Concorde - SST

Updated Friday, October 24, 2003 at 10:48:33

The only operational, supersonic, commercial jet plane. The Concorde was built in the late 1960's, as a joint project of France and Britain.

Latest

On May 10th 2003, British Airways and Air France made a joint announcement that they will retire their ageing Concorde fleets due to rising maintenance costs and declining passenger numbers.

Air France Flight AF001 from New York to Paris, which took place on Saturday May 31st 2003, was the last flight of a French operated Concorde.

British Airways decommissioned its last operational Concordes on Friday, October 24th 2003.
In a ceremonial landing three flights converged on Heathrow airport, London. A flight from Edinburgh, a token supersonic flight over the Atlantic and the last transatlantic flight of the Concorde arriving from New York.
At Heathrow a grandstand with a thousand seats was specially built for the occasion, where a farewell ceremony was held together with British Airways staff.

So far all offers regarding the future operation of the retired Concordes -- including a two-million-dollars-per-plane offer -- were declined by British Airways.

History

After long and tiring negotiations, on the 29th of November 1962, the French and British governments signed on a general agreement to the creation of a joint supersonic-commercial-jet project. The agreement specifies that the aim of the project is to research and construct such a plane. France and Britain will equally share in all aspects of the project, both financially and technically. The actual development and construction will involve French and British companies. British Aircraft Corporation and Sud-Aviation -- it is from Sud-Aviation that sketches of the Concorde were stolen, by soviet agents. The sketches were later used in the development of the Soviet rival of the Concorde, the Tu-144, nicknamed by the West Concordski -- will develop and build the body of the aircraft. Bristol Siddeley and the French company SNECMA will develop and build the engines.

On the 11th of September, 1966, the project began to take shape, as a supervising committee was appointed. The control of the committee was shared equally between France and Britain. Later that year, work had commenced on the French prototype of the plane, designated Concorde 001.

During 1967 a controversy had arisen between France and Britain, over the name of the plane. The French insisted that the plane's name will use the French spelling of the word, concorde (with an 'e' at the end), while the British insisted on the English spelling, concord. There was not much 'concord' about that, but the British finally gave in, and the plane was officially named Concorde.

On the 2nd of March, 1969, the Concorde 001 was ready to make its debut test flight. After some weather delays, the Concorde took off, for the very first time, from the airport of Toulouse-Blagnac, admired by more than a thousand spectators and reporters. Despite some minor technical difficulties, the flight was successful.
A few weeks later, on the 9th of April, the British prototype, designated Concorde 002, completed another successful test flight, at the airport of Filton.

On the 21st of January, 1976, the first two commercial flights of the Concorde were underway. In a symbolic gesture of Anglo-French cooperation, a French flight from Paris to Rio de Janeiro, and a British flight from London to Bahrain, took off simultaneously. On the 24th of January both Concordes landed triumphantly in Washington.

The Concorde entered regular service, and was far from being profitable for its companies, Air France and Biritish Airways. In total twenty Concordes were ever built.
During 1991 the French fleet of Concordes underwent 40,000 hours of meticulous scrutinising. The planes were stripped to their skeletons, and each centimeter was scanned with X-ray based technology, in search of miniature cracks caused by the extensive supersonic travel.

The crash

On the 25th of July, 2000, Air France's Concorde 203, designated F-BTSC on route from Paris to New York, crashed less than a minute after take off. The plane hit one of the buildings of a hotel in the outskirts of Paris, at Gonnesse. All 109 people on board , crew and passengers, and four more people on the ground, were killed.

The horrific crash, which was well documented and publicized, shattered the credibility of the Concorde as the world safest plane (statistically, of course), and led to a year long grounding of the entire anglo-french Concorde fleet.

The crash drew much media attention, as just a week before Air France announced that miniature cracks were found in the wings of one of its Concordes. A few days later an amateur film of the crash was made public and shown repeatedly on every news bulletin. Taken by a truck driver who drove past the crashing Concorde, the film shows the Concorde a few seconds before it hit the ground. The plane is dangerously low and a huge tail of flames is flowing from its rear.

The investigation committee concluded that some kind of metal debris left on the runway by another plane punctured one of the Concorde's tyres at take off. The rubber debris was then thrown with great force and ruptured one of the Concorde's fuel tanks. This triggered a chain of events that eventually caused a fire, followed by an engine failure. The plane did not gain sufficient speed and altitude during take off and crash landed. The committee also stated that similar tyre failures happened a few times in the past, but nothing was done to amend the problem.

