Concorde madness

[michaelab]

I'm well gutted that it's stopped flying (and that they're not even going to keep one in flying condition ) but the eBayers didn't take long to pick up on the bonanza:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2199032734&category=419

Concorde in-flight safety card - £103 and counting

Michael.

 

[domfjbrown]

I wouldn't worry too much - just like the last Advanced Passenger Train outside Crewe, I'm sure some foreign country will use the plans, get a cheaper, faster better one developed and sell it back to Virgin in 22 years' time....

I too am gutted about not being able to go on Concorde - oh well, ho hum...

 

[ilockyer]

Yeah, it does suck somewhat. I'd have loved the chance to go on Concorde (apart from the one at the Fleet Air Arm museum in Yeovilton) and it won't ever happen now. Maybe if Airbus weren't such awkward cretins in regard to the airworthiness thing, why couldn't they forfeit/sell the maintenance rights to someone else, they'd have kept one in flying order.

You're probably right Dom, it's like everything, we'll be being sold some revolutionary *new* supersonic airplane in a few years time and think it's the dogs bollocks. By then, most people will probably have forgotten what Concorde is.

 

[michaelab]

Not sure what Airbus has to do with this? IMO it was BA who were just being childish about not letting Branson fly them. It would have been just too much of a slap in the face for them.

Even when Branson had given up trying to fly them commercially he put together a proposal to maintain one or two of them in airworthy condition, using £1m of his own money to start it up but BA just told him where to stick it :bub:

Michael.

 

[nsherin]

Aurbus are no longer providing support, as from the end of October 2003, hence making it difficult to keep the aircraft in service. Remember you've also got to consider spares - which could be specific to the aircraft, so somebody needs to be ableto supply and manufacture those.

 

[PBirkett]

The future of supersonic flight will be the NASA/Aerospace Industries TU-144...

300 passenger capacity, faster and more efficient than Concorde, and it was the high price of running Concorde which sealed its fate.

 

[michaelab]

Paul - given that the Tu-144 was basically a pure Concorde rip-off (they worked from stolen Concorde plans) I can't really see it doing any better.

NASA restored and bought one of them for use in studying supersonic flight for potential future supersonic airliners.

As for Airbus not providing mainentance support, it would be easy for someone else to take that over if the money was right. If BA and AF had decided to keep flying Concorde then Airbus would have continued to provide maintenance.

Michael.

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

As Michael so well points out, the 144 was the Ruskis stealing the plans for concorde.
Unfortunately they couldn't even get that right, as the wing structure didn't come out quite right.
That's why it crashed at the Paris airshow, and also why it grew the front set of wings near the nose, as it was apparently unstable without. Chances are that it was actually slower than concorde as a result of the extra drag.

 

[michaelab]

The reason it crashed at the Paris airshow is rather darker. The French airforce had sent out a Mirage fighter to (covertly) film footage of the Tu-144 from above. As this was a covert operation the Tu-144 pilots were not told and whilst climbing rapidly they had to take drastic evasive action in order to avoid crashing into the Mirage which they had just spotted.

The evasive action they took was too stressful for the Tu-144 airframe and it broke up in mid air.

The first Tu-144s were indeed very unstable at low speeds but subsequent modifications (including those nose wings - called "canards") sorted all the initial problems. The canards were retracted for except for takeoff and landing so they wouldn't have caused extra drag.

Performance wise I think that the Tu-144 and Concorde would have been pretty similar.

Michael.

 

[cookiemonster]

Microwaves consume more power on an aircraft than everything else put together.

I did a plane course once. I thought that this was important information.

 

[PBirkett]

Originally posted by michaelab
Paul - given that the Tu-144 was basically a pure Concorder rip-off (they worked from stolen Concorde plans) I can't really see it doing any better.

Ah ok, my error, just I was watchin a program yesterday and it did have the Concorde rip off that crashed but it also had this other jet which looks the same and held 300 passengers, but they made out as if it was somethign completely different.

 

[Graham C]

Nothing new under the sun...

