Concorde
 

Yesterday was 10 years since her retirement by BA. I never had the privilege to fly on her - something which, along with watching a Space Shuttle launch at Canaveral, I think I will always regret.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxy9KcZ0iWk

Did anyone here ever get the chance? What was it like?

Re: Concorde
 

I never got to fly on one, but I did get to wander around on one whilst it was on the ground at Filton (1970s). My uncle was a draughtsman (is that even a thing anymore?) at the Guided Missile facility there and had an "in" of some sort.

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Those match my main regrets too...along with never seeing Queen live....the band that is, not the lady...met her once, and couldn't help thinking "wish Freddy was here now"....

Uncle of mine used to fly Concorde regularly..reckoned it was cramped, noisy, uncomfortable but very convenient

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Yeah.. The overall feeling was that is was very small. (The Concorde and the Queen).

The outside of the Concorde was considerably more attractive however. :)

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Used to love watching Concorde fly, truly beautiful aircraft. She used to fly over my school in Swindon when she was doing her early flights; then in the later years we used to go to airshows to watch her. Filton BA Family Days were the best,watching her fly at her home airfield :thumbsup:

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I did go through it at Farnborough and was surprised at how squashed it was inside. We saw one doing a low fly past over a company that made parts for it. We were in the car coming down a hill and had to try and keep up with it.

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It would fly over my house every day at the same time (used to live in Caversham) and it was impossible not to look up and watch it go by.
A beautiful sight. I missed it when it stopped.

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I haven't flown on Concorde but hubby has several times.

We saw the last Space Shuttle take off from CC...it was one of those moments I will always remember.

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Concorde was lovely to watch. I remember seeing one do a slow fly past over Brands Hatch at the air display before the Grand Prix one year. She came in behind the Battle of Britain Flight doing a really slow pass, with nose dipped, then opened them up and almost deafened everyone in the stands!

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I never flew on Concorde but I saw her once at an air show. We were right by the runway as she took off. Unbelievable take-off performance and rate of climb and the sound of those Olympus engines was brilliant. I think I was about 8 or 9 at the time, I loved it.

I remember seeing another one fly over our house a few years earlier after another air show. Just a great looking plane.

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We watched it flying over when it was doing its bumps and turns testing back in the 70's, it was an amazing sight to see. I can remember my dad taking us to the airfield to watch it take off, that heat shear wow !!

I would have loved to have flown in it, she took from Heathrow for New York at 11am every day and many times we saw her taking off and heading for the clouds. That delta wing was unmistakeable and so beautiful what a shame they retired her.

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I went on it at a family day too. My dad worked in GM at Filton too! We lived practically on the runway. Saw all the test flights etc.:thumbsup:

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My parents took my sister and me to see several of the pre-commissioning circuits and bump trials at Fairford as we lived not far away.
I've been inside the prototype at the FAA museum in Yeovil, and dämn its cramped, certainly no bigger in cross section than a standard British touring coach, there was nowhere near enough room for me to stand up! :ohmy:

I also lived under the inward (when the wind was from the west) flight path at Heathrow, and even as it slowed to make its final approach over Kew, you knew when it was Concorde overhead! (I soon got used to all the others, they really didn't make that much noise despite only being a thousand or so feet up at that point).

Before that I had lived in Kingston, and later in Wimbledon (the cheapest bit!) and when the wind was from the east Concorde would loop round over SW London on its way to JFK, and it really made the windows vibrate! :rofl:

:rofl:That is the surest sign I have ever seen that you've been living in the US too long! :rolleyes:

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Gahhhh, I never even noticed someone had posted that. Now I can't unsee.

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I've been in her plenty of times (again Concorde, not the Queen!) and she was cramped. But the experiance of being that fast, travelling much higher than other commercial aircraft, was something I wish I had experienced.

You can still hear her engines spool up though, as the last flying Vulcan has essentially the same engines... that is a sound to hear :)

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Is he from the Ukraine?

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FIFY :)

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Quite :)

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Very true.

Same as the VC-10. They used to come in over my town into RAF Aldergrove from time to time and the noise they made was biblical.

Old British planes. Brilliant :nod:

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The sad thing is that she has not even been considered in a heritage capacity. The airframes are owned by BA, who refuse to co-operate, and EADS (Airbus - former Aerospatiale) refused to even consider handing over what spares/blueprints they still have.

I realise she will never hold passengers again, but if they can bring the Vulcan into service, you would think that Concorde could be so.

Indeed, if you look at some of the airframes still on display now they are in a dire state - they haven't been cared for at all :(

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I agree. There should be at least two kept airworthy (one in the UK and one in France in BA and Air France liveries respectively) for airshows, displays, state occasions, jubilees, that kind of thing.

Imagine if the Queen makes it to 70 years on the throne. What better way to celebrate that than a Red Arrows/Concorde flyby over London?

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I suspect the Queen is cramped as well.

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I can't say I've ever previously given that question any thought. Now I wish I hadn't. :unsure:

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Re: Concorde
 

Just asked hubby about his experience on Concorde. As others have said it was cramped and noisy. He said during the first flight he spent the entire 3 hours wondering what famous people had sat in his seat.

