In the specific sense that the aircraft was designed in the 1960 and very early 70s, and unfortunately oil prices went up and stayed up as a result of the OPEC led 1973 oil price crisis. Oil, which had been for a decade or more around $4 a barrel went to $10 a barrel, rising again in 1980 to average around $30 a barrel through the 1980s.

During the period the aircraft was conceived there was no reason to anticipate such massive and sustained changes, but they did of course occur, and other than state owned captives, no airline could afford to run the aircraft.

I've never flown Concorde but I'd seen them on the ground at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, DC, several times and they were just a gorgeous aircraft.

An acquaintence of mine did fly to and from London a couple of times on them (somebody else paid) and other than the speed, he didn't think they were any great shakes as an actual flying experience, but I stil regret that I had neither the opportunity nor the wherewithal to do so.

My main memory is that they were noisy. I flew pre refurbishment and sitting in a window seat you had to speak up to the cabin crew in the aisle. Excellent wine list! I believe the work of Jancis Robinson.

The interior was small but once sitting down it was fine. The seats were comfortable, if a little vintage looking and you were only there for a bit over 3 hours.

I was booked for a 2nd flight when they were grounded.

I also cycled to Heathrow to watch the last commercial flights land there - 3 Concordes landing one after the other. It was VERY busy on all the perimeter roads.

Oh yes, the windows got hot to the touch.

As opposed to buying wine ina. nice restaurant without wasting all that time flying ?

I used to work at Heathrow in the 1980s, and when a Concorde lit the afterburners for take off and rolled down the runway the vibrations used to set off lots of car alarms in the multi-story car parks.

Never flew on it myself, but my parents went on a day trip to Egypt on Concorde! Happy days.

Would have loved to have tried it once. Had a colleague that spend a month of salary (overtime pay) taking one way. Maybe it’s coming back in my lifetime and I will jump

taking one way

Did they ever return?

I was fortunate to fly once as I bought a ticket when they announced its withdrawal as I realised it was never going to happen again. It was a marvel of engineering and I feel that BA was rather spiteful in ensuring no flyable craft were left, at the very least it could have flown at air shows like Spitfires, etc, even if not flying commercially due to the withdrawal of manufacturer support.

Comfort-wise it was fine, and while not as luxurious as first/business class flights today, it was only 3 and bit hours, not the gruelling 8+ hours if cattle class most of us endure if we need to get to the states.

A toast to the numerous engineers and scientists that made it work, really it was the UK/France equivalent of the Apollo program =>

I also flew once - as a result of BA cancelling a flight out of JFK and moving some of the passengers to the Concod(e) flight.

The noise-reduction process (turning off the afterburners over NYC) was pre-announced to prevent panic. The cabin was tiny and extra-narrow trolleys patrolled the miniature aisle. The outside walls got rather warm and the service offering was necessarily reduced by the limited space. However, as you say, the fast journey negated much of the potential criticism, particularly if you hadn't paid the full whack.

It was a great engineering achievement, but in the end it simply wasn't practical - which is not to say it wasn't worth doing, and it perhaps did not need to be brought to such an abrupt dead end.

at the very least it could have flown at air shows like Spitfires, etc

Even if both Airbus and Rolls Royce both offered their support, the cost of getting one back into an airworthy condition would have been ridiculously high, and even if it was successfully restored and granted a certificate of airworthiness, nobody would be particularly impressed by seeing one wallow around in slow flight trim.

But that would never happen, there's an immense difference in complexity between Concorde and any WWII warplane and it would be a massive liability.

I still regret that when it was withdrawn I decided that the cost of one of the last flights was too much for me...

Never flew in one but was always fascinated by it. I've been to see the one at East Fortune in Scotland and outside it still looks sleek and modern. Inside it's pretty small and cramped (relative to modern planes) and the cockpit is a terrifying array of dials.

+1 for the mention of East Fortune. If you ever find yourself in the vicinity, practically in the suburbs of Edinburgh, it's definitely worth a visit.

-A.

"After all, the first-class travel experience was considerably inferior to that on offer from subsonic aircraft once one discounted the glamour of speed."

Really, who gives a sonic boom when you could get to New York in about the same time as a short-haul to (say) Berlin? Back in the days when I supported a serious nicotine habit, a subsonic transatlantic flight was torture. Even leaving aside the jet lag.

-A.

