Concorde

For other uses, see Concorde (disambiguation).

Concorde
British Airways Concorde in flight in 1986
General information
Type	Supersonic airliner
National origin	France and United Kingdom
Manufacturer	British Aircraft Corporation (later British Aerospace and BAE Systems) Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale and Airbus)
Status	Retired
Primary users	British Airways Air France See Operators below for others
Number built	20 (including 6 non-commercial aircraft)
History
Manufactured	1965–1979
Introduction date	21 January 1976
First flight	2 March 1969
Retired	24 October 2003 (24 October 2003) (last commercial flight) 26 November 2003 (26 November 2003) (final flight to Bristol Filton Airport)

Concorde (/ˈkɒŋkɔːrd/) is a retired Anglo-French supersonic airliner jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Studies started in 1954, and France and the United Kingdom signed a treaty establishing the development project on 29 November 1962, as the programme cost was estimated at £70 million (£1.68 billion in 2023). Construction of the six prototypes began in February 1965, and the first flight took off from Toulouse on 2 March 1969. The market was predicted for 350 aircraft, and the manufacturers received up to 100 option orders from many major airlines. On 9 October 1975, it received its French Certificate of Airworthiness, and from the UK CAA on 5 December.

Concorde is a tailless aircraft design with a narrow fuselage permitting 4-abreast seating for 92 to 128 passengers, an ogival delta wing and a droop nose for landing visibility. It is powered by four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets with variable engine intake ramps, and reheat for take-off and acceleration to supersonic speed. Constructed out of aluminium, it was the first airliner to have analogue fly-by-wire flight controls. The airliner could maintain a supercruise up to Mach 2.04 (2,170 km/h; 1,350 mph) at an altitude of 60,000 ft (18.3 km).

Delays and cost overruns increased the programme cost to £1.5–2.1 billion in 1976, (£11–16 billion in 2023). Concorde entered service on 21 January 1976 with Air France from Paris-Roissy and British Airways from London Heathrow. Transatlantic flights were the main market, to Washington Dulles from 24 May, and to New York JFK from 17 October 1977. Air France and British Airways remained the sole customers with seven airframes each, for a total production of twenty. Supersonic flight more than halved travel times, but sonic booms over the ground limited it to transoceanic flights only.

Its only competitor was the Tupolev Tu-144, carrying passengers from November 1977 until a May 1978 crash, while a potential competitor, the Boeing 2707, was cancelled in 1971 before any prototypes were built.

On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590 crashed shortly after take-off with all 109 occupants and four on the ground killed. This was the only fatal incident involving Concorde; commercial service was suspended until November 2001. The surviving aircraft were retired in 2003, 27 years after commercial operations had begun. All but 2 of the 20 aircraft built have been preserved and are on display across Europe and North America.

Development

Early studies

In the early 1950s, Arnold Hall, director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), asked Morien Morgan to form a committee to study supersonic transport. The group met in February 1954 and delivered their first report in April 1955. Robert T. Jones' work at NACA had demonstrated that the drag at supersonic speeds was strongly related to the span of the wing. This led to the use of short-span, thin trapezoidal wings such as those seen on the control surfaces of many missiles, or aircraft such as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter interceptor or the planned Avro 730 strategic bomber that the team studied. The team outlined a baseline configuration that resembled an enlarged Avro 730.

This short wingspan produced little lift at low speed, resulting in long take-off runs and high landing speeds. In an SST design, this would have required enormous engine power to lift off from existing runways and, to provide the fuel needed, "some horribly large aeroplanes" resulted. Based on this, the group considered the concept of an SST infeasible, and instead suggested continued low-level studies into supersonic aerodynamics.

Slender deltas

Soon after, Johanna Weber and Dietrich Küchemann at the RAE published a series of reports on a new wing planform, known in the UK as the "slender delta". The team, including Eric Maskell whose report "Flow Separation in Three Dimensions" contributed to an understanding of separated flow, worked with the fact that delta wings can produce strong vortices on their upper surfaces at high angles of attack. The vortex will lower the air pressure and cause lift. This had been noticed by Chuck Yeager in the Convair XF-92, but its qualities had not been fully appreciated. Weber suggested that the effect could be used to improve low speed performance.

Küchemann's and Weber's papers changed the entire nature of supersonic design. The delta had already been used on aircraft, but these designs used planforms that were not much different from a swept wing of the same span. Weber noted that the lift from the vortex was increased by the length of the wing it had to operate over, which suggested that the effect would be maximised by extending the wing along the fuselage as far as possible. Such a layout would still have good supersonic performance, but also have reasonable take-off and landing speeds using vortex generation. The aircraft would have to take off and land very "nose high" to generate the required vortex lift, which led to questions about the low speed handling qualities of such a design. It would also need to have long landing gear to produce the required angle of attack while still on the runway.

