones to cannibalise for spare parts. Which was refused. This could have been prestige, not to have equal numbers of aircraft. Although again, that might just be people who love it whining, and actually Air France wanted to use it for spares themselves.

Concorde has some vocal fans, what with it having been so amazing. So this could be a combination of bitterness and wishful thinking. Another way to look at it, is Air France telling Airbus that they're about to retire the aircraft, and Airbus deciding there's not enough profit in manufacturing only half the number of spares - or enough work to justify a department to operate a handful of BA aircraft. It's not just aircraft that have lifespans. So does the tooling you use to make the parts, and the software you. So they may have had bits that were about to go end-of-life that they simply couldn't be bothered to replace - or would have required them to triple the price of parts - making Concorde uneconomic for everyone. Or all the staff with the knowledge were close to retirement and they didn't want to train any more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BA were asshats about it

I don't think Virgin and Branson were relevant to anything.

True. That's always a sensible starting point for everything associated with the bearded prick: Virgin Music/Trains/Brides/Money/Cola/Media etc.

Airbus were going to stop supporting the aircraft. That meant it could no longer be safely run in passenger service.

It could no longer be flown, safely or otherwise. Once Airbus stopped supporting Concorde, the planes automatically lost their airworthiness certificates and that meant they weren't allowed to fly.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: BA were asshats about it

Virgin Cola is an excellent case study of dirty tricks in retail.

[Gordon 10]

Re: BA were asshats about it

Probably the staff too.

Mechanical equivalent of having to support Apps built for AS400 or Cobol. Only greybeard contractors at hansome rates....

[Roland6]

Re: BA were asshats about it

>” I don't think Virgin and Branson were relevant to anything.”

Disagree to the extent they managed to whip up the press and public opinion, so anyone on the receiving end would double check their working. This doesn’t diverge from your “conspiracy theory” as part of that review would be to ensure all parties were singing from the same song sheet.

Personally, whilst I miss Concorde, it went out ‘cleanly’ with a bow, rather than a decline into unreliability etc. so has maintained the mystique. Similarly with the Vulcan.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BA were asshats about it

I work with IATA professionally. I can assure you the average El Reg commentator will know more than them about almost *anything*.

They are just a trade association with delusions of grandeur, continually putting up a screen of bullshit and a facade of standardisation to mask that fact the 10 biggests carriers do whatever TF they want whenever they want....

Worked example - NDC. (If you know you know)

Anon obvs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BA were asshats about it

“Supersonic passenger flight worked technically – but never added up commercially”

Considering that ‘the Rich’ now spend far more and create more environmental impact with Private Jets … the irony of the above is not lost on me.

Esp. If the jetting off for a jolly on one of their multi/million ££ Yachts.

[stungebag]

Re: BA were asshats about it

The very rich would always prefer their private jets to having to share a cabin on a service that runs to a timetable.

[rwbthatisme]

The Concorde at Manchester Airport (AFIK) is probably the nearest to still being airworthy as it hasn't had its wings cut off for transport at some point in time

[Aladdin Sane]

002 at the Fleet Air Arm museum hasn't been disassembled, it was flown to Yeovilton after it had finished being a testbed.

[balrog]

It has been robbed for parts over the years though

[Roj Blake]

The RAF's 666 Squadron need to have at least one airworthy Concorde available for use on Laundry missions.

[Oh Matron!]

I went a few years with the parents, and the level of access and detail was incredible. Was taken through how it achieved supersonic flight without afterburners at a level of detail I just about managed to grasp

Still the only aircraft to cross the atlantic supersonic without afterburners. And still beautiful. And still a wonder that the Vulcan used the same engines (almost) :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the Vulcan and Concorde used RR Olympus engines, but with significant differences.

I worked on development of a few components of the 593 version for Concorde (refinements, as it was just as the production models were being built). I saw all the UK ones take off from the factory. On one occasion, I was walking across the end of the runway when one of them (not on its maiden flight) was taking off. No danger (unless it overshot the end and was going to plough through the perimeter fence and cross the A38 road that ran alongside) - but it wasn’t very high as it passed over my head and I’ll never forget the sight (and sound*) as I looked straight into the four engine exhausts.

*Felt, as much as heard. If you worked in aerospace, it wasn’t as noisy as the hostile media claimed. My wife’s job included collating reports from the various airports it operated and she would often tell me of noise complaints received at times when there was no Concorde flying (or ground running) anywhere near the complainant. In the USA, there seemed to be a competition as to who could submit most complaints - anything to stop a foreign-built aircraft. The UK aircraft flew to Fairford (in Gloucestershire) for their individual flight certification. It was one place there were very few noise complaints - in fact, once Concorde work finished and the base returned to full USA military use, there were a lot of complaints of the noise from the Boing tankers (being military aircraft, engine systems didn’t need to compromise power for noise reduction) - and the 707s were load when taking off full.

[Boris the Cockroach]

That was the thing british airways used on the senate 'investigation' of the noise issues coming from concorde

They played back 2 aircraft taking off as recorded from the edge of the airfield, and asked them to identify which one was concorde.... of course they picked the noisy one, only for it to be pointed out that was Air force 1 (a 707 at the time) taking off and the quieter one was concorde.

Would have loved a chance to fly on the thing... but sadly lacking in the cash department

[anothercynic]

For JFK, Concorde had a really effective noise abatement procedure that tried to reduce the noise for those near the airport by banking left over Jamaica Bay, all developed by looking at the noise profile and how quickly they could cut the reheat (which was the particularly loud part of takeoff). Similar abatement procedures existed at Heathrow. At Dulles they didn't really have any issues, which is why the Dulles flights were the first in the US, while the PANY still fought over the noise for absolute years.

[Not Yb]

My favorite bit about Concorde engines: they used the same number, (and base model) of turbines as UK aircraft carriers of the time. You could fly one Concorde, or move an aircraft carrier..

[Fruit and Nutcase]

No afterburners on the Marine Olympus engines!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_TM3B

[Not Yb]

Well of course not, that'd be silly... and also they're only rated to 20,000 feet. Of course they're not exactly the same, but they are jet turbine engines of somewhat similar vintage, design, and size.

Getting the rest of the carrier to 20,000 feet would be the hard part.

[stungebag]

I find your comments on noise surprising. My hall od residence in the late 70s was at Runnymede, you could see Heathrow from it. Aircraft were generally noisy then and we routinely had to stop our conversation when a loud aircraft was taking off, but Concode was in another league. A few years later I was stuck in stationary traffic on the M25 outside Heathrow when one passed over, landing, I think. Once again there was no comparison with even the very noisy low-bandpass jets of the era.

[nobody who matters]

"Was taken through how it achieved supersonic flight without afterburners..."

Concorde did have afterburners - used during take off and climb to 500ft, and either side of the passage through Mach 1 (from Mach 0.95 to Mach 1.7 - about 10 to 15 minutes)

[Annihilator]

"achieved" being a slightly double-meaning word. It *maintained* supersonic flight without afterburners is probably more accurate, but technically once it was in the window, it continued to achieve supersonic flight without the use of afterburners.