Once the causes of the accident were understood, research was under way for the neccessary design modifications. Almost a year after the crash, on the 17th of July 2001, British Air Ways conducted its first test flight of the modified Concorde. The Concorde, designated 2001BA G-BOAF, was fitted with new tyres, fuel tank liners and additional electrical shielding. The supersonic test flight went smoothly, and the plane proved to handle very well in supersonic conditions with the new modifications.

British Airways and Air France restarted the Concorde's services on the 7th of November 2001.

Technical specifications

Capacity: Up to 100 passengers with a cargo of 590 kg / 1300 pound
The Concorde's flight crew is composed of 2 pilots and 1 flight engineer, in addition to 6 stewardesses - a total of 9 crew members.
Maximum Weight Without Fuel: 92,080 kg / 203,000 pound
Maximum take-off weight: 185,000 kg / 408,000 pound

Takeoff speed: 402 Kph / 249 mph
Supersonic Cruise Speed: Mach 2 / 2,150 kph / 1,336 mph (at an altitude of 16,765 meter / 55,000 ft)
Landing speed: 300 Kph / 187 mph

Length: 62.1 meter / 203.7 ft
Height: 11.3 meter / 37 ft
Wing Length: 27.66 meter / 90.7 ft
Wingspan: 25.5 meter / 83.6 ft
Wing Area: 361.45 sq meter / 3,890.6 sq ft

Engine Model: Olympus 593 Mrk610 turbojet
Engine Manufacturers: Rolls-Royce and SNECMA
The 4 engines produce together, at take off, a maximum thrust of 17 kilo newton/ 17,259 kg / 38,050 pound
During supersonic cruise, each engine produces a maximum thrust of 4.5 kilo newton/ 4536 kg / 10,000 pound

Fuel Type: A1 Jet fuel
Fuel capacity: 119,500 litre / 31568 gallon
Fuel consumption: 25,629 litre / 6770 gallon per hour

Fuel in the Concorde has a threefold purpose:
1. Energy source, of course.
2. Balance. During a subsonic and supersonic flight, fuel is shifted from one fuel tank to another, in order to maintain balance, and to keep the Centre of Gravity, which is so crucial in supersonic travel.
3. A heat sink for cooling purposes.

Landing gear: Eight main wheels in the back, and two nose wheels.

Main flight routes: Paris - New York and London - New York. Both flights take about 3 hours and 50 minutes, compared with a seven hour flight by subsonic jets.

Ticket price: extremely expensive, roughly twice the price of a first class ticket in a subsonic jet. It is no surprise then that of the 2.5 million people that have flown the Concorde, 80 percent are male, and 43 percent of those are senior managers in major corporations. The average passenger age is 43 years old.

---

Sources:

• Concorde SST, Supersonic Aircraft - http://www.flying.to/concorde
• http://www.concordesst.com (comprehensive history and data)
• British Airways - http://www.british-airways.com/flights/factfile/airfleet/docs/conc.shtml (specs)

Also the name of a custom parts kit for Ford Falcon coupes and panel vans in the mid-'70s. The centrepiece part was a fibreglass front that fitted over the headlights and around to the wheel arches. Made by an ex-Ford designer Peter Arcanipane through his own company Arcadipane Designs, the modification coincided with the van craze and more concorde kits were produced for the vans than the coupes. The other parts in the full kit were some slight wheel flares and a roof spoiler

The fronts were reasonably boxy looking, the van ones especially - to fully appreciate the front on vans, wheel flares that extended a couple of inches out were needed to follow the contours of the front. The coupe front is more streamlined and, in my opinion, better looking. It features a much narrower lip and sides that tapered down to sit flush with the mudguards and arches.

By far the most exposure this product ever got was to feature in the movie Mad Max, as the front on the Black Interceptor. Sadly, although a fair few fronts were made in the seventies, almost none are around anymore - the coupe moulds I believe have been completely destroyed. Even when the original Black Interceptor was restored to it's current glory, a replica van front was used. Arcadipane has confirmed that the original moulds have been destroyed.

I was a passenger in a Boeing 757 sitting on the tarmac at Boston-Logan International Aiport last Thursday (October 9) at 6:20 pm EST. The tug pushed the plane back from the gate and rolled it to the end of the terminal. The plane then sat there for about ten minutes, and I noticed out the window that a crowd (150+) of baggage handlers and other workers were clustered around the end of the terminal looking at the runway. I thought to myself that this was really unusual, so I looked out the other window and about that time the captain came on the intercom:

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll look out the right side of the aircraft you're about to have the pleasure of seeing the Concorde take off on its last transatlantic flight."