Küchemann presented the idea at a meeting where Morgan was also present. Test pilot Eric Brown recalls Morgan's reaction to the presentation, saying that he immediately seized on it as the solution to the SST problem. Brown considers this moment as being the birth of the Concorde project.

Supersonic Transport Aircraft Committee

The HP.115 tested the low-speed performance of the slender delta layout.

On 1 October 1956 the Ministry of Supply asked Morgan to form a new study group, the Supersonic Transport Aircraft Committee (STAC) (sometimes referred to as the Supersonic Transport Advisory Committee), to develop a practical SST design and find industry partners to build it. At the first meeting, on 5 November 1956, the decision was made to fund the development of a test-bed aircraft to examine the low-speed performance of the slender delta, a contract that eventually produced the Handley Page HP.115. This aircraft demonstrated safe control at speeds as low as 69 mph (111 km/h), about one third that of the F-104 Starfighter.

STAC stated that an SST would have economic performance similar to existing subsonic types. Lift is not generated the same way at supersonic and subsonic speeds, with the lift-to-drag ratio for supersonic designs being about half that of subsonic designs. The aircraft would have to use more power than a subsonic design of the same size. But although they would burn more fuel in cruise, they would be able to fly more sorties in a given period of time, so fewer aircraft would be needed to service a particular route. This would remain economically advantageous as long as fuel represented a small percentage of operational costs.

STAC suggested that two designs naturally fell out of their work, a transatlantic model flying at about Mach 2, and a shorter-range version flying at Mach 1.2. Morgan suggested that a 150-passenger transatlantic SST would cost about £75 to £90 million to develop, and be in service in 1970. The smaller 100-passenger short-range version would cost perhaps £50 to £80 million, and be ready for service in 1968. To meet this schedule, development would need to begin in 1960, with production contracts let in 1962. Morgan suggested that the US was already involved in a similar project, and that if the UK failed to respond it would be locked out of an airliner market that he believed would be dominated by SST aircraft.

In 1959, a study contract was awarded to Hawker Siddeley and Bristol for preliminary designs based on the slender delta, which developed as the HSA.1000 and Bristol 198. Armstrong Whitworth also responded with an internal design, the M-Wing, for the lower-speed shorter-range category. Both the STAC group and the government were looking for partners to develop the designs. In September 1959, Hawker approached Lockheed, and after the creation of British Aircraft Corporation in 1960, the former Bristol team immediately started talks with Boeing, General Dynamics, Douglas Aircraft, and Sud Aviation.

Ogee planform selected

Küchemann and others at the RAE continued their work on the slender delta throughout this period, considering three basic shapes; the classic straight-edge delta, the "gothic delta" that was rounded outward to appear like a gothic arch, and the "ogival wing" that was compound-rounded into the shape of an ogee. Each of these planforms had advantages and disadvantages. As they worked with these shapes, a practical concern grew to become so important that it forced selection of one of these designs.

Generally the wing's centre of pressure (CP, or "lift point") should be close to the aircraft's centre of gravity (CG, or "balance point") to reduce the amount of control force required to pitch the aircraft. As the aircraft layout changes during the design phase, it is common for the CG to move fore or aft. With a normal wing design this can be addressed by moving the wing slightly fore or aft to account for this. With a delta wing running most of the length of the fuselage, this was no longer easy; moving the wing would leave it in front of the nose or behind the tail. Studying the various layouts in terms of CG changes, both during design and changes due to fuel use during flight, the ogee planform immediately came to the fore.

Plan-view silhouette of the Bristol Type 223 SST project

While the wing planform was evolving, so was the basic SST concept. Bristol's original Type 198 was a small design with an almost pure slender delta wing, but evolved into the larger Type 223.

To test the new wing, NASA assisted the team by modifying a Douglas F5D Skylancer to mimic the wing selection. In 1965 the NASA test aircraft successfully tested the wing, and found that it reduced landing speeds noticeably over the standard delta wing. NASA also ran simulations at Ames that showed the aircraft would exhibit a sudden change in pitch when entering ground effect. Ames test pilots later participated in a joint cooperative test with the French and British test pilots and found that the simulations had been correct, and this information was added to pilot training.

