Concorde's last flight

[Technoid]

Concorde's last flight is on friday the 24'th

At 16 local time it will land at Heathrows northen runway.

For the LAST time

[Brian R.]

Hard to believe that plane is as old as it is...

Still looks modern

[K6-III]

I hope the British government gives them to Branson, rather them letting them rust away as museum peices...

[agallag]

I was literally 5 minutes from the airport when it flew out of Toronto a few weeks ago. I should've gone over to see it leave for the last time

[Drizzt]

I suppose that now US gov should be happy.

And, we'll probably see a new Concorde in less than a year.

[VJ]

It is sad that nearly 30 years ago man could cross the Atlantic at Mach 2, whereas is this now is no longer possible (jet fighters/bombers need to refuel).

I'm glad I saw it a couple of times (on an air show in Ostend, while taxiing on JFK, ...).
It still is one of the best looking planes ever...

Jörg

[KvHagedorn]

What a shame.. wonder what part the Paris crash played in its downfall..

[Brian Ellis]

I'm really sad. Not only was this such a technological feat, it was beautiful to the eye, poetry in the fast lane !!!

I hope the British government gives them to Branson, rather them letting them rust away as museum peices...

Neither aluminium nor titanium rust

[Technoid]

Originally posted by Drizzt
I suppose that now US gov should be happy.

And, we'll probably see a new Concorde in less than a year.

I doubt that, the trend is larger planes hauling hundreds of passengers as fuel efficient as posible

Originally posted by KvHagedorn
What a shame.. wonder what part the Paris crash played in its downfall..

That and that it was so thirsty and not to mention all the noise it made a Mach2


Noise and fule consumption being the realy big reasons

[Admiral]

One accident in all its histroy and even that suposedly caused by debries on the runway.

I have a feeling they wanted to retire it anyway, not comercially viable anymore ? How much was a one way ticket, 6-8k $ ?
The general public use the normal plains while executives use private/corporate jets now, in between they probably had a hard time filling the places.

[VJ]

Main cost was the maintenance. If I remember correctly, it needs 30 hours of ground maintenance for every hour of flight. Also, my uncle - who flew with it - told me it is not very comfortable (noise, not much room, ...).
I don't think running it was ever profitable, apart perhaps from the status that came with offering Concorde flights...

Anyone knew that at Mach 2 the plane is 15 cm longer than on the ground ?


Jörg

[Dr Mordrid]

Only hope left for even a near-SST is a resurgance of Boeings Sonic Cruiser, which has been at least temporailiy shelved due to the downturn in air traffic since 9/11. It'll do .98 mach in normal flight (and probably faster if economics allowed).

http://www.boeing.com/news/feature/concept/flash.html

Some of its tech is transferrable to widebodies in the form of engine efficiency improvements.

Dr. Mordrid

[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Admiral
One accident in all its histroy and even that suposedly caused by debries on the runway.

I have a feeling they wanted to retire it anyway, not comercially viable anymore ?

The Concorde could mantain himself pretty well, and it should have been a much more common plane today if everything would have worked as it should.


(you can find the following history on almost all airplane's encyclopedias)
At the time Concorde project begun, there were three "players" in the game: USA, URSS and Europe.
Russians and Europeans were the first to "see" the future of a Mach 2 passenger plane, and begun developing it really fast.
So, when USA begun to think about such plane, too, it was really too late to be competitive. USA tried to develop it, however, but they had a few initial problems with the project and soon realized that they couldn't be in time.
Now, as everybody knows, USA economic depends a lot from airplane's industry, so the Mach2 Plane problem could be much worse than what should seems.


In the end, USA government took two simple contermeasures:
1) Refuse to the Concorde to land in their country. Simply and effective; the plane that was born to bring thousands of businessman accross the ocean was forced to fly only in Europe, thus becoming useless2
2) Advertise versus the Concorde with a campaign about the supposed (and obviously false) acoustic pollution that the Concorde would have done flying above European cities at Mach 2 speed. This brought european governments to deny the Concord access to their airports.


Concorde was so limited to travel only from England to France and viceversa, and still from only a couple of airports. In the end, however, the Concorde got the permission to land on one airport in the USA, and the project went ok.

The general public use the normal plains while executives use private/corporate jets now, in between they probably had a hard time filling the places.

Private/corporate jets cannot even barely stand against Concorde, if not for comfort. The only plane that could someway match Concorde speed is a higly expensive Learjet. And there is no real use for those in corporate use, other than being "the president one".

[Wulfman]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
INeither aluminium nor titanium rust

give me some quicksilver and I'll show you how fast aluminium will "rust".

mfg
wulfman

[Brian Ellis]

I used to grow beautiful AlHg "trees" in my bedroom as a youth. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise, especially when the folly is induced by mercury poisoning. However, I doubt whether Concorde is likely to fly through a mist of mercury vapour.