The yanks had everyone beat in the 60's - but they pulled the plug for economic reasons. This baby is the Xb70 in '64:

from this site:

http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html

 

[PBirkett]

Thats a beast, and it could fly at Mach 3, pretty nippy I say

 

[ilockyer]

Originally posted by nsherin
Aurbus are no longer providing support, as from the end of October 2003, hence making it difficult to keep the aircraft in service. Remember you've also got to consider spares - which could be specific to the aircraft, so somebody needs to be ableto supply and manufacture those.

Looking through the BA site, which has a section called Celebrate Concorde, in the FAQ I found this.

Noel Forgeard, Airbus chief executive is quoted recently in the Financial Times : "The costs of operating Concorde, and in particular maintenance and support, have become such that operations are unrealistic for any operator."

Also they apparently would have had no obligation to provide support anyway if another airline wanted to take the fleet over and run it.

The BA site also has Concorde Screensavers, video clips of the last flights and Windows wallpaper to download. Oh, and a shop where you can buy merchandise too...

 

[Paul Ranson]

There was a story last week that Airbus didn't want to release the technical documentation allowing Concorde to be maintained to a thirdparty due to the trade secrets and other intellectual property that was relevant to their current production.

Shame.

Paul

 

[michaelab]

Originally posted by ilockyer
Noel Forgeard, Airbus chief executive is quoted recently in the Financial Times : "The costs of operating Concorde, and in particular maintenance and support, have become such that operations are unrealistic for any operator."

Also they apparently would have had no obligation to provide support anyway if another airline wanted to take the fleet over and run it.

Sure - but where there's a will, there's a way. If someone was prepared to spend the money it would be possible to keep Concorde flying for at least another 10-15 years.

The BA attitude appears to be: "we can't make it work economically and we won't let anyone else try either".

Michael.

 

[tones]

Originally posted by Paul Ranson
There was a story last week that Airbus didn't want to release the technical documentation allowing Concorde to be maintained to a thirdparty due to the trade secrets and other intellectual property that was relevant to their current production.

Shame.

Paul

As someone working in the field (intellectual property), that doesn't make any sense to me. Any patents would be long published (and probably expired) and any "trade secrets" would be easily discovered. And we are talking about old technology - the instrumented prototype Concorde at the FAA museum makes the point that all those batteries of on-board computers are the equivalent of one modern laptop. Things have moved on a lot since then.

Concorde was (and is) a beautiful bird, but it was doomed to fail because it fell between the proverbial two stools. It wasn't big enough to carry a decent number of passengers, at a time when the Jumbos were looming on the horizon. The only way round that was to make it faster, up to Mach 3 - but that meant titanium and nickel alloys (incredibly expensive and notoriously difficult to fabricate). Insistence on conventional aluminium alloys and construction meant a top speed of Mach 2. The combination of low(er) speed and low payload meant that it would never be a winner, but it was continued for prestige purposes alone. The US manufacturers (Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas) did the sums correctly, concluded that it wasn't worthwhile and dropped any plans for an SST. And, of course, since then, the price of aviation fuel has skyrocketed, redirecting emphasis to fuel efficiency, in which Concorde is notoriously lacking.

Mind you, it's still a shame that they don't keep at least one working.

 

[ilockyer]

Anyone know if they've actually flown the Concordes to their final destinations yet? I guess if not then they'll be doing it with utmost secrecy and in the middle of the night, so as not to draw the 1000s that surrounded Heathrow and the locale to see their final revenue earning flights end.

 

[michaelab]

I know that the one that was going to Manchester flew there in the early hours of the 31st (last Friday).

There's one going to the Museum of Flight in Seattle which will be landing at Boeing Field (Boeing's own "private" airfield - the irony ) today (5th of Nov) at 3:00pm local time (about 11pm UK time).

There's one going to NY and one to Barbados (apparently) but I don't know if flight dates for them have been set yet. Two will remain at Heathrow (for the time being anyway) and another is going to Filton.

Michael.

 

[ilockyer]

I think one of those still at Heathrow might be going to Syndey... there was mention of Sydney on the news when they announced where they were all going so I guess that accounts for them all.