40 years ago....Concordes First Flight.

[KentPhilip]

You flew on Concorde from Paris to London - and they managed to hit Mach 2...

It was probably Paris to London via the Bay of Biscay for a bit of Mach 2 action.

[Sysman]

It was probably Paris to London via the Bay of Biscay for a bit of Mach 2 action.

I remember several sets of neighbours doing Leeds/Bradford to Heathrow or back in Concorde, in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It didn't fly direct, but went up to Scotland and out to sea to do its sonic boom bit. Champagne was served and maybe something like strawberries and cream, and each passenger got a commemorative glass or something.

This was a one leg jolly, with a coach laid on for the other leg. Nobody who flew on it seemed to know how much tickets cost, as they had either won them as a raffle prize or been given them as a gift by sons/daughters/grandchildren.

Methinks I can see a bit of a Plan B there

[teclo]

I was lucky enough to be a couple of miles away from Edinburgh airport on the day one of the planes made the last flight from Edinburgh to London. Even though I was in Livingstone, I could still hear the engines revving up and it taking off, then seeing it fly straight over us.

Amazing sight and sound.

[wurzel]

I met this drunken old derelict in a pub in Dingle once. The usual sort of thing, he sat down uninvited on my table and proceeded to jibber drunkenly away. Just at the point that I was going to finish my drink and go, he mentioned the name Brian Trubshaw - the test plot for Concord(e). This got my attention and I started listening to what he was saying & it turned out that he was the navigator on those test flights. He showed me an old ID card he had in his wallet & his story seemed to stack up so I believed him. It turned out that he'd had a couple of tragedies in his life - I think his son had killed himself at a young age or something - and he ended up hitting the bottle. Anyway I felt sorry for him and told him what an impression those early Concorde flights made on those of us that were around at the time. He seemed to like that and insisted on buying me a drink. Nice guy but a shame what happened to him.

[wurzel]

Sorry, I thought my last piece was so good I've bumped it back to the top again

[sasguru]

Methinks I can see a bit of a Plan B there

Wot, create a supersonic aircraft and charter it for day trips? I don't think that will fly.

[Board Game Geek]

Methinks I can see a bit of a Plan B there

That's a great idea !

You could have this sort of large square, in Paris, called Place de la Concorde, with all these leather seats on it, and speakers that make a whooshing noise and stuff, and this big guillotine thing comes down and..

oh....

[darmstadt]

I went on the prototype when it was displayed at the Paris airshow back in the late 60's although it never actually took off although I do remember rushing home in the early 70's to lie in the pool in South Africa as they flew it over. This was the only land mass they were allowed to test it over while going supersonic.

If you drive down to Stuttgart on the A6 and as you get to Sinsheim you'll pass a museum and from the motorway you cannot miss Concorde and a Tupelov sitting next to each other up on perches.

[PRC1964]

For those not in Germany, pop down the A3 to Brooklands and you can have a look inside Concorde. It took quite a while to get it all there but it looks amazing now. The interior has been stripped away so you can see which bits were made here or in France.

According to the chap who showed me around last time, they designed it without any windows originally but were told to put them in as passengers like that sort of thing.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

British Engineering went down the hole during this <tonyBennVoice>"we will show the world how Great Britain really is through technology"</tonyBennVoice> period.

The country wasted probably billions during that time developing a useless airplane[sic], politics decided a product, ....


Oh yes, I also hold an honours in Mechanical Engineering.

Bollocks. We'd have been the dominant force in world travel if the Americans hadn't shafted us. It was a fantastic advance and with continuing development, we'd all have been travelling faster and more comfortably. This didn't suit the Septics and they got even more upset when they couldn't make their own version so they shafted the approvals just long enough to bugger up the business case. It was a fabulous aeroplane.