An even shorter way of saying it is in one word - supercruise. :-)

[anothercynic]

Indeed. That was the one thing that made Concorde successful over Concordski (the Tupolev TU-144). The TU-144 had to continue using its afterburner which absolutely sucked fuel like mad, and it was noisy as hell inside compared to Concorde. It's the ingenious intake system that allowed the engines to be *really* efficient.

[werdsmith]

That was the one thing

One ?

[anothercynic]

Strictly speaking, probably yes. If the Tupolev had had supercruise, it would've been much more successful than it turned out to be. The crash at Le Bourget was unfortunate but I don't think it would've been as fatal to its success as its absolutely horrific fuel performance (and interior noise) was.

[lordminty]

The only way a Concorde engines fitted a Vulcan was in the bomb bay!

Concorde's engines were 3 feet longer than the engines in a Vulcan.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic, as RR used a Vulcan as a flying test bed. I never saw a 593 under such testing, before my time working there, but I did see the RB199 (for the RAF’s Tornado).

[anothercynic]

Under the bomb bay. The Concorde Olympus engines were never fitted inside the Vulcan airframe. :-)

[Red Ted]

Concorde 101 was also delivered by air to Duxford and has remained there since.

[Vulch]

With bulldozers waiting at the end of the runway which was about to be shortened to let the M11 go through.

[Xalran]

There's also the Air France one at CDG ( Roissy Airport ) sitting on a stand. It was basically lifted the from the nearest tarmac after it's last flight.

[codejunky]

Hmm

It was interesting to read about the Concorde running at a loss for the UK and French government only for BA to make a nice profit when it took over. Cutting down cruft and running it for the right target audience magically fixed the economic issues.

[Roland6]

Re: Hmm

Agree, whilst it was known Concorde, in the version which went into service, would not repay its development costs(*), hence why the government simple wrote them off. Leaving BA to make it operationally profitable, which they successfully achieved by the late 1980s with only 7 aircraft.

Given ElReg is US-biased these days, it makes sense they would want to downplay Concorde, however, given Richard Speed is UK-based it would be interesting to understand how he arrived at his conclusion.

(*) whilst the numbers are smaller, the cost overrun is of a similar magnitude to HS2; I’ve always maintained we should have designed HS2 properly from the get go, putting it in tunnels so that it would not require landscaping etc. and also protecting it from the (changing) English weather which has caused the railways to suspend services several times this winter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmm

Tunnels for HS2 make a lot of sense, but so do long elevated sections, for keeping the trains away from animals and trespassers. Japan's Shinkansens use both. However, regardless of the merits of the chosen route and construction of HS2, cancelling it was a stupid decision when the design work and purchase of land had got as far as it had.

[Roland6]

Re: Hmm

>but so do long elevated sections

The problem with elevated sections, as demonstrated by HS1 is the noise pollution, which due to government cost cutting (to reduce the overspend) was made worse than it needed to be.

Also as noted the overhead power lines are susceptible to wind either directly being damaged or being moved, making running trains dangerous.

>cancelling it was a stupid decision when the design work and purchase of land had got as far as it had.

It should of been thrown into the long grass in 2010 as it failed all the tests the new coalition government had set regarding government spending priorities following the financial crash...

However, having purchased the land a really stupid thing will be to sell that land, before completing an exportation of the options, one of which is to reduce the line speed to that of HS1, thereby massively reducing the trackbed construction costs and meaning that conventional high-speed rolling stock can be used, allowing for greater interworking and trackbed sharing. As once that path is destroyed, it is going to be a very long time before anyone will want to go through the process of reacquiring land for a railway...

[anothercynic]

Re: Hmm

Absolutely this. The suggestion that the government should sell off the land it's bought between Birmingham and Crewe for Phase 2a (after Sunak cancelled it) is absolutely absurd, especially given that there's now a suggestion that 'a whole new railway' is meant to be built between Birmingham and Manchester! USE. THE. LAND. BOUGHT. FOR. HS2! You already own it. You already went through the hassle of buying it. So USE IT FOR GOD'S SAKE!

It blows my mind that politicians are so duff.

[anothercynic]

Re: Hmm

Put HS2 in tunnels? Do you know how much that would've blown the budget (in excess of what it's already been blown)? The fact that it's had to be put into tunnels in the Chilterns increased the cost significantly.

HS2 was designed for the future, not for today's rail. That was the recommendation of infrastructure experts who said that if this new railway was to last 100+ years without major reconstruction and upgrades, it should be done for high speed (360 kph+) from the get-go. And quite frankly, they are right.

[Roland6]

Re: Hmm

>”The fact that it's had to be put into tunnels in the Chilterns increased the cost significantly.

”

What “cost” are you referring to?

Remember the original “cost” was a political decision, anyone reading the original report from HS2, would have known it was not a realistic cost, given basically it assumed no problems, minimal compulsory purchase etc etc.

Once you make the decision to tunnel, many other things fall into place: a station under Birmingham airport - like the TGV station at Charlie’s de Gaulle, connection to HS1 at an underground station at Kings Cross (land already purchased and reserved) etc. Okay going beyond Birmingham, things do become a little more complex. Also, like Concorde a decision needs to be made: is this dull-and-boring everyday tried and tested engineering or are we going to be pushing the envelope and making a statement; what the politicians have given us is a bit of mutton dressed as lamb, which is great shame as it could have been so much more.

[lordminty]

Re: Hmm

Of course we'd have never needed HS2 if Harold Wilson's Labour government hadn't kowtowed to the ex-LMS men who ran British Rail and the rail unions, and closed the old GCR route in 1968, in favour of the former LMS West Coast Main Line.

Closing the GCR route wasn't even in the Beeching Report. In fact it recommended that the GCR was adapted to provide a high speed passenger route from London to Rugby go increase capacity, because it was the faster route even with steam trains. The Euston to Rugby WCML would have been used for freight.

Yet here we are, effectively building a brand new railway to do what Dr Beeching suggested in 1963.

[wolfetone]

Re: Hmm

From memory, BA conducted a study as to what passengers thought a ticket would cost on Concorde. The public feeling was that it cost (I don't know) £2,000 a ticket in the 80s. When I think the tickets were really only £400/£500. Something like that.

So BA basically said a ticket to fly on Concorde was £1,000. Way cheaper than public sentiment, but of course more than what they charged at the time.

I think that's true. Can't verify everything in my head, which is what I source for this right now.

[anothercynic]

Re: Hmm

That's correct. Many folks who flew on Concorde didn't really know how much the tickets were because 'it was taken care of'. So... BA upped the price, made Concorde more exclusive, and lo and behold, people still used it *and* paid the money. Suddenly the thing that was making a loss originally started making a profit.

That said, BA was not above charters either... they along with Air France happily let people charter the plane for 'private' jollies, because those extra flights brought in more dosh and didn't stretch the jets too much (a 2 hour round trip out over the Severn, then down to the Bay of Biscay, and then back to Heathrow was popular). It sadly was one of those charters (full up with German tourists en route to New York) that crashed at Gonesse and heralded the end of the Concorde era.

