Concorde

[clarkkentsglasses]

Off for a Concorde experience this week for half term.

Has anyone here flown on Concorde?

Me too, the sonic boom every night marked my bedtime 😂

As a child we used to hear it fly over our house every day and I used to dream of arriving in New York on it. I never got to do that but I did get to fly on it from London to Manchester. It wasn't a long enough flight to go supersonic but it was still amazing. The interior was so small - like sitting in a long thin tube - and the thrust when it took off was just incredible. It really pinned you back in the seat. It was an experience I will never forget.

Is it true that it flew sufficiently high not to have any turbulence?

My uncle did a flights of fantasy experience from Heathrow. We went and watched. he got a cool gift bag with loads of goodies in!

There's one in our local aircraft museum. It feels quite small when you go on it.

Why haven’t they developed something that fast again?

I used to live in Hounslow and watch it come into land every evening, it was so low you could see all the underneath in great detail, incredible sight. I may have remembered this wrong (it was 35 years ago) but I swear that one night I was taking a shortcut through the east side of the airport and had to stop for a Concorde to taxi across the road. From google earth now that doesn’t seem possible but maybe the road layout or hanger locations were different then. It is vividly etched in my mind though.

I flew on Concorde (work trip). I didn’t think it was anything special to be honest. It’s tiny and noise and we all had headaches when we landed in New York. It had posh hand soap in the toilet!

Ds was obsessed by Concorde from about age 3 to 7 or 8yo. He knew everything about it, including all about the crash, and would watch documentaries about it back to back. He liked other aircraft too, especially Red Arrows and Spitfires.
This was great when his school trip in year 1 did a school trip to Brooklands. He started by telling the person who was meant to be guiding them, that they needed to see the bouncing bomb, corrected the guide on the information he was telling them about the next plane (which they did admit he was correct) then I believe took over the guiding from that moment onwards.
All was going well until the Concorde experience when the teacher told them they were going to take a "trip in Concorde". To ds one of the most interesting parts was the crash, so he gave them full information... leading to the experience having to be cut short as some of the form wanted to get off before "it took off". His teachers thought it very funny.

My late dad worked for BAC and he flew in it once. He was given all sorts of memorabilia, I think it's in the loft somewhere.

There's something so fascinating about Concorde. I'd love to visit one of the museum exhibitions.

I read a thing about things teenagers don't believe their parents had when they were younger and one of the things was Concorde. They struggled to believe there were supersonic passenger jets making regular flights. They seemed to think it was fictional or a prototype.

I read a thing about things teenagers don't believe their parents had when they were younger and one of the things was Concorde. They struggled to believe there were supersonic passenger jets making regular flights. They seemed to think it was fictional or a prototype.

Yeah I had a conversation like that with my 13 year old on the way to Lidl, we drove past the 1:4 model Concorde and he asked what it was, I did the speech about Concorde being a supersonic passenger aircraft jointly built in France and Britain, what it was like, how iconic it was, the crash, what happened next, his grandad working on it - the works basically. And then he announced that he was a little surprised it took off at all, given it was so small.

Pretty much, they were usually up 45000 feet plus, well above most bumps..

Yes! At the Brooklands Museum

I'm so pleased I asked this question, love hearing everyone's experience.

I lived under the LHR flight path and would often hear the sonic boom

The closest I got to flying on Concorde was when I went to Farnborough airshow on an industry day in, I think, 1998. A BA Concorde was there (I think it was Alpha Foxtrot, which is now in the museum at Bristol) doing its flying display as part of the day’s entertainment. It was spectacular, of course.

At the end of the day, the aircraft which weren’t staying queued up to take off & fly home. Including the Concorde. By this time the crowds had thinned out and I went as close as I possibly could to the runway to watch them go, right up against the rope barrier & much closer than you could ever get at a normal airport. The Concorde thundered down the runway towards me, its four afterburners glowing bright orange. It shot past me then a tsunami of hot exhaust fumes hit me in the face like a giant fan oven being opened. For a few seconds I couldn’t breathe as the hot gases displaced all the oxygen in the air. I thought it was going to set fire toto my hair. The noise was deafening. I could smell & taste burned aircraft fuel for the rest of the day. Unforgettable.

Your memory may well be spot on.

Up to maybe 25 years back there was a public road that cut through the BA base over on the east side at LHR, it ran roughly from the Hatton Cross roundabout through the centre of the base and then joined the eastern perimeter road.

At one point that road crossed a taxiway that linked the two halves of the BA base and aircraft were sometimes towed (not sure if they ever taxied) between the two parts of the base, crossing the road as they did so. There were a set of big railway crossing type gates to stop road traffic when aircraft crossed.

As part of increased security that road got closed a few years back and you now have to route around the whole BA base to the East, you can’t cut through.

On the image below I’ve tried to mark where the road crossed the taxiway with a red line, Hatton Cross is at the bottom, the airport terminals are off image to the left. The previously mentioned Concorde is tucked way near the bottom left corner.

HTH.

Yes, I flew Concorde from New York to London when the flight I was booked on was cancelled so they rebooked me onto Concorde. It was early in the morning (and I'd had a big night the previous night) and it didn't really register until I was walking to the lounge and looked at my boarding pass and it said Concorde.

I knew one of the pilots. He was a terrible car driver - but he used to joke you never had to reverse the Concorde!
I used to work in Teddington and when it flew over the building vibrated and you had to tell whoever you were on the phone with to hang on a minute. But it was spectacular- if you saw it in the sky today it would still be a thing of marvel.

Remember the sonic boom? It rattled our windows many a time...

That's what I meant about it being time to go to sleep when hearing the boom at 8:30/9pm. I would have been primary school age.

Astounding engineering and I'm surprised it's not been reinvented as there seems to be more rich people than ever. Taxpayer funded yet the Govt wouldn't sell it to Branson.

It sounded different to everything else even without the boom. It was beautiful.

We lived near heathrow for a while and XBIL worked there. He said it was the only plane that workers at heathrow would stop what they were doing to watch come in and go out.

Yes I flew on it from London to New York. Was very fast and very small! I remember the mach - o -meter or whatever it’s called and being very squiffy and the food being amazing.

We then flew New York to LA and it took twice as long lol.

It was very small - much smaller than I imagined.

Yes I think it was 2:2 configuration?

It was, I remember being so surprised at how small it was, I still have my boarding pass somewhere 😂

https://aerospacebristol.org/

This is worth a visit if you're in Bristol. You can get in again on the same ticket for up to a year.

I’ve got the menu somewhere……!