Concorde

[clarkkentsglasses]

Off for a Concorde experience this week for half term.

Has anyone here flown on Concorde?

Apparently Joan Collins was on our flight but I didn’t see her.

Yes to the silver service! Crisp linen laid out on your table, proper cutlery and cruet set. Lobster and Chablis and yes overdid the champagne in the lounge at Heathrow!

Yeah, I think I was wrong about that: as you'd be travelling the same speed, the sound delay wouldn't affect you. Pity!

They weren’t allowed to break the sound barrier over land, only over sea.

I’m gutted I never got to fly Concorde. There was just something special about it

They're not mis-remembering,

The boom is down to shock waves produced by the aircraft and the path those waves trace over the ground can extend out laterally from the aircraft's flight path, just how far depends on weather conditions...

Concordes travelling supersonically over the western approaches, as they did when accelerating going westbound or when they were decelerating to subsonic when travelling eastbound could lay down a boom path that could extend as far north as Cornwall...pretty sure Brittany used to also get regularly boomed, though usually by one of the French flights

FWIW the more elderly here 🤔may remember that there was also a overland boom trial done in the very early seventies when the aircraft was deliberately flown overland on a route that ran north/south along the extreme eastern edge of parts of the UK...

HTH.

Without outing myself Concorde was a very big part of my family. Three relatives including my DF worked on the original design and production. All three flew on Concorde at various times. In later years it flew over our house every day, a beautiful plane.

When they tested the engines at Filton it broke nearby windows although thankfully not ours. The noise could be heard for miles. There was a lot of pride locally that it was "our plane".

My cousin has a whole box of memorabilia including scraps of metal, some souvenir jewellery and photos of the workshops where development work was done. We have all agreed it will go to a museum when he dies, or possibly before.

Nope...there may be a change in noise level but it doesn't go silent.

Yes you are leaving engine noise transmitted through the external air behind you, that's the stuff the public on the ground hear,

However engine noise transmitted by the aircraft structure will still be audible in the cabin...

I love take off best. If it were possible to have a joyride in an SR-72, preferably over the Arctic, I would cash in some investments tomorrow.

when they were decelerating to subsonic when travelling eastbound could lay down a boom path that could extend as far north as Cornwall...

We heard it in Cornwall all the time, signalled bed time when I was younger.

We could hear the boom in Filton, even when it wasn't coming in to land there and was heading towards Heathrow.

I seem to remember that in the early days of its commercial flights that it did go supersonic over land, but it soon got changed.

It seems such a shame that the site where it was built is being redeveloped. The hangar it was housed in is going to be a concert arena.

You're not misremembering, this used to happen! I grew up near Hounslow.

Another thing I would remember, sometimes if we were near Heathrow in the morning, my dad would take us to watch it take off. It was really spectacular and what was nice too was that there would always be a small crowd watching it and without fail, grown men would have tears silently streaming down their face. Like it was such a thing of technological beauty that they were moved to tears. I loved that.

I lived under the take off path from Heathrow - it was deafening. Even without looking you knew it was Concorde and not a 747.

Yep I forgot to mention sometimes/most days? there would be a Concorde was at high speed up the middle of the Bristol Channel into/out of Heathrow so there was potential for booms well beyond Cornwall.

The US put the kiss of death on supersonic over the States land very early on, one of several reasons why there were ultimately so few ordered..

Never went on it but saw it take off from Heathrow for the final time, it actually brought a tear to my eye to see it (for the first and final time)

Although it never failed to impress me when it came in over our heads in Hounslow it was annoying to miss a chunk of what you were watching on TV, no pausing in those days unless you had video'd it.

We saw Concorde flying overhead on our first trip to Legoland Windsor in the late 90s

It is indeed still there and visible from runway 27L 😁

I used to watch it fly over our house as a child in south London. Now I’ve seen quite a few of them. Know a few ex Concorde crew too and the stories are fascinating

I’m sensing there are enthusiasts here who can help with something that’s bugged me on and off for ages….

As concord could only go supersonic over water, why did it regulalrly fly to Bahrain, a journey that’s all over land?

m I’ve read that it’s something to do with Gulf Air (Bahraini carrier) funding it, but why did they do that?

Story I head was hey did a slightly indirect route that allowed supersonic whilst over the Med, and I think (but not sure) that were allowed supersonic overland over maybe Saudi Arabia

"British Airways opened Concorde operations with the less satisfactory London to Bahrain service. This was a difficult segment for Concorde as it involved a subsonic leg over Europe, a curved tack over the eastern Mediterranean and the need for absolutely precise navigation through the narrow corridor over the unstable Middle East. But despite this, Concorde still managed to complete the flight in four hours compared to a subsonic aircraft which took 6.5 hours to complete the route."

That's from:

https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-first-scheduled-services

Bahrain was one of the key refuelling/stop over points for flights to the Far East (and onwards to Australia) before flights could get to places like Singapore from Europe non-stop (which I think only happened from the late 80s?). Not sure why Bahrain over anywhere else, but that's certainly where BA used to stop, so perhaps that was why Bahrain for BA's Concordes instead of another Middle East country.

As I understand it, they picked up a lot of passenger traffic who wanted the experience of Concorde and then carried on their journey on other aircraft, or used Concorde for the last leg back to the UK.

(Caveat, "a lot" wouldn't have been huge numbers because Concorde wasn't big, but hopefully you see what I mean, as in it wasn't all about Bahrain as the destination, but location too).

@SurreyMumOfOne

Bahrain was one of the key refuelling/stop over points for flights to the Far East (and onwards to Australia) before flights could get to places like Singapore from Europe non-stop (which I think only happened from the late 80s?).

Yep, routine, non-stop UK-Singapore/Singapore-UK only really became possible with the introduction of types such as the 747-400 from '89 onwards..up until then you'd have at least one stop en-route either in the Gulf or India...sometimes both.....(eeee...tell that to the youth of today and...😉).

As you say Gulf Air management quite possibly thought that using Concorde out of London would drum up business with them.

Used to work in London and could see the late afternoon flight coming in.
Always knew it was time to go home at that point.

Been in the one at Duxford several times

Thank you so much for this link, I sent it to my dad and he's found a whole page describing the work he singlehandedly, obviously did on it. He's delighted.

My parents flew to Paris on it, it must have been the late 90s. They had certificates that were framed in our old house. I'm seeing my Dad tomorrow so I will ask for details for this thread!!

I live near Bristol and used to commute through Filton a few years ago, there was a concorde very randomly placed on the old airfield that I used to drive by every day. I always found it really surprising that it was such a big deal a few decades ago and yet it just seemed 'dumped' there. I was surprised at how small it was too, it took me a while to clock the pointy nose! Its gone now though.