[ChrisC]

Re: Hmm

The charters also gave more of us "ordinary people" the opportunity to sample the Concorde experience, which I suspect helped maintain the love we had for it above and beyond what it'd managed to earn for itself. I mean, don't get me wrong, as someone who started their love of aviation around the time Concorde first entered service, made the pilgrimage out to my local airport with thousands of like-minded souls in the area to see it when it visited in the early 80s, explored the prototype at the FAA Museum, always looked towards the sky whenever I heard it heading out of Heathrow during my walk to work in the early years of my career, and have a deep appreciation (as someone who's followed an engineering career path of my own) of the engineering efforts that went into it, I'd happily wax lyrical about Concorde regardless.

However...

Having *also* been on one of those BA charters - round trip from Fairford during one of the RIAT shows in the 90s - and having therefore had first hand experience of what it was like not merely to sit in as a static exhibit, but as a passenger, plied with excellent food and drink by the attentive cabin crew as we wafted along at M2 with less fuss or bother than any other airliner experience I've had, my position as a Concorde supporter is set in stone forever. So whatever monetary benefit those charters brought in directly is one thing, but the PR benefits they generated, with the potential knock-on effects for indirect revenue generation, really shouldn't be overlooked either.

[anothercynic]

Re: Hmm

Absolutely, couldn't agree more. :-)

[Roland6]

Re: Hmm

>” So whatever monetary benefit those charters brought in directly is one thing, but the PR benefits they generated, ”

Whilst HS2 is a different kettle of fish, because of the very public spend by taxpayers, we can hope the operators of the new railway line will be similarly inspired and offer similar “excursion” priced tickets so that many can experience high-speed train travel, not just those who can afford the expected premium priced tickets for normal service.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: Hmm

The key detail iirc was that, when BA asked the passengers what they'd paid for the ticket & were told "don't know, my PA booked it" they got the passenger to guess, & immediately put the price up to whatever was the average figure that the passengers had guessed, which was substantially more than they were asking at the time.

[balrog]

Concorde has, believe it not, the exact same failing that General Montgomery had. If only they had been American they would have been renowned.

[werdsmith]

So Concorde takes 100% of the blame for Market Garden, whilst everyone else sidles off quietly?

[Charlie Clark]

Actually, you could make a fair comparison with another remarkable bit of technology with miserable economics: the Space Shuttle. The US has no shortage of very expensive white elephants and with the new grifter-in-chief the list is bound to get longer.

Want to fly really far, really fast: leave the atmosphere as proposed by HOTOL and similar projects.

[Gene Cash]

LOL. Well, considering HOTOL has been "proposed" since 1982 and has yet to roll onto a runway, I'll not be holding my breath.

At least the Shuttle flew.

[Charlie Clark]

I wasn't commenting on the viability of HOTOL itself, but the principle espoused is valid, which is why it's been adopted by the recent clutch of companies wanting to do the same thing.

[Gordon 10]

Not sure you can compare a paper project with something that flew to space 135 times.

HOTOL was and always will be a stillbirth. Hell even Blue Streak was a roaring success compared to HOTOL.

Hotol was a grand idea that I would have loved to see in reality mind you...but lets not be delusional about how close it came...

[Charlie Clark]

I'm not suggesting it was ever going to fly, just pointing out how it would have worked, if it had. ICBMS do the same thing for the same reason.

[Jurassic.Hermit]

Amazing memories

I had the fortune to be in the right place at the right time and got to fly this remarkable feat of human capability three times, all work related, I happened to work for the airline.

Once was a totally unplanned upgrade to the jump seat in the cockpit sat next to the flight engineer and his myriad of dials.

Asking the captain after a while when his workload tailed off as to when we’d go supersonic, he replied “about 20 minutes ago!” I didn’t notice the transition to supersonic, it was so smooth.

I was also glancing occasionally at the speedo which had topped out around “600”, I couldn’t see the units, I was too far away. When I mentioned the speedo indicator and my surprise we were supersonic, he replied with a laugh, “oh that? It’s the subsonic speedometer, the supersonic one is over here to the right!” I looked, and sure enough, we were whipping along at Mach 1.5 at 40,000 ft and slowly increasing speed to almost 2,0 and an eventual altitude touching almost 60,000 feet, a couple of hundred lower.

A quarter of the way into the flight the flight engineer remarked that one engine was indicating a temperature a few degrees higher than expected. He used a programmable scientific calculator to predict if and when the engine would fail. He checked over the radio back to base. He concluded that they could safely continue to JFK, and that once the engine was turned off it wouldn’t be able to restart and would need a thorough service.

Memories that I’ll never forget, especially since it wasn’t even planned to happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Amazing memories

The sister of a colleague was sitting in Heathrow waiting to board her routine BA shuttle to Belfast. When boarding was called she was astonished to hear "your aircraft today will be Concorde". Seems it was due to perform at the NI airshow later that day, they saw no point in flying it up empty but obviously didn't want to announce that beforehand, so they just slotted it into the schedule at a quiet time.

Not supersonic, of course, but an amazing experience all the same. Eveyone in the office was very jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Amazing memories

Back in the mid 1970’s, when Concorde was under final development, RR and BAC flew trials in their prototype. At weekends, they took factory workers along for the ride (as payload) - a very popular perk. On one occasion, the flight was a bit longer than normal and returned after the factory shift ended; the unions demanded extra overtime payments for the workers as compensation for a longer shift. They got their money but the companies then invested in sandbags for payload and the workers’ perk was ended. Nose, say goodbye to face…

[abend0c4]

Re: Amazing memories

I, too, managed a transatlantic run as my booked flight from JFK was cancelled anf I'd turned up very early. The speed was impressive and it meant you could leave and arrive in daylight which was a huge psychological advantage.

For an ultra-premium service, though, it wasn't exactly luxurious: cramped cabin with narrow seats and limited catering choice owing to the confined galley. That would have been a problem if it had been possible to fly significantly longer routes given the passenger demographic.

It was really operating at the margins of everything - technology, range, market and available comfort - which were as much constraints on its deployment as noise regulations.

Still a great experience though.

[nobody who matters]

Re: Amazing memories

I rather think that the selling point was that because of the speed and massive time saving on longer routes, the space and comfort of a 747 wasn't as necessary and that busy business types for whom time was money would see that as an advantage, not a drawback (no public internet or telephone connections for working on aircraft in those days). Ordinary people not in a great hurry and expecting space and comfort were not the target clientele ;)

[anothercynic]

Re: Amazing memories

Absolutely this. And the Concorde clientele were a pretty select bunch, most of them flew regularly that they were known to the crew personally, and everyone treated each other like friends, yet very professionally. It was a great way to fly for them, and many crew to this day wax lyrical about their time on that aircraft.

This is why Boom Aerospace will have a captive market when/if their plane eventually flies - there will always be people for whom time will be very precious.

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: Amazing memories

or an ultra-premium service, though, it wasn't exactly luxurious: cramped cabin with narrow seats

I went inside the Concorde that's at Duxford and was surprised at how cramped it was. (But if I had the chance, I'd still have taken a trip in it!)

[ChrisC]

Re: Amazing memories

Cramped, but not uncomfortable, IMO - unlike the similarly narrow seats you find some airlines using in economy, it was less of an unpleasant squeeze and more of a firm but gentle hug. You wouldn't want to be sat in such a seat for too long, but then that was also the point about Concorde - trading off the higher level of in-flight comfort offered by a widebody, in return for giving you back several hours of your time with each hop across the pond.