Partnership with Sud Aviation

France had its own SST plans. In the late 1950s, the government requested designs from the government-owned Sud Aviation and Nord Aviation, as well as Dassault. All three returned designs based on Küchemann and Weber's slender delta; Nord suggested a ramjet powered design flying at Mach 3, and the other two were jet-powered Mach 2 designs that were similar to each other. Of the three, the Sud Aviation Super-Caravelle won the design contest with a medium-range design deliberately sized to avoid competition with transatlantic US designs they assumed were already on the drawing board.

As soon as the design was complete, in April 1960, Pierre Satre, the company's technical director, was sent to Bristol to discuss a partnership. Bristol was surprised to find that the Sud team had designed a similar aircraft after considering the SST problem and coming to the same conclusions as the Bristol and STAC teams in terms of economics. It was later revealed that the original STAC report, marked "For UK Eyes Only", had secretly been passed to France to win political favour. Sud made minor changes to the paper and presented it as their own work.

France had no modern large jet engines and had already decided to buy a British design (as they had on the earlier subsonic Caravelle). As neither company had experience in the use of heat-resistant metals for airframes, a maximum speed of around Mach 2 was selected so aluminium could be used – above this speed, the friction with the air heats the metal so much that it begins to soften. This lower speed would also speed development and allow their design to fly before the Americans. Everyone involved agreed that Küchemann's ogee-shaped wing was the right one.

The British team was still focused on a 150-passenger design serving transatlantic routes, while France was deliberately avoiding these. Common components could be used in both designs, with the shorter range version using a clipped fuselage and four engines, and the longer one a stretched fuselage and six engines, leaving only the wing to be extensively re-designed. The teams continued to meet in 1961, and by this time it was clear that the two aircraft would be very similar in spite of different ranges and seating arrangements. A single design emerged that differed mainly in fuel load. More powerful Bristol Siddeley Olympus engines, being developed for the TSR-2, allowed either design to be powered by only four engines.

Cabinet response, treaty

While the development teams met, the French Minister of Public Works and Transport Robert Buron was meeting with the UK Minister of Aviation Peter Thorneycroft, and Thorneycroft told the cabinet that France was much more serious about a partnership than any of the US companies. The various US companies had proved uninterested, likely due to the belief that the government would be funding development and would frown on any partnership with a European company, and the risk of "giving away" US technological leadership to a European partner.

When the STAC plans were presented to the UK cabinet, the economic considerations were considered highly questionable, especially as these were based on development costs, now estimated to be £150 million (US$420 million), which were repeatedly overrun in the industry. The Treasury Ministry presented a negative view, suggesting that there was no way the project would have any positive financial returns for the government, especially in light that "the industry's past record of over-optimistic estimating (including the recent history of the TSR.2) suggests that it would be prudent to consider" the cost "to turn out much too low."

This led to an independent review of the project by the Committee on Civil Scientific Research and Development, which met on the topic between July and September 1962. The committee rejected the economic arguments, including considerations of supporting the industry made by Thorneycroft. Their report in October stated that it was unlikely there would be any direct positive economic outcome, but that the project should still be considered because everyone else was going supersonic, and they were concerned they would be locked out of future markets. It appeared the project would not be likely to significantly affect other, more important, research efforts.

At the time, the UK was pressing for admission to the European Economic Community, and this became the main rationale for moving ahead with the aircraft. The development project was negotiated as an international treaty between the two countries rather than a commercial agreement between companies and included a clause, originally asked for by the UK government, imposing heavy penalties for cancellation. This treaty was signed on 29 November 1962. Charles de Gaulle vetoed the UK's entry into the European Community in a speech on 25 January 1963.

Naming

At Charles de Gaulle's January 1963 press conference the aircraft was first called 'Concorde'. The name was suggested by the eighteen-year-old son of F.G. Clark, the publicity manager at BAC's Filton plant. Reflecting the treaty between the British and French governments that led to Concorde's construction, the name Concorde is from the French word concorde (IPA: [kɔ̃kɔʁd]), which has an English equivalent, concord. Both words mean agreement, harmony, or union. The name was changed to Concord by Harold Macmillan in response to a perceived slight by de Gaulle. At the French roll-out in Toulouse in late 1967, the British Minister of Technology, Tony Benn, announced that he would change the spelling back to Concorde. This created a nationalist uproar that died down when Benn stated that the suffixed "e" represented "Excellence, England, Europe, and Entente (Cordiale)". In his memoirs, he recounted a letter from a Scotsman claiming, "you talk about 'E' for England, but part of it is made in Scotland." Given Scotland's contribution of providing the nose cone for the aircraft, Benn replied, "it was also 'E' for 'Écosse' (the French name for Scotland) – and I might have added 'e' for extravagance and 'e' for escalation as well!"

In common usage in the United Kingdom, the type is known as "Concorde" without an article, rather than "the Concorde" or "a Concorde".