Pictures do the Concorde absolutely no justice. The entire plane shook with the thunder of the Concorde's engines, at least 500 yards away, with full afterburners engaged. It sped away as if someone had put the Concorde in a slingshot. A fitting end to the 50 minute wait through security and the Concorde's multi-decade run.

Concorde is usually only associated with two airlines, British Airways and Air France, the airlines that operated it from its launch to its retirement. However, there are four other airlines that figure prominently in the Concorde story, and it wouldn't be fair to leave them out. So here's The Rest of the Story (tm)...

Pan Am: The Concorde That Wasn't

When the Concorde program was launched, it had twenty-one firm orders: seven each from British Airways, Air France, and Pan Am. In case you're too young to remember, Pan Am was, back in the day, the largest international airline based in the Estados Unidos, and probably the largest airline in the world bar none. It had been a launch customer for two other revolutionary airliners, the Boeing 707 and the Boeing 747.

After Pan Am ordered Concorde, economic conditions changed, making fuel for the kerosene-hungry aircraft a financial nightmare. Worse yet, U.S. environmental groups were protesting the SST's tendency to pollute the air and disturb people on the ground with its sonic booms, leading key American airports such as JFK to ban the plane outright. So Pan Am's Concordes had no future, and the planes slated for America were picked up by Britain and France instead.

Singapore Airlines: The Concorde That Halfway Was

Since BA couldn't fly the Concorde to America, it turned the SST on an eastward route to Bahrain. The airline's eventual goal was to link Britain and Australia by Concorde, but the route would require two refueling stops, and the next likely stop seemed to be Changi International Airport in Singapore.

BA enlisted the help of Singapore Airlines, and gave the Asian carrier exactly one-half of a Concorde. That is to say, British Airways operated and maintained the plane, but it painted a Singapore Airlines livery on the port (left) side. This was perhaps one of the only points in history when two airlines shared an aircraft's livery by splitting it down the centerline.

The Bahrain-Changi service only survived for three months in 1977. Malaysia started complaining about sonic booms, and Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC had agreed to let Concorde land. Two years later, BA and Singapore restored their cooperative service by using a new route across India, but because Concorde couldn't reach supersonic speeds over populated areas of the country, the carriers gave up again in 1980, and Concorde left Singapore for good.

Braniff International: The Concorde With A Double Identity

Nowadays, Braniff only exists as the production company that brings us South Park. Back in the seventies, however, it was a major U.S. airline, and its giant orange 747's were a common, if comical, sight at many airports.

In 1979, Braniff sent a group of pilots and flight attendants to Europe, and had them trained to operate Concorde. Later that year, Braniff worked out an agreement with both BA and Air France, under which it would commandeer one daily Concorde flight on each carrier from New York to Dallas/Fort Worth.

Although the planes were clearly marked in British Airways and Air France livery, they were operated by Braniff crews on their US sectors. To clear up legal problems (foreign carriers are generally not allowed to operate US domestic flights), the aircraft were registered in the United States, and their European registry was covered up with a giant sticker while they were on their US sectors.

Having an American Concorde might have been cool for Braniff, but it wasn't feasible on a business level. The flights were rarely more than 25% booked, and there was simply no way to turn a profit on such a short and low-dollar route. Braniff stopped flying Concorde in 1980.

Virgin Atlantic: The Concorde That Really, Really Wanted To Be

You've got to love Richard Branson. If somebody discovered oil on Mars, he would have a network of Virgin Petroleum rigs set up within a month, and would be operating a chain of 2,000 Virgin Gas Stations by year's end, and turning a higher profit than anybody else in the industry.

When British Airways decided to retire Concorde, Branson virtually leapt to the phones and began trying to buy the planes for his airline. He told British Airways that he would buy the whole fleet for the same price it carried in the 1970's. That price happened to be... one pound sterling. Needless to say, BA told Sir Richard to get stuffed.

Later, Branson reappeared with an offer of five million pounds. Again, BA refused, and explicitly stated that it would not sell Concorde to anyone at any price.

Although Virgin never got to fly Concorde, it did get to enjoy its fantasy in one way. Before the year was out, Virgin commissioned a model Concorde in its red and silver livery, and sold the models as a limited edition through its in-flight catalog.

Personally, I would have let Branson buy Concorde. He would have done something fun with it. Maybe it could have become a real-life Soul Plane.