The main issue Concorde ran into was environmental concerns of an unprecedented ferocity. This was the first time anybody had raised such issues outside a few fringe predecessors to Greta Thunberg (Rachel Carson was perhaps the first: checkout her book "Silent Spring"). The US did not want to be upstaged by Europe and seized the environment as its weapon of choice. Supersonic land overflights were banned, and airport flight paths made awkward and inefficient. Other nations followed suit, some went so far as to ban overflights altogether. Concorde lost its transcontinental markets and saw its transoceanic costs rise dramatically, while delays in the air lengthened. The calculated operating costs that had justified its development were left in the dirt, the fast flight times became stretched and less attractive.

Nobody during its development had foreseen such a sudden global rise in environmental concerns and political backlash, especially not a US who loved researching nuclear-powered bombers among other things, and it remains an oddity of the era that Concorde was singled out for treatment that many long-established and much bigger polluters deserved a great deal more. It may well have been the likes of Boeing behind the Big Money and the professional campaigning, but in the end they brought environmentalism out of the hippie commune and onto the world stage, and have since had to clean up their own acts. Killing Concorde ended up something of a pyrrhic victory for the global politico-industrial machine, and a good thing too. Just a shame they chose such a beautiful bird as the first sacrifice.

Quote

"The US did not want to be upstaged by Europe and seized the environment as its weapon of choice."

there was quite a lot of opposition to Concorde landing in New York/Washington due to the noise, according to old and unreliable memory concordes makers turned up at a senate hearing with a couple of recordings and playing them back at full volume as someone standing under the flight path would have experienced, the senators were then asked which one was concorde, the noisy one of course they answered only to be told that was a recording of Airforce 1 taking off (a 707 with standard turbo jet engines) and the quieter one was concorde.

Someone in New York in an interview a few years later said she preferred concorde to the other jets.... mainly because it cleared off so quickly.

Only saw one in flight once..... rumbling over Winsor while I was there doing other stuff..... whats that..... look up... beautiful delta shape flying over..

Now look at us... 10 hrs in a stuffed 767 from Dallas is progress? see icon

Saw her In flight twice, once in Sidcup hot August Sunday afternoon, just after she resumed service & once from a train coming into Paddington as I recall she was in the sky around the area of GSK House in Brentford she was framed in the twilight skies of the setting sun (Also a Sunday).

Heard her often enough at 9.05 or thereabouts in the 80's & 90's as she throttled up over the channel, I always found it a strangely comforting sound.

Also walked through the 002 Prototype at Yeovilton a couple of times.

Pint for all those who brought her to life.

When the service was reintroduced after the crash, BA offered one-way upgrades for business class tickets to either Concorde or First. I was flying London/NY about every 6 weeks at that time, so, yeah, Concorde, lets do it!

First time was uneventful. Left LHR at 9am, landed JFK at 9am, in the office by 10am. "Oh did you fly in last night?", nah, Concorde... Like you do...

Second was much more interesting ... Having done a bit of homework I now knew that take-off speed was approaching 200mph. So we were barreling down the runway but it didn't feel like no 200 mph. Then the brakes came on, hard, very very hard. Like face on seat in front of you hard. Momentary feeling of panic, what's happening, are we all going to die? Once we'd stopped the pilot came on the intercom in his best Biggles accent and apologised as there had been a technical issue. Apparently one of the reheats hadn't lit up so we weren't going to make it hence the emergency stop.

We then taxied for a while, a really long while. Again Biggles explained, the technicians want us to go to the edge of the air field and try running the engines up to full power to see if it does it again. What???!! This is how you problem solve? We parked up and sure enough the dodgy engine was run up, presumably with the pilot standing on the brake pedal with all his weight. The whole airframe shook and jiggled as it tried very hard to pirouette round in circles. After a few seconds it stopped. "Its definitely broken", said Biggles, "But, good news! We always have a spare Concorde ready to go". Now, that inspires confidence...

We were then de-planed back at the terminal where the BA ground crew clustered around all the proper paying passengers fawning and apologising profusely. I was pretty much ignored since I was on a freebie. True to their word they had us on their spare fairly quickly and we arrived in NY around about the same time that a conventional flight would have. The weird steep approach angle really freaked me out on landing. I wasn't quite so elated by that experience.

I went First next time. Still have the boarding pass for seat 1A.

Yes, the exterior walls did get notably warm to the touch. The toilets were very warm too. Wish it had been during the era of smart phones because I have nothing to remember the experience by except my own unreliable memory.