Can't comment on how limited the catering choice was, as I don't know what the equivalent choice would have been 20+ years ago if someone had opted to cross the Atlantic in the front end of a 747 vs on a Concorde. I do remember it all being bloody nice though!

[sstroud]

HS2 then

No difference.

£80bn to save 12 minutes between Birmingham and north London.

Think how much 80 towns and cities could have each done with £1bn

[Gordon 10]

Re: HS2 then

Try again.

HS was never about speed - it is about capacity, putting high speed intercity trains on their own lines frees up local lines for stopping services and frieght.

Dumbest sales job in the history of Whitehall, that and letting most of the Tory counties scream for their own cuttings where not necessary.

[Roland6]

Re: HS2 then

HS2 was all about making New Labour look good and with it for the upcoming election, ie it was all about political vanity. Hence why it was so poorly put together.

There is an excellent BBC podcast “Derailed: The Story of HS2” which skims over the surface of the various problems successive governments have had in delivering HS2.

From various conversations, I am sure the engineering is top notch, it’s just the rest of it that leaves much to be desired…

As for cuttings, agreed they were not necessary, the entire line should have been tunnelled, the costs were too high for politicians, but set against the current level of overspend, there would still be money in the pot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: letting most of the Tory counties scream

IMO, those counties will vote for Reform at the next election ... Not that they will make a success of the Government given that most of them appear to be failed Tories.

I'd fully expect Dear Leader Nigel to cancel HS2 (not withstanding that it will be 95% complete by then) along with all renewable energy projects just to appease his boss Trump.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: letting most of the Tory counties scream

Surely his boss is, therefore, Putin. Trump is only his line manager?

[Chris Miller]

Re: HS2 then

HS was never about speed - it is about capacity, putting high speed intercity trains on their own lines frees up local lines for stopping services and freight.

Bollocks. It was originally claimed it would pay for itself by time savings for highly paid businessmen - until some clever clogs pointed out that it's possible to work on a train. So a couple of consultants with a spreadsheet were hired to 'prove' that the WCML would run out of capacity in a decade or so. Trouble is, if capacity is the issue, HS2 is completely the wrong solution. A new 'traditional' (say 150mph) 4-track main line could have been built for a fraction of the cost of HS2 and provide much more capacity. But that wouldn't allow our glorious leaders to win "mine's faster than yours" willie-waving competitions at Davos.

Very high speed rail makes absolutely no sense in Central England, which (with nearly 50 million people living in 25,000 square miles) is one of the most densely populated areas of its size on the planet.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: HS2 then

High speed rail links between major conurbations have proven themselves in many countries such as Germany and France. It's arguable they've led to the haves and have nots: you're either close to a TGV/ICE station and love it, or you're not and feel very much left behind.

The West Coast Main Line has never had sufficient capacity or speed, as you can see when you compare it with the East Coast. The backbone was built during railway mania where the price of land was key and, therefore, skimped on. Politics also played an oversize role with Crewe the main junction and a law requiring all trains from Manchester to London also stopping in Stockport. As a result, in many places it goes unconformtably close to people's houses. Can't really do much their without encroaching even further on the properties or moving the line.

But once the political pendulum had swung back to spending more of rail infrastructure, the politicians of both main parties really managed to to fuck things up. Give Gideon credit for pointing out, that improving transport within cities (Manchester suffers massively from three terminuses really close to each other and signficantly different heights, with platforms 13 and 14 at Piccadilly infamous for anyone wanting to travel on North from there) and between them, was just as important. At the same time money for Cross Rail and new capacity in and around London was cheerily waved through…

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: HS2 then

I never understood why BoJo rushed it through pre-Covid. I don't think he stood to get some massive directorship or something. You do wonder *who* stood to benefit, who could put the screws on the government of the time.

I never forget the comment he made leading up to the debate. "When you're in a hole, keep digging". There was a "tell" that he knew it was bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Boris's tell

That tell was/is whenever his lips were moving.

[herman]

Re: HS2 then

Not much. After each local politician took his cut, it would only leave about 100 million and most contractors would not be interested in that...

[werdsmith]

Re: HS2 then

People still parroting this 12 minutes / 18 minutes take your pick thing. Despite all the attempts to explain it’s not about that, they still don’t get it. What chance does the country stand with people like that?

[Jurassic.Hermit]

Re: HS2 then

No comparison. Concorde was a rocket ship that more than halved the time to around 3 1/2 hours between London and New York.

In fact, it was so fast that it allowed me to do something once in my life, which is impossible on any other passenger plane, that’s a day return LHR-JFK-LHR, and spending a couple of hours in the Concorde lounge at JFK drinking Krug and trying caviar for the first time in my life.

12 minutes LOL

[mickaroo]

Re: HS2 then

Comments like this always make me wonder…

The £80bn didn’t just go up in a huge puff of smoke. It supported numerous families from being unemployed. Who in turn supported grocery stores, toy stores, auto shops, I don’t know what else, and most importantly… the local pub.

And on top of that, the scientific and engineering breakthroughs!

[Roland6]

Re: HS2 then

>” And on top of that, the scientific and engineering breakthroughs!”

Not sure about “breakthroughs”

But yes we now have a significant number of engineers skilled I. The delivery of high-tech infrastructure, just at a time when we are needed to build new high-tech infrastructure…

[Jurassic.Hermit]

Re: HS2 then

Nonsense, Concord introduced a myriad of breakthroughs and innovations, here’s just a handful of:

First Fly-By-Wire in an Airliner

Variable Engine Intakes

Advanced Thermal Management

Supercruise Capability - no afterburners required

Fuel as a Trim System

[Chz]

Re: HS2 then

I think you need to add "in an airliner" to all of those for it to be true.

Most of that was old hat to the USAF at the time.

That doesn't discount how impressive Concorde was. Using these things in the civilian realm for the first time was a Big Deal. Some still not in common use today, though that would be because they're unnecessary for subsonic flight.

[Roland6]

Re: HS2 then

Agree, however breakthroughs introduced by HS2?…

[Fred Daggy]

Re: HS2 then

It's not 12 minutes once.

12 minutes, for every person taking the train, every day, for decades.

Enabling more slow trains - that probably save those punters time, every day, for decades.

It becomes hundreds, then thousands, millions and then billions of minutes saved.

Remember: Billions of pounds are spend every year on roads that eventually become more clogged and slower than the original road.

[Roland6]

Re: HS2 then

the trouble is the business case for HS2 rested on two key assumptions, that have been proven to be false:

1. Travel time is dead time. The train operating companies already knew that people worked on trains and were installing WiFi and internet access across their trains in 2006.

2. There would be an ever-increasing need for more capacity. Lockdown proved we didn't need to have high levels of commuting to have a highly productive economy - lockdown had a negligible impact on manufacturing output but did massively reduce overheads ie. commuting.

[anothercynic]

Re: HS2 then

HS2 is there to add *capacity*, not time savings (even if the PR guff concentrated on that and everyone bought it hook, line and sinker). What HS2 does is pull all those non-stop super-fast expresses (previously Virgin, now Avanti) off the West Coast Mainline (the track between Euston and Birmingham through Milton Keynes and Rugby), and allows more services to be run between local stations (so stopper trains between major and minor stations, and freight trains that don't go faster than 100 mph/160 kph).

