Climb Inside a Concorde With These 360 Degree Panoramas

The Concorde is a failure? It served a niche that no other airliner did. I had the pleasure of riding in her both as a passenger and in the cockpit on several occasions. The crews were the best I have ever seen on any level. The schooling required was over 13 months long.

You had to be a widebody PIC before you could bid on her in the left seat and subsequently Concorde had a lot of really senior experienced First Officers would loved her so much that they would never bid off of her.

It had a perfect safety record until the dreaded flight that grounded her. It was never intended to be a money maker otherwise it would not have been subsidized since day one by two countries. It was all about bragging rights. Boeing and Douglas had similar designs but did not have the balls to challenge her.

Furthermore. it set milestones for many modern systems we see today. Concorde pioneered the following technologies:
Concorde was the first airliner to have a (in this case, analogue) fly-by-wire flight-control system, hybrid circuits, double-delta shaped wings, variable engine air intake system controlled by digital computers, supercruise capability, thrust-by-wire engines, (predecessor of today’s FADEC-controlled engines), droop-nose section for better landing, high-pressure hydraulic system for lighter hydraulic components, complex Air Data Computers (ADC) for the automated monitoring and transmission of aerodynamic measurements, fully electrically-controlled analogue brake-by-wire system, pitch trim by shifting fuel around the fuselage for centre-of-gravity control and finally parts made using "sculpture milling" from single alloy billet, reducing the part-number count while saving weight and adding strength.

The service was the best I have ever seen on the finest china with the finest food and booze you can have on an airliner.

You talk of your love of planes and all that you have done in aviation and yet you slam the most unique airliner ever made?

As a professional pilot and aeronautical engineer I find the Concorde to be an amazing legendary machine that set milestones that may never be broken.

Is the XB-70 a failure too? The Spruce Goose?, which set milestones herself with unique firsts for systems including "artificial feel"

Concorde is far from being a failure.

Cheers

 

He meant financially.

Sad but true.

Jedi

 

I had the opportunity to fly it from New York to London once and I've got to admit it was pretty damn great to get there in 3 1/2 hours. It may be old tech, but wow was it fast. I remember it being a smooth ride, but the walls got quite warm from the air friction- it was like sitting next to a radiator. No worries, because the trip was over in no time.

Just thinking about progress for a moment: In the 1770s it took months to cross the USA ( what there was of it). In the 1870s it probably took 14 days to get across the country. In the 1970s it took 5 hours to get from san fran to NYC and today, 50 years later, it takes longer than that. We are suddenly going backwards.

 

I have no argument with all that you put forth regarding crews, services, advancements in instruments, milestones,etc. I am one of millions who assumed that it was a supersonic AIRLINER , the mission of which was to carry passengers for profit while it advanced commercial aviation...like Boeing and Douglas have done for years. If the mission for which the Concord was designed was to wave the flag then it was a success. I worked on the Boeing SST and it was cancelled not because Boeing lacked the balls to continue but the U.S. Congress killed it. I should add here that Boeing's SST was to be built entirely of titanium (advancement) so that it could cruise at a Mach much higher than the Concord, it had fuel translation for balance, translating inlet spikes, and most important, it carried enough passengers to make the operator a profit. It would have paid its own way without subsidies.
I respect your experiences with Concord with envy. Few can put that in thier resume.
Switches

 

There will be another SST. and this time the laws are changing to allow flights over land masses.

 

If it was commercially viable and to be built by a commercial organisation how could Congress kill it ?

 

They didn't want to spend anymore money on the development.

 

Since use of the afterburners was probably the most fuel-guzzling part of the Concorde's flight profile, the question arises: how fast can the aircraft go if AB isn't used? There would be no need on these "heritage" flights to go Mach 2 -- if the aircraft can exceed Mach 1, to any extent, on dry thrust, that might be satisfying enough for most people.

 

I'm hoping Bob or one of the other pilots can explain it better but the Concorde might not be able to take off without afterburners. A while back I was talking with some B-1 pilots and they explained that they had to use burners in order to make it to refusal speed before running out of runway or something like that.

 

For what it's worth, MS Flight Sim X has a Concorde simulation.... I can sim-pilot anything
from an ultralight to a 747 - get off the ground and back down again with all the
"helpers" turned off....

Concorde? Hahahahaha! That's the twitchiest plane in Flight Sim X IMO... it's hard
to get in the air without crashing - hard to manually fly at altitude without auto pilot,
and landing? Even with all the helpers turned on, EVERYONE DIES when I'm the
pilot.

Given that MS Flight Sim is the engine of commercial simulators, I tend to believe it's
flight characteristics from one plane to another.

which leads me to believe the Concorde pilots had a TOUGH JOB and must have had
to be at the "top of their class" to manage that beast.

Jedi

 

Sorry but still confused : if as you say it was commercially viable why did its existence depend on Congress funding it ?

 

Maybe they didn't want the SST to be breaking the speed of sound over the US.

 

There were a number of reasons that ganged up on the program. The government funded the building of two prototypes and the costs were increasing. The Vietnam war. Sonic boom over the populace. The interest in other things and political pressure finally cut funds to continue. Boeing was also running into serious problems with the wing pivot and finally had to resort to a double delta config. So the whole thing turned into a financial bucket of worms. It was premature.
Switches

 

Thanks - talking of going supersonic overland does anyone recall stories of the Braniff Concorde pilots on the DFW/IAD route going for it over the Appalachians on the basis of no-one lives there anyway ?

 

I've never seen any real number crunching analysis but heard that even at 10,000 pounds a ticket and a 70% full plane the flight wouldn't make money and govt. coughed up the rest. Then after the crashes the govt. and the airlines had to invest in upgrades for safety (that did nothing to increase business). Kinda like a we lose a few dollars on each item but we'll make up for the difference by selling lots of 'em business model.

 

I took one trip on it and it was amazing. Got to the airport two hours before in the private Concord lounge. They had a huge spread with great wines. My wife and I were the only ones there until about a half hour before the flight, when everyone else showed up. I'm in the plane on the way to Paris and I remember that I never picked up my coat from the coat check. I mentioned it to the FA and she told me not to worry, it was on the plane. The next three hours were eating and drinking great wine and we were in Paris before dinner.
I had requested to be seated towards the front of the plane as one complaint from a few friends was that you could sometimes smell some exhaust at the back of the plane. I got row 1 both ways. I show up for the return trip, this time a half hour before departure. They give you a person who cut all lines at immigration. They also give me some bs about not sitting with my wife so they had to move me to row 3, no big deal. Get to the gate and the gate agent thanks me for giving up my seat for Henry Kissinger. Seems he only sits bulkhead. He kept me out of Vietnam, it was the least I could do.