Also remember being parked on a taxi way at LHR waiting to take-off with a view down the runway when a Concorde took off. The jet wash really rattled the side of our aircraft as Concorde disappeared in a yellow haze of its own fumes. That's the other reason it couldn't be in service today.

I've seen 3 of the stuffed and mounted ones, been inside two, wonder if one of them was one of "mine"..

Ah, the days when we actually could claim to be World Leaders (at some things).

But wait, there's more, memory has been jolted.

When Concorde was being introduced they did pilot training at Prestwick near where I grew up. Touch and go, or whatever they call those landings where you don't stop, you just take off again.

It passed over several times a day for a while one summer, early 70's I suppose.

So my Concorde experiences spanned pretty much its entire operational lifetime.

and try running the engines up to full power to see if it does it again. What???!! This is how you problem solve?

Don't want to sound like a twit, but has anyone suggested to the pilot if they could just try turn it off and on again?

1. Most recently at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford - you must go if you haven't already - walked through Concorde. Surprisingly small.

2. That said, prior to that by some years, walking along the river at Richmond in London, turned the bend and Concorde was lying on a barge floating on the river - this was post retirement and apparently awaiting being shipped to Scotland. It was small.

3. Prior to that, living along the Thames in London, frequently disturbed by the roar of Concorde coming in to land at Heathrow. It was notably louder than all planes, and presumably, it was being quiet as it came over London.

Question is, what's gonna replace it and when? I trust you're working on that Richard?

"Question is, what's gonna replace it and when? I trust you're working on that Richard?"

Beardo works on nothing but his image and his wine cellar. NASA however have been paying Lockheed Martin to develop the X59 (I hope US taxpayers don't mind), which has flown, but looks like on of the X-planes most air forces were paying with in the 1960s, such as the Fairey Delta, the Avro 707 and a range of US equivalents. So there will be a lot of knowledge learned (or relearned) but they're a long, long way from any sort of airliner. The big sell of the X59 is "no sonic boom", but I have to say that it seems a tad expensive for that modest benefit.

Maybe this is about a replacement for the Rockwell B1B. Do the research for a putative civilian jet, admit nobody wants it, but then use the R&D as free issue to update the supersonic bomber concept, thus avoiding quite the level of scrutiny it might attract. In theory cruise missiles and stealth bombers have supplanted the need, in reality will the US military want to forgo the speed of force projection the B1B offers?

As a kid I remember the Concorde maiden flight from Tolouse. Followed not much later by the humungous - at the time - launch of the 747. It was a great time for planes :-)

There is also a Concorde at the Seattle Museum of Flight at Boeing Field, that you can walk through. And as you say it's tiny. In addition there is also a walk through of a previous version of Air Force One - maybe 707 based - I don't remember - someone will tell me.

All in all a great place to go - a whole day will not be enough.

And if you're there, the visit to Boeing at Everett is just awesome, a cathedral of engineering prowess.

Though I guess there are no more 747s

I regret due to the previous years organisational debacle at a convention, I did not expect to get a chance to tour Boeing or Microsoft with the Fifth & Seventh Doctors the following day.

My flight home was already booked.

My three:

1) My aunt knew a pilot of Concorde, so she managed to acquire a set of flight charts and other documents for the day of my 16th birthday as a present. +20 geek points

2) Roll forwards a couple of decades to when I was brewing my own beer. I gave a couple of bottles of one of the better recipes to a friend who shared one with his father in law (a BA steward who flew Concorde). His verdict "we could serve that on board". + 50 geek points

3) mid 2003. My then boss and his wife flew Concorde to the States on their anniversary, then had a Caribbean cruise and returned 747. His verdict "done it once, don't need to again". Lost all my geek points just for knowing him

Amazing how so many people still dont understnd they are slaves to the stupidity that is commuting.

Read the headline.

We're talking about stuff that happened at least 20 years ago...

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit the flight deck of G-BOAG (the record-setting Concorde bound for Seattle). It was immaculate and appeared ready to take flight at a moment's notice, with just a few additional lights added by the museum for illumination.

The accomplishments of Concorde are a source of pride for both Britain and France. While it may not have achieved the same quantity of sales as a plane like the 747, it unquestionably demonstrated that innovation was thriving, and ambitious "moonshot" endeavors can succeed with unwavering determination.

Innovation should transcend the limitations of strict financial calculations. Remarkable achievements are possible when we have the audacity to dream big.