How much do you think it would cost to add another 2 tracks between London and Birmingham on the West Coast Mainline? Keep in mind that you would have to raze to the ground countless houses, add tunnels, add bridges, rip up infrastructure that is currently being used, WHILE it is being used!!

The West Coast Mainline *UPGRADE* that brought down Railtrack in 2003 cost £14.5 billion then, which is £27 billion today. That was just *upgrades*. Add to that all the upgrades done since (station remodelling, track remodelling). Add another two tracks, and you'd be looking at probably a shedload more, *plus* endless disruption to existing services. So no, it's not just £80 billion to save 12 minutes. It's currently 80 billion that saves endless disruption to people's lives, people's neighbourhoods, people's homes, and that adds a future-capable railway line that will be able to grow further over the next 100 odd years.

Am *I* happy about the 80 billion price tag? No, but given how much the government fucked around with the designs, didn't have proper contracts in place that appropriately apportioned risk, prevaricated over the last 15 years on costs, designs, plans, phases, cut here, cancelled there, messed around there, asked for more redesigns, chopped, changed, and and and... when you are working on cost plus, *everything* costs money. You ask for a new plan, it costs. You ask for a design change, it costs. You look funny at the bill, it increases.

The government should've done what the French and the Japanese did - GETTING ON WITH IT. PERIOD. No ifs, no buts, build it and get it done, leave it alone, don't cancel things, don't change things, give developers and construction companies certainty and consistency, and the risks and costs and inflationary pressures would've been a shedload less.

[EvilDrSmith]

Re: HS2 then

I agree that HS2 adds capacity, and that adding that additional capacity was justifiable, but it didn't need to be HS (high speed) to achieve that - those non-stop super fast expresses you mention are not HS - but they are adequate for a journey between London and Birmingham, which is a fairly short intercity train journey length.

Going to HS brought about a lot of technical complexity and cost.

HS lines require more gentle curves (higher radius) in both horizontal and vertical: that constrains the route alignment, and makes it more difficult to avoid areas of land that might be viewed as more valuable (because they are villages, or historic and environmentally sensitive woodland), rather than route the track through less valuable land (low value agricultural land).

Restrictions on vertical alignment mean more gentle gradients so longer (and more expensive) embankments and viaducts, which have a bigger environmental /visual impact.

Those restrictions plus sensitivities to visual intrusion mean more tunnelling. Tunnelling is not cheap. Also, a railway track on the surface can be re-aligned in 20 years time relatively easily, tunnels are harder to widen (not impossible, but more costly, more constraining to future options).

HS rail needs a higher quality of track bed - the permanent way. (There are some interesting things that happen with pressure waves in the ground under high speed - and you get similar issues with 'air pistons' within tunnels). HS 2 is using slab track (ie ballastless track). This is (I think) standard for HS lines. Even on non HS lines, there are some advantages to using slab track but it's a lot more expensive.

HS trains go faster than non HS-trains, so need more energy to obtain that speed. That makes them more costly to run, and some could argue it's not very net-zero.

If HS2 went from Glasgow to London and then connected to HS1, giving a high speed line from Glasgow to Paris and Lille, then all those costs involved in building to an HS specification would seem more justifiable.

Paying all that cost (in money terms, but also socially and environmentally), when we could have avoided those costs by building a new medium speed line, good enough for the existing 140mph '225' expresses and a comparable next generation, and providing the increase in capacity needed, doesn't seem to have been very wise.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: HS2 then

Some interesting points, but also reads like a list for not doing anything, which isn't a good idea. As new tracks for at least part of the line would be required, there's little or no reason not to make the new sections suitable for HS and it's not as if the geology is a real problem, certainly not in comparison with the Berlin-Munich line, though even Cologne-Frankfurt has "more" geology than London to the North West. The challenges associated with high-speed rail should indeed not be underestimated: have a high-speed line about 200m from here and it's due to be extended by two tracks in our direction. A sound wall has been promised, but we already notice the vibrations more than the noise.

The costs in built up areas, in built up areas, will dwarf most of the landscaping in the countryside, and this is also where much of the "time" is lost as the trains have to travel more slowly because of the poor tracks and the noise.

I don't understand the arguments of linking the sections from Glasgow to Lille (really? nice place but not the same kind of destination as Brussels and Paris) to justify costs. Link if possible, but most of the journeys will be the existing ones: London to the Midlands and the North West (Scotland is largely "empty" between the border and the rift valley and I used to make the journey quite frequently). Glasgow to Paris? Unlikely to have many takers.

Also the idea that energy use will require more power is really quite specious. The main argument for making these kind of lines highspeed is to encourage people to use trains rather than the car or the plane, both of which require much more energy per passenger. The new TGVs and the new ICEs are also increasing passenger capacity whilst improving the motors, meaning even lower energy per passenger required. But train services are some of the easier things to contract power supplies for because the load is predictable.

[anothercynic]

Re: HS2 then

If you only think 20 years ahead, then yes, high-speed wouldn't really be necessary. But if you think 100 years ahead, high speed *will* become a thing. And that's what HS2 was designed for... the future, with faster trains, more advanced signalling that would allow more high-speed services à la Shinkansen or AGV to use the line, and less need to have to redo *everything* as trains got faster (see WCML upgrade).

The hybrid concept of making HS2 trains switch to the WCML north of Crewe was again based on capacity issues (the WCML just as it is capacity constrained south of Birmingham has the same problem between Birmingham and Wolverhampton and up towards Crewe). That's why rail engineers ground their teeth and shouted "What the FUCK" when Johnson and then Sunak said that Phase 2a should be terminated at Handsacre Junction (and then pulled the plug), not where the project originally recommended it should end. Ending superfast services in the middle of a very constrained corridor is so fundamentally stupid.

At least a HS2 extension from Crewe north would've been a thing for a future infrastructure project, as would have been from Leeds north (Leeds I think was the terminus for Phase 2b, which was cancelled first). The Midlands were really hoping to see Phase 2b, mostly because it would've helped improve general rail usage where it's needed (it takes an *hour* from Birmingham to Nottingham!!).

[Ken Hagan]

Re: HS2 then

"But if you think 100 years ahead, high speed *will* become a thing."

Really? Compare modern transport tech with what was around 100 years ago and tell me that anyone in 1926 had any chance of foreseeing the needs of 1976, let alone 2026. No chance.

[Roland6]

Re: HS2 then

Beeching, demonstrated politicians couldn’t see 20~40 years ahead.

[Roland6]

Re: HS2 then

>” The hybrid concept of making HS2 trains switch to the WCML north of…”

That was one of the (many) ideas in the original HS2 proposal that convinced me this wasn’t a serious proposal and was about the political vanity of being seen talking about a “new shiny” rather than the humdrum unexciting upgrade of the west coast mainline, that would be needed regardless of the monies spent on HS2 (ie. The Conservatives clearly thought they could spend on HS2 and not spend on “British rail” with all its negative union, service quality and other perceived problems.

[Roland6]

Re: HS2 then

>” Going to HS brought about a lot of technical complexity and cost.”

HS2 was “High Speed” from the outset. However, what was not defined was what “high-speed” actually meant.

