OT - Concorde

[Highmac]

You may have heard that British Airways has said it is grounding its Concorde fleet permanently from October. They have refused to sell the fleet to Richard Branson who, as he puts it, wants to have a go at keeping the supersonic airliner going - "We might succeed, we might not". (As he puts it, BA are bad losers - "We can't make it work, but there's no way we're giving anyone else the chance").
I was wondering, though, whether TSers in the NY area, who must be used to seeing it coming and going, will miss it. Would you be pleased if Branson got his chance, or relieved that you would never see (and hear!) it again?
For anyone interested in all the background (including, apparently, a video of its first flight in 1969) point your browser to this BBC search page

[krissel]

Regulations after the very first test flights many years ago forced the Concorde to become subsonic long before it entered the Metro-NY fly zone so we never heard any booms.  Those people who are in the take-off/landing paths of any of the three International airports around here are suffering from the regular traffic.

They keep changing the routes so one area gets relief and another is subjected to more noise, they complain, five years later they change again, etc.

NJ keeps asking for an ocean route but the government says that is reserved for military. Hah.

The town I used to live in was often under the landing path and we used to stop our conversations and joke, "Open the front and back doors and let 'im through."


My present location fortuantely (knock, knock) is between paths and is pretty quiet except for the occassional company chopper, private jet or small plane from the area small airports.

If anyone heard anything from the Concorde they would be most likely from Long Island. Anyone?  

[Highmac]

Hi Kris... I was brought up four miles from Heathrow - fortunately north of it. Traffic is normally east-west. But by the time I moved away the latest aircraft landing there were the Boeing 707 and the De Havilland Comet IV .

Where we are now our nearest airport is Birmingham, but it's 18 miles away and we're not under the main flight paths. However, the government has proposals to either build another runway at Brum or (oh joy!) build a new airport larger than Heathrow, between Coventry and the nearby town of Rugby (closing Birmingham), so it would be just 8 miles from here. Naturally the people in Birmingham are all in favour of the second idea. The people in Coventry and Rugby... well, you get the picture.

Going back to Concorde, I was working in Oxford when they were using RAF Brize Norton as a training base, so it would be over the city four or five times a day doing "circuits and bumps". Yes, it was noisy but, for a machine, it really is an elegant thing of beauty. Probably the best-looking jet airliner ever built. (Best-looking propellor airliner was the Lockheed Constellation - such graceful curves - with the Bristol Britannia a close second).

Hey, who fitted new batteries in my typing fingers....

[WDL]

Two memories of the Concorde.

On a vacation flight to Bahamas from Toronto the captain came on the intercom and advised us to look upward out of the starboard windows and we would see a Concorde in flight - he added that we were flyhing at 33,000 feet and it was flying at 60,000 feet. Beautiful against the dark blue of the upper atmosphere.

In the early 90's we went to McCarran airport in Las Vegas for out return flight to Toronto. Lo and behold, a Concorde was sitting just below the windows in the passenger lounge. Then crew members came into the lounge to answer any questions people might have.

This Concorde was in Las Vegas as one stop in a world tour which I believe cost the passengers $40,000 U.S. each. One of the crew told me they didn't like coming to Las Vegas at that timne of year because the heat (Aug - 112 degrees) reduced their liftoff capabilities.

Eventually it was positioned out on the tarmac for takeoff. The memory of the sheer power and thunderous noise as it plunged down the runway, its nose lifting and it rising into the sky will always stay with me.

As highmac said:

"Yes, it was noisy but, for a machine, it really is an elegant thing of beauty. Probably the best-looking jet airliner ever built."

Well said - it was all of that in spades.

WDL

[krissel]

Some of our younger members may not realize or remember that the US was originally in the race to make an SST. It was the economic and ecologic problems encountered that ultimately killed the project.

US SST

As we Mac lovers know... innovation, beauty, grace and power does not always win over the masses.