He was given several complimentary items...leather folder, garment bag etc. He still has them...including his first ticket stub.

After the journey he went straight to the Windsor Castle Hotel...dropped his complementary Concorde garment bag and walked across the road to McDonalds...because the food in Concorde wasn't filling. :lol:

The date of his first flight was Sunday 17th November, 1996.

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I also have all these items, purchased from eBay - including one of the wooden models sold on board (still in its box of course) that sit within my aviation memorabilia/models collection.

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He kept the items because it was his first flight on Concorde. I don't know what happened to the items from subsequent flights...I probably threw them out. :o.

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The first and only female BA. Concorde pilot. She left school aged 15 to become a hairdresser. Scroll down to Feb 2011 to read about her.

http://concordesst.com/latestnews.html

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Yes, in 1982, LHR to Dulles.

Pretty much like any other aircraft really, although it was only four seats with the aisle down the middle and there was a mach meter on the bulkhead.

The difference was looking out the window, which is not something I will ever forget, you could see the curvature of the Earth and you were so high up the sky was black and you looked down at the Earth.

Also it was quite novel arriving before you left as the time difference was five hours but the flight time was only three hours.

I've just had a look at my old photos, one of me in the cockpit with the crew who had some seriously dodgy haircuts. :lol:

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Oooh, are the leather luggage tags they gave me worth something then? I used one of them for ages and it is all mangled but the other one is still in the wrapper.

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I'd certainly buy them :)

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When at uni, it had a rotating landing path and for about a week every so often, it would fly over the uni and shake the crap out of the place.

Was quite nice to watch though.

Oh and apparently because of it, we also didn't have mobile phone reception on campus because it had some sort of landing beacon on one of the building roofs, so you could only get reception on the bog in a particular corner building :/

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Yeah I was in the car park at Terminal 4 once at the end of the runway when Concorde went over, it was only a few hundred feet above me and the noise was ear-splitting.

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One year when I was living in Wimbledon in June, when the tennis was on, and the wind was from the east, I heard Concorde on TV flying over the All England tennis club, then I heard it overhead, then I flipped over, if I remember correctly, to the cricket at Twickenham, and then on to golf at Wentworth, picking up the noise from Concorde at each location! :lol:

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I saw it fly overhead when it did a 'tour' of the US and the idiots were out protesting it.

I saw an interview of the chief pilot, he said it was amazingly stable to fly, mach 2 steering with two fingers.

So cool.

Pete

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I guess I'm one lucky sod then. My step-father worked at Filton for British Aerospace (or whatever it was called in the last 60s) and I got to go onboard for a nose around. Years later, our next door neighbour was a flight engineer on Concorde and took me on a tour of it at Heathrow. Never actually got to fly on it though.

As for Queen, I first saw them on the "Crazy Tour" in 1979. Managed to get 6 dates on that tour in. Saw them another 5 times on the "Works" tour in 1982. Then I got some strange feeling about the "Magic" tour in 1986, quit work and followed them around Europe. People thought I was mad at the time, but it was pretty much the best thing I've ever done.

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Didn't ever fly on it. When my ex worked for BMI, we could get tickets for 400 quid each to NYC. Stupidly, we never took advantage of that! My first job at LHR was the security company that had the contract with BA though so I've been on it many times. First impressions, not the luxury I was expecting. 2 and 2 configuration, the seats were OK but not the luxury I thought they would be. You were paying for the speed, not the luxury. That said, it was no cattle class. The best part of the plane was the cockpit! Like an old world war 2 bomber. No glass cockpit there. If you counted every switch and dial, you'd end up in the thousands easily.
I was lucky enough to work 7 years in Air Ops at LHR. Concorde retired before I joined, but this still hangs proudly on the unit wall

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u...1/470f8e14.jpg

The one Concorde BA still own, I want to say AC, but don't quote me that, is at least on display now, sort of. It's just to the east of the 27L hold, the southern runway.

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u...ps2b7f759f.jpg

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u...ps8c6defe9.jpg

Oh, and I also had the privelage of seeing a shuttle launch at Cape Canavarel which I'm afraid blew any Concorde experiences I've had out of the water.

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She's Alpha Bravo, not Charlie, but she's in terrible shape now - not even protected from the elements.

Shame on you BA.

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I would say, cosmetically, the exterior isn't too bad considering. One of my colleagues used to take it on himself to go aboard and try and keep it clean in his spare time. Then bits started going missing, not from him I might add, so BA sealed it up and that was that.

I hoarded a load of copies of Skyport, heathrow's paper when she was taken out of service. They did a souviner special. I thought I'd sell me to all the spotters on eBay and make a killing. Unfortunately, every other one of Heathrow's 60,000 employees had the same idea LOL

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There's one at Ringway as well, isn't there? Or at least there used to be - I seem to remember seeing one on my way back from a trip out here, by the runway when we were coming in to land, or maybe when we were taxiing to the gate.

I might also be going mental, of course.