It is clear in the original documents it meant trains running up to 300 km/h (190 mph) as per HS1. At a subsequent date it was decided to change this to 360 km/h (220 mph) and so blow the politically set budget and effectively make any track sharing with lower speed lines problematic and potentially dangerous (ie. accident waiting to happen and thus not fail safe).

>re-alognment and changing of line gauge:

Re-alignment (West coast line and Midland mainline) has only really been used to enhanced alignment so that trains can run faster for longer. If the trackbed has been designed from the outset to permit operation at maximum trackbed formation speed, I don’t there being a need to allow for re-alignment at some future date.

Loading/line gauge is another where it is something best avoided. Hence why both HS1 and HS2 are built to the international UIC GC loading gauge; making them fully interoperable with TEN-R. The scale of this network would imply it isn’t going to change. Hence regauging is really only something affecting the legacy UK network where efforts are being made to bring the majority of lines up to the same loading gauge. Also, as we have seen on the West coast mainline, some regauging (particularly of stations) has been happening to accommodate modern rolling stock and speeds.

Aside: a wry laugh is whilst the railways are making efforts to standardise on common loading gauges and rolling stock standards, the various tram networks do seem to be determined to have no common standards so each metro requiring bespoke (£££) rolling stock.

[lordminty]

Re: HS2 then

Its not about speed, its about capacity!!

Dr Beeching identified the capacity problem from Euston to the north in the early 1960s.

Back then there was a even a high speed line that could have been used to alleviate the problem, which ironically Dr Beeching actually recommended.

But it was operated by BR Eastern Region, and the Euston line by Midland Region, so railway politics killed that idea. Then Midland Region got to own that alternative route, and persuaded the government to close it.

From the early 1960s BR pumped millions into the West Coast Mainline, first with electrification, god awful modernist stations like Euston and New Street, and even tilting trains. But even after the demise if the majority of rail freight, it still hasnt got enough capacity!

[Will Godfrey]

The real reason it was banned in the USA

... was because it wasn't American, and they had nothing like it. It's a shame they were taken out of service, but financially they just weren't viable. The crash in France was the last nail in the coffin.

On a related point I watched the last flight of the Vulcan Bomber at Headcorn Aerodrome. One of the things that gets you is how slowly it could fly at low level flight, almost defying gravity. I looked around and could see the smiles on a few faces as the nose poked up. Next second there shocked gasps from the crowd at the roar of the afterburners and it shot up in the air.

P.S. I've got one of the mugs that were on sale at the time.

[AbnormalChunks]

Re: The real reason it was banned in the USA

<pedant>Dry thrust only on the Vulcan no re-heat on those Olympus engines...</pedant> Vulcan 'howl' when pouring on the coal was, none the less, very noisy and very impressive!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The real reason it was banned in the USA

Still is, apparently. They can't fly it, but Wellesbourne does fast taxiing runs a few times a year.

[Not Yb]

Re: The real reason it was banned in the USA

Well, barring the occasional 'oops, went a bit too fast taxi testing'...

[Patrician]

Re: The real reason it was banned in the USA

That Vulcan howl is quite something; I've seen one several times in my youth and every time it took me by surprise just how loud that plane was.

[anothercynic]

Re: The real reason it was banned in the USA

The howl comes from the odd shape of the inlets, by the way... and we used to see XH558 a lot around here because the pilots used to use the Thames often as a navaid and so we'd see it cruise along the river around our parts. We still have the Lancaster and the Spitfire doing that occasionally, but XH558 was a special bird to see (and hear).

[EvilDrSmith]

Re: The real reason it was banned in the USA

It was fun being at the Farnborough airshow when the Vulcan was still flying.

The USAF are always there in force (and do a great job of interacting with the crowd by the way - so thumbs up to you left-pondians on that).

Mostly they practiced looking studiously bored, and uber-cool in their shades and flight suits, while other nations' 'planes strutted their stuff.

But they always stopped and watched while the Vulcan was displaying.

[R Soul]

financially they just weren't viable

That wasn't true. BA's Concorde flights generated remarkable operating profits once they realised how much people were prepared to pay to fly on them. Air France never figured that out. So they were quite keen to stop flying Concordes and cut their losses.

The crash wasn't the last nail in the coffin. Though it did speed up the move into the departure lounge. Both airlines operated Concordes for a year or so once they returned to service after the crash.

Air France pulled the plug because Concorde made a big dent in their accounts which threatened the airline's privatisation. That left BA on the hook for all of the support costs from Airbus. BA couldn't/wouldn't pay these on their own. Then Airbus said they were withdrawing tech/engineering support and at that point it was game over.

Of course, the concept of financial viability here is theoretical because the French and UK taxpayers wrote off all the R&D and manufacturing costs. These never got charged to the airlines who flew Concorde.

[Roland6]

Re: financially they just weren't viable

Perhaps we should be thankful to having had more enlightened governments back in the 1960s (yes I'm am aware of all the other stuff they got wrong) as without that R&D investment, it was most likely Rolls Royce Aerospace would have ceased to exist.

[nobody who matters]

Re: financially they just weren't viable

When you actually look at the projects those same Governments cancelled during the 1960s, I am not sure that they can be regarded as 'enlightened'.

Some of those decisions are the root cause of the consequences that have led us to becoming heavily reliant on the USA for such a large proportion of the aircraft currently equipping the RAF. Something which is now being looked upon as a very real disadvantage in the current circumstances!

[Roland6]

Re: financially they just weren't viable

I agree it is a heavily caveated ‘enlightened’ and that the Concorde overspend has traumatised probably all subsequent governments.

With respect to military purchases, we should not forget that from the circa mid-1950s to 1970 the UK reduce defense spending from circa 10% to circa 5%, as it tried to balance the books with an increase in civil expenditure. The v bomber project is a good example, where the government came up with a brief and paid three different (UK) companies to deliver to the specification. It is nice that Duxford now has one of each of these aircraft (Vulcan, Victor and Valiant) and can give the whole story and the lessons from hindsight of decades of operational usage, where the key finding was the relatively low tech Vulcan proved to be operationally more flexible and robust, hence why was able to fly for so many years.

However, I agree, I was with Heseltine over Westland.

[IamAProton]

Near Moscow, if still there, tere is a ''koncordsky' (Tu144) in the air force museum in Monino.

Pity it's used for storage/taking naps (at leas wehn I've been there) but it was possible to have a walk inside

[Locomotion69]

You will find it easier to visit the one in Sinsheim, Germany. There is a Concorde on display as well.

[Gashead]

Some Boring Stuff

I lived in Bristol and we had Vulcan bombers flying over the city creating sonic booms and smashing greenhouses late 60s, noisy evenings when they tested the engines at Filton. But best was the UK version's first flight. I saw it on the runway on TV, ran out the back door up to the allotments and watched it soar over Redland High School's playing fields headed for Bath.

My sister got her first job at Rolls Royce and became secretary to the project change controller. Although she spoke Russian I doubt she was the one who gave Brezhnev the blueprints.

[Patrician]

Re: Some Boring Stuff

The Vulcan wasn't supersonic so there wouldn't have been a sonic boom from them.

[nobody who matters]

Re: Some Boring Stuff

Vulcans couldn't cause sonic booms - they couldn't exceed the speed of sound except in a dive (at which point they would have gone out of control and crashed - determined to be the cause of at least one Vulcan crash).