Sales efforts

British Airways Concorde in early BA livery at London-Heathrow Airport in the early 1980s

Advertisements for Concorde during the late 1960s placed in publications such as Aviation Week & Space Technology predicted a market for 350 aircraft by 1980. The new consortium intended to produce one long-range and one short-range version, but prospective customers showed no interest in the short-range version, thus it was later dropped.

Concorde's costs spiralled during development to more than six times the original projections, arriving at a unit cost of £23 million in 1977 (equivalent to £180.49 million in 2023). Its sonic boom made travelling supersonically over land impossible without causing complaints from citizens. World events also dampened Concorde sales prospects; the 1973–74 stock market crash and the 1973 oil crisis had made airlines cautious about aircraft with high fuel consumption, and new wide-body aircraft, such as the Boeing 747, had recently made subsonic aircraft significantly more efficient and presented a low-risk option for airlines. While carrying a full load, Concorde achieved 15.8 passenger miles per gallon of fuel, while the Boeing 707 reached 33.3 pm/g, the Boeing 747 46.4 pm/g, and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 53.6 pm/g. A trend in favour of cheaper airline tickets also caused airlines such as Qantas to question Concorde's market suitability. During the early 2000s, Flight International described Concorde as being "one of aerospace's most ambitious but commercially flawed projects",

The consortium received orders (non-binding options) for more than 100 of the long-range version from the major airlines of the day: Pan Am, BOAC, and Air France were the launch customers, with six aircraft each. Other airlines in the order book included Panair do Brasil, Continental Airlines, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa, American Airlines, United Airlines, Air India, Air Canada, Braniff, Singapore Airlines, Iran Air, Olympic Airways, Qantas, CAAC Airlines, Middle East Airlines, and TWA. At the time of the first flight, the options list contained 74 options from 16 airlines:

Airline	Number	Reserved	Cancelled	Remarks
Pan Am	6	3 June 1963	31 January 1973	2 extra options in 1964
Air France	6	3 June 1963		2 extra options in 1964
BOAC	6	3 June 1963		2 extra options in 1964
Continental Airlines	3	24 July 1963	March 1973
American Airlines	4	7 October 1963	February 1973	2 extra options in 1965
TWA	4	16 October 1963	31 January 1973	2 extra options in 1965
Middle East Airlines	2	4 December 1963	February 1973
Qantas	6	19 March 1964	June 1973	2 cancelled in May 1966
Air India	2	15 July 1964	February 1975
Japan Airlines	3	30 September 1965	1973
Sabena	2	1 December 1965	February 1973
Eastern Airlines	2	28 June 1966	February 1973	2 extra options on 15 August 1966 2 other extra options on 28 April 1967
United Airlines	6	29 June 1966	26 October 1972
Braniff	3	1 September 1966	February 1973
Lufthansa	3	16 February 1967	April 1973
Air Canada	4	1 March 1967	6 June 1972
CAAC	2	24 July 1972	December 1979
Iran Air	2	8 October 1972	February 1980

Testing

Concorde 001 first flight in 1969

The design work was supported by a research programme studying the flight characteristics of low ratio delta wings. A supersonic Fairey Delta 2 was modified to carry the ogee planform, and, renamed as the BAC 221, used for tests of the high-speed flight envelope; the Handley Page HP.115 also provided valuable information on low-speed performance.

Construction of two prototypes began in February 1965: 001, built by Aérospatiale at Toulouse, and 002, by BAC at Filton, Bristol. 001 made its first test flight from Toulouse on 2 March 1969, piloted by André Turcat, and first went supersonic on 1 October. The first UK-built Concorde flew from Filton to RAF Fairford on 9 April 1969, piloted by Brian Trubshaw. Both prototypes were presented to the public on 7–8 June 1969 at the Paris Air Show. As the flight programme progressed, 001 embarked on a sales and demonstration tour on 4 September 1971, which was also the first transatlantic crossing of Concorde. Concorde 002 followed on 2 June 1972 with a tour of the Middle and Far East. Concorde 002 made the first visit to the United States in 1973, landing at Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport to mark the airport's opening.

Concorde on early visit to Heathrow Airport on 1 July 1972

Concorde had initially held a great deal of customer interest, but the project was hit by order cancellations. The Paris Le Bourget air show crash of the competing Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 had shocked potential buyers, and public concern over the environmental issues of supersonic aircraft – the sonic boom, take-off noise and pollution – had produced a change in the public opinion of SSTs. By 1976 the remaining buyers were from four countries: Britain, France, China, and Iran. Only Air France and British Airways (the successor to BOAC) took up their orders, with the two governments taking a cut of any profits.

