Concorde

Originally posted by AtheiX

Originally posted by RichardPrice
Both BA and AF had 7 concordes each, to make a total commercial production run of 14 aircraft.

What were Concorde's parametres?
How many seats did it have?
What was its range?

100 passengers
Range: 4,300 miles (6,880 kms)
Speed: Mach Two (2,150kph)

Cruises at around 1350 mph at an altitude of up to 60,000ft (11 miles).
Typical europe to Newyork crossing takes 3.5 hours.
Four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines provide more than 38,000lbs of thrust each.

They are some of the most powerful commercial jet engines in existence and provide a take off speed of 220 knots.

Concorde is 62.1 metres long and consumes 5,638 imperial gallons of fuel every hour.

Its maximum take-off weight is 185 tonnes and it has ten landing wheels.

well,what i meant is that looking at our other great achievements with aircraft for example British Electric Lightning,B.O.A.C Comet,Harrier Jump Jet-all more advanced aircraft than anything else the world was offering at the time but decommisioned or discontinued due to set backs or problems,with no plan in the pipe line for anything equal-British goverment deems the harrier at the end of its servicble life,U.S. goverment finds it another 20 years service with its navy!!

Some hefty errors in that little lot I'm afraid

English Electric Lightning, US had the F-106 of comparable ability at the same time, though Lightning was the fastest climbing fighter in the world until the F-15 beat it. Lightning served for 26 years and was not discontinued.

DH Comet (BOAC was an operator not the designer) exposed flaws in aircraft design that were universal in respect of high flying passenger jets, rectifying these faults (and passing on the information to Boeing, Douglas, Tupolev et al) is what delayed it but it then served until 1980, not bad going really. If another company had built the first passenger jet they would only have been in the same position as DH found itself.

Harrier, What on earth are you on about? British Harriers will be replaced by the F-35B just as the USMC ones will, the type has been in continuous service since 1969?

Now if you had mentioned the Hawker P1121, TSR.2, Avro 730 etc etc we'd be cooking on gas but your examples don't have a decommisioning or discontiation amongst them that the passage of time didn't warrant.



[edit on 10-10-2004 by waynos]

Some hefty errors in that little lot I'm afraid

ooopppppssss! yes your completley right,apologies to all concerned.

I am now going to kill myself after writing such complete drivel.

I think i know what point i was trying to point out but it has been lost in my insane ramblings-just goes to show you:- Engage brain (or google) before engaging mouth.

Sorry again,have a nice day-now wheres that rope?

We all make mistakes, live on to make some more. Yes I do know the general point you were making but if you look at my profile at the side it does say Mr Pedantic

The Comet is still technically flying...its just called something else (albeit after much modification,but the same design)..


RAF Nimrod

Concorde has only 100 passengers? That's very little, less even than a 737 or an Airbus 319; very little for an intercontinental plane

Originally posted by AtheiX
Concorde has only 100 passengers? That's very little, less even than a 737 or an Airbus 319; very little for an intercontinental plane

Hence why a roundtrip to NY was in the region of �6,000 a seat. Oh and you got less space than on a 747 economy seat.

An interesting thing is when the British Concordes were sold to BA, to look into running a profit from Concorde, BA did a poll of all their frequent fliers.

None of those people knew how much they were paying for a seat, they were all the sort of people who jsut called their secretary and said 'Book me on Concorde for monday, I have a meeting in NY'.

When asked to guess, most of them came up with a figure that was double what they were actually paying. So, BA just doubled the fare prices and 99% of their frequent fliers kept on buying as frequently as they had before.

I recently saw an exact replica of the inside of a concord at a theme park while on holiday. It was originally used for training purposes. I was amazed at how tiny it was inside. I didn't take a picture of the passenger area, but it looked pretty claustrophobic. Heres a pic of the cockpit. How the pilots managed to get themselves into those seats I have no idea!

Concorde was also run by Singapore Air for a while, a little known fact. There's a Concorde currently on display here in New York at the Intrepid Aircraft Carrier Musuem.

-koji K.

Originally posted by koji_K
Concorde was also run by Singapore Air for a while, a little known fact. There's a Concorde currently on display here in New York at the Intrepid Aircraft Carrier Musuem.

-koji K.

The routes flown by SA was done in partnership with BA, using BA concordes. The planes were painted on one side in BA livery and on the other in SA livery.

There were a couple of other instances of third party airlines leasing the planes for short periods of time, including two american airlines.

I know that Braniff operated Concorde in partnership with BA as well but I didn't know, or I've forgotten, there was a second US operator. Unlike the SIA aircraft the Braniff ones (there were two I think) never recieved a new livery but I remember one was registered in the US as N94AE, god knows why I remember that!

Concorde was actually designed to carry 144 passengers but the maximum actually carried was 128. I know its still tiny. The reason it was so small was to keep a very low cross section in order to minimise supersonic drag. A wider aircreaft would have incapable of the performance required.

If you are interested further, I suggest reading the following page:

Concorde questions answered

Quite an informative read.

Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure (sorry this is coming so late, I only thought about it now) I have to admit to having flown on concorde once. Once is all you need, and it was a SERIOUSLY fantastic experience and you get treated like royalty, regardless of who you really are. Everyone on the plane is treated the same.

Originally posted by optimus fett

ooopppppssss! yes your completley right,apologies to all concerned.

I am now going to kill myself after writing such complete drivel.

I think i know what point i was trying to point out but it has been lost in my insane ramblings-just goes to show you:- Engage brain (or google) before engaging mouth.

Sorry again,have a nice day-now wheres that rope?

- Chill out a tad optimus fett

It's true that some of the UK's output of the 1950's and 1960's died a tragic death and woefully missed their potential but there is another factor in this which has been slowely coming to light lately.

Political interference and criminal fraud.

No, not the usual 1950's Duncan Sandys or 1960's Harold Wilson stuff (that IMO is used to divert attention).

This was pressure, interference and outright criminal fraud from the USA (Gov and manufacturers) which saw things like the Lockheed Starfighter 'sale of the century' destroy umteen UK designs after just a handful had been sold to the domestic market. This was the source of the real killer of the UK's high-tech national aero-industry. Our 'friends. Nice of them wasn't it?

I think this is often cited as the reason for the death of the SR177 but to be honest I cannot really see how that aircraft would have been a success anyway. I believe the Germans had already decided in fact to buy a mixed force of Lighnings and Buccaneers when the Americans pulled a fast one with the F-104.

Equally devastating was the US pressure which ended up with the UK and Australia going for the F-111 over the TSR 2, remarkably despite the fact that the TSR2 was five years nearer to service entry than the F-111, cheaper (despite contrary propaganda from the US and British at the time), more advanced and more capable.

Often cited in the same breath as these were the moves to replace the HS.681 with the Hercules and the P1154 with the Phantom at the same time as TSR 2 died, but in reality neither of these aircraft were really goiong to be a success as the technology was just too far in the future, indeed nothing like either type has been built forty years later!

Still I think that subject has probably been done to death so I will stop rambling off topic, for the time being.