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Some Boring Stuff

Vulcan B1 XA903 - Olympus 593 Trials.

4+1 "Olympus" Engines.

http://www.2av8.co.uk/pages/xa903/xa903c.htm

[Patrician]

Concorde's profitability was badly damaged when the Americans wouldn't let it fly above the speed of sound, even after they allowed it to land at New York; it was nothing to do with the noise and everything to do with the fact that Europe beat them to it with a supersonic airliner. It was sour grapes and nothing more.

"The Project (Boeing 2707): After a federal competition, Boeing was selected in 1966 to build the Boeing 2707, which was intended to be larger (250–300 passengers) and faster (roughly Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound) than the Concorde."

"Timeline: The US program was formally announced by President Kennedy in 1963, shortly after the Anglo-French agreement for Concorde was signed. While Concorde's first prototype flew in 1969, the Boeing 2707 was intended to begin testing in the early 1970s."

[cryptopants]

https://youtu.be/DhX93KYORPw?si=JbXHrgGfWp1AHi1k

Why the US banned supersonic over flights, nothing to do with Concord.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Argh

Flying on Concorde was one of those bucket list things for me. I never could afford it when they were flying, now I could afford to fly it for vacation every year. What bites - I could have first been able to buy a pair of tickets about 4 years after they quit flying. For those of you here who did, good on yer, I'm genuinely glad you were able to fly it but I am intensely, INTENSELY jealous of your experience!

What makes it worse, they're going to dragass whatever the next supersonic passenger jet will be. They won't start flying until I'm either too old to travel, or about a week after I die. It'll probably be when I'm too old to travel, just to twist the knife a bit. Icon, for how upset all this makes me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Argh

Bought 2 of the "discounted" tickets at £3000 each to JFK that they did after the retirement was announced. Did make a rather big hole in the savings, and that figure did not include accommodation and subsonic return flights.

The flight was interesting... Take off, climb, then switching on reheat over the Bristol Channel which the Captain explained will be done in pairs. Forget which way inner/outer or other way round, but you felt a slight nudge each time.

Photographs - have a few. Should have taken more. Some out of the window, the deep blue below and black above, with a slight curvature. The Mach indicator at 2.0 at 60000ft.

And all too soon the announcement of preparation for landing approach.

We were the last passengers off, after a visit to the cockpit.

My Sister, who accompanied me was blown away by the food/compares all airline catering against that experience. She's probably the bigger fan out of the two of us, and 20 years later, still recounts the experience.

Posting this from a seat at the back of a rather more pedestrian bus

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Argh

Don't worry, there won't be another supersonic passenger jet, so you won't have anything to be jealous of. I know NASA is working on methods of making the booms quieter, but that's not the major problem...

It's the fuel efficiency and cost of development, and many current governments that COULD fund such a project are far more interested in rhetoric than policies that would make an SST viable.

[Luiz Abdala]

Not even a NASA exemplar?

There was a certain astronomical event - an eclipse - that could only be observed for long enough on an aircraft that combined raw top speed and the necessary long range autonomy to reach the corner of the planet under said event, (with a window measured in SECONDS) and a Concorde was recruited exactly for that purpose, on a frame that was declassified and liberated for civilian use.

The Concorde 001 (F-WTSS) should have been kept *off* the Museums just for that capability. Of course it is in the Musée de l'air et de l'espace in France now.

But damn if NASA isn't fond of collecting exotic airframes with even more exotic capabilities, like the SR71 itself.

Yeah, economical viability is a foregone conclusion, but keeping an airframe airworthy just for the capability, even THAT was expensive? This is sad.

[Patrician]

Re: Not even a NASA exemplar?

It was an eclipse:-

"In 1973, scientists used the supersonic Concorde 001 to chase the June 30th solar eclipse, achieving an unprecedented 74 minutes of total darkness over the Sahara by flying in sync with the moon's shadow, allowing for extended observation of the solar corona and setting a record for sustained totality"*

* source Wikipedia

[nobody who matters]

From the article: "Technically, the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 was the first supersonic passenger airliner, entering service on December 26, 1975"

As it is now proven, the resemblance of the Tu 144 to Concorde was because details of the early design work for Concorde were illegally passed to the Soviet Union and the Tu 144 was basically a copycat of those, so as a lookalike built from stolen plans, I don't think it counts.

It also proved to be rather dangerous to fly on (probably as a result of being based on those early design details, and the Soviets didn't have the know-how to move those designs forward safely) - I recall one crashed at a Paris Airshow. They didn't operate for long.

[Antony Shepherd]

The TU-144 was later fitted with 'rabbit ears' in an attempt to improve the aerodynamics a bit, but its main problem was that it didn't do supercruise. To fly supersonic it had to use afterburners all the time which used vast amounts of fuel.

[doublelayer]

There have been rumors of copying ever since it started. I don't know how proven those are, as I've seen plenty of claims that they were overblown or that there was substantial theft but it came too late to make much of a difference to the design, but I have not bothered to study either set of claims and presumably you have.

However, in a game of what technically counts, I don't think that objection, even if correct, is enough to remove it. Unless they just stole completed Concordes and painted new stuff on them, that was still a different plane with lots of differences, including several that led to its less impressive service record. It loses on most metrics, and you can argue as the article does that it misses the more important of the firsts, but that's why they used the word "technically". Technically, it wasn't the same and technically, it entered service first, whether or not either of those were significant factors.

[nobody who matters]

"There have been rumors of copying ever since it started. I don't know how proven those are....."

A recent article on the BBC website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj65x7yk2eyo

Due to the extreme similarity of the designs, I don't think there can be a great deal of doubt that the USSR had been provided with significant detail about Concorde. They would have been extremely unlikely to have come up with such a close resemblance otherwise - bearing in mind both were being designed and developed at the same time, so it wasn't likely to have been a case of the Russians seeing a prototype Concorde and copying that as that would mean their project would have been several years behind the BAC/Sud Aviation development.

[Dave314159ggggdffsdds]

The 'copying' seems to be overstated by a lot of sources. While the Soviets were apparently keen to steal designs for internal systems, the visual similarity of the two planes is largely because that's the shape SSTs needed to be, with the tech available; the proposed US designs are also generally very similarly shaped.

[nobody who matters]

The Tu-144 was a bit more than just 'similar' to Concorde though ;)

[Fruit and Nutcase]

It also proved to be rather dangerous to fly on (probably as a result of being based on those early design details

probably the Russian pilot didn't "think" in English or French

[Not Yb]

That joke is quite obscure. Are you using the right browser to make it?

[Not Yb]

Hmmm...

That's a very subtle joke. Are you sure you're using the right browser for it?

[Andy Taylor]

I grew up in West Reading and school lessons were regularly interrupted by the scheduled LHR>JFK journey. Concorde was so loud you couldn't hear the teacher.

I was fortunate to get the chance to pilot the Concorde simulator when it was still at Filton and the cockpit was moveable. They had recently upgraded the visual system from a map and camera (no really) to a computer display. I got to take off from JFK, circle round and land again (with assistance from the instructor).

This simulator is now at Brooklands in a static configuration. "flights" cost from £335 for 15 minutes at the controls.