The US government cut federal funding for the Boeing 2707, its supersonic transport programme, in 1971; Boeing did not complete its two 2707 prototypes. The US, India, and Malaysia all ruled out Concorde supersonic flights over the noise concern, although some of these restrictions were later relaxed. Professor Douglas Ross characterised restrictions placed upon Concorde operations by President Jimmy Carter's administration as having been an act of protectionism of American aircraft manufacturers.

Programme cost

The original programme cost estimate was £70 million in 1962, (£1.68 billion in 2023). After cost overruns and delays the programme eventually cost between £1.5 and £2.1 billion in 1976, (£11.4 billion – 16 billion in 2023). This cost was the main reason the production run was much smaller than expected. The unit cost was impossible to recoup, so the French and British governments absorbed the development costs.

Design

Concorde flight deck layout

General features

Concorde is an ogival delta winged aircraft with four Olympus engines based on those employed in the RAF's Avro Vulcan strategic bomber. It is one of the few commercial aircraft to employ a tailless design (the Tupolev Tu-144 was another). Concorde was the first airliner to have a fly-by-wire flight-control system (in this case, analogue); the avionics system Concorde used was unique because it was the first commercial aircraft to employ hybrid circuits. The principal designer for the project was Pierre Satre, with Sir Archibald Russell as his deputy.

Concorde pioneered the following technologies:

For high speed and optimisation of flight:

• Double delta (ogee/ogival) shaped wings
• Variable engine air intake ramp system controlled by digital computers
• Supercruise capability
• Thrust-by-wire engines, precursor of today's FADEC-controlled engines
• Droop nose for better landing visibility

For weight-saving and enhanced performance:

• Mach 2.02 (~2,154 km/h or 1,338 mph) cruising speed for optimum fuel consumption (supersonic drag minimum and turbojet engines are more efficient at higher speed); fuel consumption at Mach 2 (2,120 km/h; 1,320 mph) and at altitude of 60,000 feet (18,000 m) was 4,800 US gallons per hour (18,000 L/h).
• Mainly aluminium construction using a high-temperature alloy similar to that developed for aero-engine pistons. This material gave low weight and allowed conventional manufacture (higher speeds would have ruled out aluminium)
• Full-regime autopilot and autothrottle allowing "hands off" control of the aircraft from climb out to landing
• Fully electrically controlled analogue fly-by-wire flight controls systems
• High-pressure hydraulic system using 28 MPa (4,100 psi) for lighter hydraulic components, tripled independent systems ("Blue", "Green", and "Yellow") for redundancy, with an emergency ram air turbine (RAT) stored in the left-inner elevon jack fairing supplying "Green" and "Yellow" as backup.
• Complex air data computer (ADC) for the automated monitoring and transmission of aerodynamic measurements (total pressure, static pressure, angle of attack, side-slip).
• Fully electrically controlled analogue brake-by-wire system
• Pitch trim by shifting fuel fore-and-aft for centre-of-gravity (CoG) control at the approach to Mach 1 and above with no drag penalty. Pitch trimming by fuel transfer had been used since 1958 on the B-58 supersonic bomber.
• Parts made using "sculpture milling", reducing the part count while saving weight and adding strength.
• No auxiliary power unit, as Concorde would only visit large airports where ground air start carts were available.

Powerplant

Main article: Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593

A symposium titled "Supersonic-Transport Implications" was hosted by the Royal Aeronautical Society on 8 December 1960. Various views were put forward on the likely type of powerplant for a supersonic transport, such as podded or buried installation and turbojet or ducted-fan engines. Concorde needed to fly long distances to be economically viable; this required high efficiency from the powerplant. Turbofan engines were rejected due to their larger cross-section producing excessive drag (but would be studied for future SSTs). Olympus turbojet technology was already available for development to meet the design requirements. Rolls-Royce proposed developing the RB.169 to power Concorde during its initial design phase, but developing a wholly-new engine for a single aircraft would have been extremely costly, so the existing BSEL Olympus Mk 320 turbojet engine, which was already flying in the BAC TSR-2 supersonic strike bomber prototype, was chosen instead.

Boundary layer management in the podded installation was put forward as simpler with only an inlet cone, however, Dr. Seddon of the RAE favoured a more integrated buried installation. One concern of placing two or more engines behind a single intake was that an intake failure could lead to a double or triple engine failure. While a ducted fan over the turbojet would reduce noise, its larger cross-section also incurred more drag. Designers were confident that a turbojet's noise could be reduced and SNECMA made advances in silencer design during the programme. The Olympus Mk.622 with reduced jet velocity was proposed to reduce the noise but was not pursued. By 1974, the spade silencers which projected into the exhaust were reported to be ineffective but "entry-into-service aircraft are likely to meet their noise guarantees".

