Concorde - SST
Updated Friday, October 24, 2003 at 10:48:33
The only operational, supersonic, commercial jet plane. The Concorde was built in the late 1960's, as a joint project of France and Britain.
Latest
On May 10th 2003, British Airways and Air France made a joint announcement that they will retire their ageing Concorde fleets due to rising maintenance costs and declining passenger numbers.
Air France Flight AF001 from New York to Paris, which took place on Saturday May 31st 2003, was the last flight of a French operated Concorde.
British Airways decommissioned its last operational Concordes on Friday, October 24th 2003.
In a ceremonial landing three flights converged on Heathrow airport, London. A flight from Edinburgh, a token supersonic flight over the Atlantic and the last transatlantic flight of the Concorde arriving from New York.
At Heathrow a grandstand with a thousand seats was specially built for the occasion, where a farewell ceremony was held together with British Airways staff.
So far all offers regarding the future operation of the retired Concordes -- including a two-million-dollars-per-plane offer -- were declined by British Airways.
History
After long and tiring negotiations, on the 29th of November 1962, the French and British governments signed on a general agreement to the creation of a joint supersonic-commercial-jet project. The agreement specifies that the aim of the project is to research and construct such a plane. France and Britain will equally share in all aspects of the project, both financially and technically. The actual development and construction will involve French and British companies. British Aircraft Corporation and Sud-Aviation -- it is from Sud-Aviation that sketches of the Concorde were stolen, by soviet agents. The sketches were later used in the development of the Soviet rival of the Concorde, the Tu-144, nicknamed by the West Concordski -- will develop and build the body of the aircraft. Bristol Siddeley and the French company SNECMA will develop and build the engines.
On the 11th of September, 1966, the project began to take shape, as a supervising committee was appointed. The control of the committee was shared equally between France and Britain. Later that year, work had commenced on the French prototype of the plane, designated Concorde 001.
During 1967 a controversy had arisen between France and Britain, over the name of the plane. The French insisted that the plane's name will use the French spelling of the word, concorde (with an 'e' at the end), while the British insisted on the English spelling, concord. There was not much 'concord' about that, but the British finally gave in, and the plane was officially named Concorde.
On the 2nd of March, 1969, the Concorde 001 was ready to make its debut test flight. After some weather delays, the Concorde took off, for the very first time, from the airport of Toulouse-Blagnac, admired by more than a thousand spectators and reporters. Despite some minor technical difficulties, the flight was successful.
A few weeks later, on the 9th of April, the British prototype, designated Concorde 002, completed another successful test flight, at the airport of Filton.
On the 21st of January, 1976, the first two commercial flights of the Concorde were underway. In a symbolic gesture of Anglo-French cooperation, a French flight from Paris to Rio de Janeiro, and a British flight from London to Bahrain, took off simultaneously. On the 24th of January both Concordes landed triumphantly in Washington.
The Concorde entered regular service, and was far from being profitable for its companies, Air France and Biritish Airways. In total twenty Concordes were ever built.
During 1991 the French fleet of Concordes underwent 40,000 hours of meticulous scrutinising. The planes were stripped to their skeletons, and each centimeter was scanned with X-ray based technology, in search of miniature cracks caused by the extensive supersonic travel.
The crash
On the 25th of July, 2000, Air France's Concorde 203, designated F-BTSC on route from Paris to New York, crashed less than a minute after take off. The plane hit one of the buildings of a hotel in the outskirts of Paris, at Gonnesse. All 109 people on board , crew and passengers, and four more people on the ground, were killed.
The horrific crash, which was well documented and publicized, shattered the credibility of the Concorde as the world safest plane (statistically, of course), and led to a year long grounding of the entire anglo-french Concorde fleet.
The crash drew much media attention, as just a week before Air France announced that miniature cracks were found in the wings of one of its Concordes. A few
days later an amateur film of the crash was made public and shown repeatedly on every news bulletin. Taken by a truck driver who drove past the crashing Concorde, the film shows the Concorde a few seconds before it hit the ground. The plane is dangerously low and a huge tail of flames is flowing from its rear.
The investigation committee concluded that some kind of metal debris left on the runway by another plane punctured one of the Concorde's tyres at take off. The rubber debris was then thrown with great force and ruptured one of the Concorde's fuel tanks. This triggered a chain of events that eventually caused a fire, followed by an engine failure. The plane did not gain sufficient speed and altitude during take off and crash landed. The committee also stated that similar tyre failures happened a few times in the past, but nothing was done to amend the problem.
Once the causes of the accident were understood, research was under way for the neccessary design modifications.
Almost a year after the crash, on the 17th of July 2001, British Air Ways conducted its first test flight of the modified Concorde. The Concorde, designated 2001BA G-BOAF, was fitted with new tyres, fuel tank liners and additional electrical shielding. The supersonic test flight went smoothly, and the plane proved to handle very well in supersonic conditions with the new modifications.
British Airways and Air France restarted the Concorde's services on the 7th of November 2001.
Technical specifications
Capacity: Up to 100 passengers with a cargo of 590
kg / 1300
pound
The Concorde's flight crew is composed of 2 pilots and 1 flight engineer, in addition to 6
stewardesses - a total of 9 crew members.
Maximum Weight Without Fuel: 92,080
kg / 203,000
pound
Maximum take-off weight: 185,000
kg / 408,000
pound
Takeoff speed: 402 Kph / 249 mph
Supersonic Cruise Speed: Mach 2 / 2,150 kph / 1,336 mph (at an altitude of 16,765 meter / 55,000 ft)
Landing speed: 300 Kph / 187 mph
Length: 62.1 meter / 203.7 ft
Height: 11.3 meter / 37 ft
Wing Length: 27.66 meter / 90.7 ft
Wingspan: 25.5 meter / 83.6 ft
Wing Area: 361.45 sq meter / 3,890.6 sq ft
Engine Model: Olympus 593 Mrk610 turbojet
Engine Manufacturers: Rolls-Royce and SNECMA
The 4 engines produce together, at take off, a maximum thrust of 17 kilo newton/ 17,259 kg / 38,050 pound
During supersonic cruise, each engine produces a maximum thrust of 4.5 kilo newton/ 4536 kg / 10,000 pound
Fuel Type: A1 Jet fuel
Fuel capacity: 119,500 litre / 31568 gallon
Fuel consumption: 25,629 litre / 6770 gallon per hour
Fuel in the Concorde has a threefold purpose:
- Energy source, of course.
- Balance. During a subsonic and supersonic flight, fuel is shifted from one fuel tank to another, in order to maintain balance, and to keep the Centre of Gravity, which is so crucial in supersonic travel.
- A heat sink for cooling purposes.
Landing gear: Eight main wheels in the back, and two nose wheels.
Main flight routes: Paris - New York and London - New York. Both flights take about 3 hours and 50 minutes, compared with a seven hour flight by subsonic jets.
Ticket price: extremely expensive, roughly twice the price of a first class ticket in a subsonic jet. It is no surprise then that of the 2.5 million people that have flown the Concorde, 80 percent are male, and 43 percent of those are senior managers in major corporations. The average passenger age is 43 years old.
Sources:
- Concorde SST, Supersonic Aircraft - http://www.flying.to/concorde
- http://www.concordesst.com (comprehensive history and data)
- British Airways - http://www.british-airways.com/flights/factfile/airfleet/docs/conc.shtml (specs)