[Dizzy Dwarf]

Concord was nice

But the XB-70 Valkyrie was way cooler.

[martinusher]

It wasn't American so it was toast

The real problem with Concorde was it wasn't American,. It was also faster in service than anything the US had in service or even on the drawing board**. The only way it would ever fly to the US was as a political concession, a quid pro quo (and then it was only allowed a relatively few flights).

Obviously, being a product of the 1960s it wasn't particularly 'eco' but compared to the jets of that era it was about average. (Try being on the A4 next to Heathrow's 28L in the late 1960s for that full aural experience.....guaranteed deafness!). Even the 'scare the horses' sonic boom wasn't at all bad, I experienced it several times while working in Cornwall and it was nothing compared to the roof shaking bang we got used to when the Shuttle was landing at Vandenberg. (Concorde sounded like someone dropping a lot of building materials onto a truck in the parking lot while the Shuttle was more like a neighbor playing with a 19th. Century cannon in their back yard.)

Like everything else, we're great team players over here in the US. Provided we get to win.

(**If you can't keep up supersonic speed for an extended period of time or if the plane needs special handling like the SR-71 then it really doesn't count.)

[cryptopants]

Re: It wasn't American so it was toast

https://youtu.be/DhX93KYORPw?si=JbXHrgGfWp1AHi1k

This is why the US banned supersonic over flights.

The US had it’s SR 71 at the time which was quite a bit faster than the Concorde.

[Anonymous Coward]

Special stamps...

Special stamps salute the 50th anniversary of Concorde's first commercial flight

https://shop.royalmail.com/special-stamp-issues/concorde

[CliveP]

If interested in the history of Concorde, it's worth looking up Concorde by Mike Bannister. Also a Concorde is at Brooklands Museum.

[Herring`]

The mark II

I recall that there was talk of a Concorde B. It would have had a wider body and more powerful engines - so they could ditch the reheat that used a stupid amount of fuel. Ah well. On PPrune, there is a very long thread with contributions from engineers, flight crew, cabin crew and all sorts. It took me about 3 days to read it.

[lordminty]

"The White Heat of Technology"

I'm so glad I was born into the UK's "White Heat of Technology" era, when nothing seemed impossible and tue UK's industries were at the top of the world's stage.

Concorde was probably the ultimate symbol of that period, and along with British computing, and engineering like the HST (High Speed Train), APT (Advanced Passenger Train), the Triumph TR7 (easy to laugh, but it was the first car in the world engineered using FEA and NASA software), was why I decided at the young age of 11 to choose a school with a dial-up link to a local Polytechnic, which set me on half a century in IT. If it hadn't been for "the White Heat of Technology" I haven't got a clue what career I'd have ended up in.

Its obviously easy for me to be cynical about it, but there just isn't anything today like it.

[Tombola]

Concorde Foll-on Producr

There wasn't one, unlike in France where the engineers at Toulouse were working on Airbus and booking their time to Concorde. When I was working at Filton for BAC this was told to me by an acquaintance who flew regular to France (HS125) in a liaison role.he wondered what on earth an Airbus might be!

I started as a programmer on the KGF9 (48K Memory and no disks) with paper-tape & Algol! This kit was replaced by an IBM 360/50. and that in turn by a succession of 380/370 mainframes which benefitted from the compatibility offered by that range. I left to join the mainstream IT Industry and within a few years the Filton BAC site closed and eventually the magnificent runway was dug-up for housing. There was no civil aircraft in plan to save the business. Indeed, the BAE Systems management, successors yo BAC left the Airbus consortium. Airbus work continues at Filton with wing design but on a much reduced basis and foreign owned.

I'm uncertain as to why the BAC Directorate were so shirt sighted but they were performing true to form. A generation before, BAC had built the ridiculous Brabazon!

[RMclan]

Unusual route

Concorde used to fly a completely different route going transatlantic than most other airliners. Whilst most airliners heading across the pond follow a great circle route which takes them up over Scotland and out over the North Atlantic from there, Concorde needed to get over the sea as soon as possible after take off so it could go supersonic. From Heathrow they followed a route almost directly over Bristol and out over the Bristol Channel where they could go supersonic off the South Wales coast. They would then route out over the Atlantic south of Ireland a long way further south than even those routes which go via Shannon.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Wrong market

First, who will want to fly a supersonic anything for three times (or ten times) the price? Only those who value their time (and perhaps a bit of comfort) above all else. Otherwise, there's always the possibility of an 'all first class' subsonic luxury plane. With sleeping cabins, in-flight shower and sauna, cocktail lounge and piano bar, etc. The people who need to move _fast_ are always going to be a small market slice. And as a result, not a good fit for a larger capacity plane that will struggle to be filled for a once a day trans-Atlantic flight. You miss the schedule by 10 minutes and you might as well catch the comfy, slow jet. You'll get there faster than catching tomorrows supersonic.

Related to that, the people who want to fly fast want to fly _right_now_. Which isn't a good fit for large airports and crowds. And the obligatory TSA body cavity search. The market solution begins to look more like supersonic business jets. Flown out of different facilities than what the general riff-raff uses. Multiple smaller flights per day.

Oddly enough, back when Boeing was designing its B2707, another proposal came pretty close. A passenger version of the XB-70. The unstretched model would have seated around 25 to 30 passengers and beat the Boeing at a bit over Mach 3. Not that the military airframe would have been anywhere near economical. But North American Aviation had a demonstrated ability to take a set of requirements and actually deliver something that flew. Boeing's first proposal could not (carry passengers plus the weight of the swing wing). By the time they were finished knocking out plywood models, the game was over.

[Roland6]

Re: Wrong market

>” there's always the possibility of an 'all first class' subsonic luxury plane. With sleeping cabins, in-flight shower and sauna, cocktail lounge and piano bar, etc.”

The rise of this “luxury cruiser” style of travel is very noticeable, distracting people from speed. Personally, I did welcome the introduction of bed seats, given much of my transatlantic travel was effectively overnight and thus I wanted to spend most of the flight asleep.

>” The unstretched model would have seated around 25 to 30 passengers”

From what I can see, the current US supersonic projects are all effectively targeting the private jet market where people are prepared to pay top prices just so they and their friends can travel away from the hoi polloi.

[Dave 15]

Spiteful

The yanks ban on it was out of spite because their own supersonic passenger plane failed totally. The spiteful nature of the USA clearly hasn't changed

[cryptopants]

Re: Spiteful

https://youtu.be/DhX93KYORPw?si=JbXHrgGfWp1AHi1k

The Concorde was not the reason for the ban. Watch the video. It clearly explains how it happened.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: Spiteful

Operation Bongo II. An "approval" rating of supersonic flight dropping from 99% to 92%? Not really a reason to cancel something.

What really stuck a knife it it was the FAAs refusal to compensate many property owners for damage. Damage such as cracked windows and plaster. Right in the heart of Lightning Alley. Prove that this wasn't due to cloud to ground lightning/thunder. Which can easily crack a window. The people who accepted supersonic overflights were most likely expressing valid sentiments. But snub the people who have their hands out for money and you have now created a determined political foe.

The reality was that the FAA/airlines would have to compensate people for questionable damage with no end in sight. Well beyond the end of Operation Bongo II.