The powerplant configuration selected for Concorde highlighted airfield noise, boundary layer management and interactions between adjacent engines and the requirement that the powerplant, at Mach 2, tolerate pushovers, sideslips, pull-ups and throttle slamming without surging. Extensive development testing with design changes and changes to intake and engine control laws addressed most of the issues except airfield noise and the interaction between adjacent powerplants at speeds above Mach 1.6 which meant Concorde "had to be certified aerodynamically as a twin-engined aircraft above Mach 1.6".

Situated behind the wing's leading edge, the engine intake had a wing boundary layer ahead of it. Two-thirds were diverted and the remaining third which entered the intake did not adversely affect the intake efficiency except during pushovers when the boundary layer thickened and caused surging. Wind tunnel testing helped define leading-edge modifications ahead of the intakes which solved the problem. Each engine had its own intake and the nacelles were paired with a splitter plate between them to minimise the chance of one powerplant influencing the other. Only above Mach 1.6 (1,960 km/h; 1,220 mph) was an engine surge likely to affect the adjacent engine.

The air intake design for Concorde's engines was especially critical. The intakes had to slow down supersonic inlet air to subsonic speeds with high-pressure recovery to ensure efficient operation at cruising speed while providing low distortion levels (to prevent engine surge) and maintaining high efficiency for all likely ambient temperatures in cruise. They had to provide adequate subsonic performance for diversion cruise and low engine-face distortion at take-off. They also had to provide an alternative path for excess intake of air during engine throttling or shutdowns. The variable intake features required to meet all these requirements consisted of front and rear ramps, a dump door, an auxiliary inlet and a ramp bleed to the exhaust nozzle.

As well as supplying air to the engine, the intake also supplied air through the ramp bleed to the propelling nozzle. The nozzle ejector (or aerodynamic) design, with variable exit area and secondary flow from the intake, contributed to good expansion efficiency from take-off to cruise. Concorde's Air Intake Control Units (AICUs) made use of a digital processor for intake control. It was the first use of a digital processor with full authority control of an essential system in a passenger aircraft. It was developed by BAC's Electronics and Space Systems division after the analogue AICUs (developed by Ultra Electronics) fitted to the prototype aircraft were found to lack sufficient accuracy. Ultra Electronics also developed Concorde's thrust-by-wire engine control system.

Engine failure causes problems on conventional subsonic aircraft; not only does the aircraft lose thrust on that side but the engine creates drag, causing the aircraft to yaw and bank in the direction of the failed engine. If this had happened to Concorde at supersonic speeds, it theoretically could have caused a catastrophic failure of the airframe. Although computer simulations predicted considerable problems, in practice Concorde could shut down both engines on the same side of the aircraft at Mach 2 without difficulties. During an engine failure the required air intake is virtually zero. So, on Concorde, engine failure was countered by the opening of the auxiliary spill door and the full extension of the ramps, which deflected the air downwards past the engine, gaining lift and minimising drag. Concorde pilots were routinely trained to handle double-engine failure.

Concorde used reheat (afterburners) only at take-off and to pass through the upper transonic regime to supersonic speeds, between Mach 0.95 and 1.7. Due to jet engines being highly inefficient at low speeds, Concorde burned two tonnes (4,400 lb) of Jet A-1 fuel (almost 2% of the maximum fuel load) taxiing to the runway. Due to the high thrust produced with the engines at idle, only the two outer engines were run after landing for easier taxiing and less brake pad wear – at low weights after landing, the aircraft would not remain stationary with all four engines idling requiring the brakes to be continuously applied to prevent the aircraft from rolling.

Heating problems

Air compression on the outer surfaces caused them to heat up during supersonic flight. Every surface, such as windows and panels, was warm to the touch by the end of the flight. Besides engines, the hottest part of any supersonic aircraft's structure is the nose, due to aerodynamic heating. The engineers used Hiduminium R.R. 58, an aluminium alloy, throughout the aircraft because of its familiarity, cost and ease of construction. The highest temperature it could sustain over the life of the aircraft was 127 °C (261 °F), which limited the top speed to Mach 2.02. Concorde went through two cycles of heating and cooling during a flight, first cooling down as it gained altitude, then heating up after going supersonic. The reverse happened when descending and slowing down. This had to be factored into the metallurgical and fatigue modelling. A test rig was built that repeatedly heated up a full-size section of the wing, and then cooled it, and periodically samples of metal were taken for testing. The airframe was designed for a life of 45,000 flying hours.