Concorde - Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers on its Last Day

I will not add a lament on the fate of Concorde to this node; it would be superfluous and probably fairly hollow, since my age was in single digits the last time I saw Concorde in flight. In retrospect, I am at least as disappointed to have never seen it since as I am that I never got to see the SR-71 in flight. It's a beautiful aircraft, I'm sorry it no longer flies, and I hope we see another SST in my lifetime.

This node, however, is a perfect opportunity for some aviation geekery, if you'll allow. I hope to allow the professionals to speak for me.

Although I'm not presently employed in the aviation industry, I'm as interested in it as ever. Still get the tingles hearing the twin GE90s spool up on a triple seven. Still think the Gulfstream IV is sex with wings ("cool idea, however way you take it," a dangerous girl once said to me). Still would drive a hundred miles to watch winged bundles of duralumin, cables and hydraulic fluid fling themselves into the sky at 200mph along a concrete strip.

Air Traffic Controllers get paid to tell pilots, most of whom get paid far more than them, what to do. And pilots have to do it. If there is a cooler job in the world than throwing thousands of tons of metal around the sky... well, there isn't. If you disagree with me, you are wrong.

* * * * *

The world of ATC communications is nominally very formal and structured. Phraseology has been prescribed for every common situation, and many of the not-so-common ones:

I have been instructed by Her Majesty's Government to refuse entry into United Kingdom airspace. What are your intentions?"

...was a bit of published phraseology that prompted some mirth during initial training, for example.

Occasionally, pilots or controllers break the conventions for some reason. Although sometimes the situation demands it, oftentimes it does not and arises simply from a wish to informalise the situation somewhat. This is perhaps inevitable for people in positions that involve either large amounts of responsibility, dealing with the darker side of human existence, or both; to dwell is almost certainly a destructive influence, and making light of sombre or otherwise serious situations is a common coping mechanism.

Dr. Cox of Scrubs sums this up fairly well, as he explains doctors' widespread use of flippant and morbid humour:

"You see Dr. Wen in there? He's explaining to that family that something went wrong and that the patient died. He's gonna tell them what happened, he's gonna say he's sorry, and then he's going back to work. You think anybody else in that room is going back to work today?

"That is why we distance ourselves, that's why we make jokes. We don't do it because it's fun -- we do it so we can get by.

...

"And sometimes because it's fun.

"But mostly it's the 'getting by' thing."

The departures from standard pilot/controller conversations make interesting listening if you're so inclined, and frequently betray the abiding respect that both pilots and controllers generally reserve for, despite taking most available opportunities to gripe about, each other.

At least as many pilots and controllers as enthusiasts were sorry to see the last of Concorde; this is compellingly illustrated in the R\T exchanges between Concorde pilots and their controllers during the aircraft's final flights, in which controllers and other pilots took time to wish Concorde and her crew well for retirement, and for Concorde pilots to thank those they worked with during the 27 years the aircraft operated passenger services.

Some of these exchanges are transcribed below. Concorde in the transcripts is Speedbird 2 (BAW002), Captained by Les Brodie and copiloted by British Airways chief Concorde pilot Mike Bannister. The exchanges are edited or truncated here and there for readability's sake, and I will interrupt with pertinent explanations of terms.

KJFK, USA; ~0700Z, 24th October, 2003;

Last Concorde passenger flight from KJFK to EGLL, aircraft registration G-BOAG

BAW002:     Kennedy Ground, good morning, for the last time, Speedbird Concorde 2, IFR,
            London Heathrow with Mike, requesting a Canarsie Climb.

KJFK:       Morning Speedbird 2, I guess for the last time we can give you that Canarsie
            Climb: Speedbird 2 Heavy cleared to London Heathrow Airport; Kennedy 9
            Departure, Canarsie Climb, radar vectors SHIPP, then as filed*, maintain 
            five thousand, expect flight level 290 ten minutes after, squawk 1136, and
            Mike is the ATIS.

"Kennedy 9 Departure" refers to a Standard Instrument Departure, or SID. These are published, standardised routes out of an airport which are referred to by ATC. They detail navigation aids, directions and altitude requirements, and any pertinent radio frequencies. Pilots have details of these routes on hand so ATC, when telling aircraft where to fly, can simply refer to the designation of the appropriate route - in this case, 'Kennedy 9' - instead of having to read out a lengthy route clearance on the radio.

The 'Canarsie Climb' is a flight profile specific to JFK airport, that takes aircraft towards the Canarsie