Concorde skin temperatures

As the fuselage heated up it expanded by as much as 300 mm (12 in). The most obvious manifestation of this was a gap that opened up on the flight deck between the flight engineer's console and the bulkhead. On some aircraft that conducted a retiring supersonic flight, the flight engineers placed their caps in this expanded gap, wedging the cap when the airframe shrank again. To keep the cabin cool, Concorde used the fuel as a heat sink for the heat from the air conditioning. The same method also cooled the hydraulics. During supersonic flight the surfaces forward from the cockpit became heated, and a visor was used to deflect much of this heat from directly reaching the cockpit.

Concorde had livery restrictions; the majority of the surface had to be covered with a highly reflective white paint to avoid overheating the aluminium structure due to heating effects. The white finish reduced the skin temperature by 6 to 11 °C (11 to 20 °F). In 1996, Air France briefly painted F-BTSD in a predominantly blue livery, with the exception of the wings, in a promotional deal with Pepsi. In this paint scheme, Air France was advised to remain at Mach 2 (2,120 km/h; 1,320 mph) for no more than 20 minutes at a time, but there was no restriction at speeds under Mach 1.7. F-BTSD was used because it was not scheduled for any long flights that required extended Mach 2 operations.

Structural issues

Fuel pitch trim

Due to its high speeds, large forces were applied to the aircraft during banks and turns, causing distortion of the aircraft's structure. There were concerns over maintaining precise control at supersonic speeds. Both of these issues were resolved by active ratio changes between the inboard and outboard elevons, varying at differing speeds including supersonic. Only the innermost elevons, attached to the stiffest area of the wings, were active at high speed. The narrow fuselage flexed, which was visible from the rear passengers' viewpoints.

When any aircraft passes the critical mach of its airframe, the centre of pressure shifts rearwards. This causes a pitch-down moment on the aircraft if the centre of gravity remains where it was. The engineers designed the wings to reduce this, but there was still a shift of about 2 metres (6 ft 7 in). This could have been countered by the use of trim controls, but at such high speeds, this would have dramatically increased drag. Instead, the distribution of fuel along the aircraft was shifted during acceleration and deceleration to move the centre of gravity, effectively acting as an auxiliary trim control.

Range

To fly non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean, Concorde required the greatest supersonic range of any aircraft. This was achieved by a combination of engines which were highly efficient at supersonic speeds, a slender fuselage with high fineness ratio, and a complex wing shape for a high lift-to-drag ratio. This also required carrying only a modest payload and a high fuel capacity, and the aircraft was trimmed to avoid unnecessary drag.

Nevertheless, soon after Concorde began flying, a Concorde "B" model was designed with slightly larger fuel capacity and slightly larger wings with leading edge slats to improve aerodynamic performance at all speeds, with the objective of expanding the range to reach markets in new regions. It featured more powerful engines with sound deadening and without the fuel-hungry and noisy afterburner. It was speculated that it was reasonably possible to create an engine with up to 25% gain in efficiency over the Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593. This would have given 500 mi (805 km) additional range and a greater payload, making new commercial routes possible. This was cancelled due in part to poor sales of Concorde, but also to the rising cost of aviation fuel in the 1970s.

Radiation concerns

Concorde's high cruising altitude meant people on board received almost twice the flux of extraterrestrial ionising radiation as those travelling on a conventional long-haul flight. Upon Concorde's introduction, it was speculated that this exposure during supersonic travels would increase the likelihood of skin cancer. Due to the proportionally reduced flight time, the overall equivalent dose would normally be less than a conventional flight over the same distance. Unusual solar activity might lead to an increase in incident radiation. To prevent incidents of excessive radiation exposure, the flight deck had a radiometer and an instrument to measure the rate of increase or decrease of radiation. If the radiation level became too high, Concorde would descend below 47,000 feet (14,000 m).

Cabin pressurisation

Airliner cabins were usually maintained at a pressure equivalent to 6,000–8,000 feet (1,800–2,400 m) elevation. Concorde's pressurisation was set to an altitude at the lower end of this range, 6,000 feet (1,800 m). Concorde's maximum cruising altitude was 60,000 feet (18,000 m); subsonic airliners typically cruise below 44,000 feet (13,000 m).

A sudden reduction in cabin pressure is hazardous to all passengers and crew. Above 50,000 feet (15,000 m), a sudden cabin depressurisation would leave a "time of useful consciousness" up to 10–15 seconds for a conditioned athlete. At Concorde's altitude, the air density is very low; a breach of cabin integrity would result in a loss of pressure severe enough that the plastic emergency oxygen masks installed on other passenger jets would not be effective and passengers would soon suffer from hypoxia despite quickly donning them. Concorde was equipped with smaller windows to reduce the rate of loss in the event of a breach, a reserve air supply system to augment cabin air pressure, and a rapid descent procedure to bring the aircraft to a safe altitude. The FAA enforces minimum emergency descent rates for aircraft and noting Concorde's higher operating altitude, concluded that the best response to pressure loss would be a rapid descent. Continuous positive airway pressure would have delivered pressurised oxygen directly to the pilots through masks.

Flight characteristics

Concorde performing a low-level fly-by at an air show in August 1981

While subsonic commercial jets took eight hours to fly from Paris to New York (seven hours from New York to Paris), the average supersonic flight time on the transatlantic routes was just under 3.5 hours. Concorde had a maximum cruising altitude of 18,300 metres (60,000 ft) and an average cruise speed of Mach 2.02 (2,150 km/h; 1,330 mph), more than twice the speed of conventional aircraft.

With no other civil traffic operating at its cruising altitude of about 56,000 ft (17,000 m), Concorde had exclusive use of dedicated oceanic airways, or "tracks", separate from the North Atlantic Tracks, the routes used by other aircraft to cross the Atlantic. Due to the significantly less variable nature of high altitude winds compared to those at standard cruising altitudes, these dedicated SST tracks had fixed co-ordinates, unlike the standard routes at lower altitudes, whose co-ordinates are replotted twice daily based on forecast weather patterns (jetstreams). Concorde would also be cleared in a 15,000-foot (4,570 m) block, allowing for a slow climb from 45,000 to 60,000 ft (14,000 to 18,000 m) during the oceanic crossing as the fuel load gradually decreased. In regular service, Concorde employed an efficient cruise-climb flight profile following take-off.

The delta-shaped wings required Concorde to adopt a higher angle of attack at low speeds than conventional aircraft, but it allowed the formation of large low-pressure vortices over the entire upper wing surface, maintaining lift. The normal landing speed was 170 miles per hour (274 km/h). Because of this high angle, during a landing approach Concorde was on the backside of the drag force curve, where raising the nose would increase the rate of descent; the aircraft was thus largely flown on the throttle and was fitted with an autothrottle to reduce the pilot's workload.

The only thing that tells you that you're moving is that occasionally when you're flying over the subsonic aeroplanes you can see all these 747s 20,000 feet below you almost appearing to go backwards, I mean you are going 800 miles an hour or thereabouts faster than they are. The aeroplane was an absolute delight to fly, it handled beautifully. And remember we are talking about an aeroplane that was being designed in the late 1950s – mid-1960s. I think it's absolutely amazing and here we are, now in the 21st century, and it remains unique.

— John Hutchinson, Concorde Captain, 'The World's Greatest Airliner' (2003)

Brakes and undercarriage

Because of the way Concorde's delta-wing generated lift, the undercarriage had to be unusually strong and tall to allow for the angle of attack at low speed. At rotation, Concorde would rise to a high angle of attack, about 18 degrees. Prior to rotation, the wing generated almost no lift, unlike typical aircraft wings. Combined with the high airspeed at rotation (199 knots or 369 kilometres per hour or 229 miles per hour indicated airspeed), this increased the stresses on the main undercarriage in a way that was initially unexpected during the development and required a major redesign. Due to the high angle needed at rotation, a small set of wheels was added aft to prevent tailstrikes. The main undercarriage units swing towards each other to be stowed but due to their great height also needed to contract in length telescopically before swinging to clear each other when stowed.

The four main wheel tyres on each bogie unit are inflated to 232 psi (1,600 kPa). The twin-wheel nose undercarriage retracts forwards and its tyres are inflated to a pressure of 191 psi (1,320 kPa), and the wheel assembly carries a spray deflector to prevent standing water from being thrown up into the engine intakes. The tyres are rated to a maximum speed on the runway of 250 mph (400 km/h). The right nose wheel carries a single disc brake to halt wheel rotation during retraction of the undercarriage. The left nose wheel carries speed generators for the anti-skid braking system which prevents brake activation until the nose and main wheels rotate at the same rate.

The high take-off speed of 250 miles per hour (400 km/h) required Concorde to have upgraded brakes. Like most airliners, Concorde has anti-skid braking  to prevent the tyres from losing traction when the brakes are applied. The brakes, developed by Dunlop, were the first carbon-based brakes used on an airliner. The use of carbon over equivalent steel brakes provided a weight-saving of 1,200 lb (540 kg). Each wheel has multiple discs which are cooled by electric fans. Wheel sensors include brake overload, brake temperature, and tyre deflation. After a typical landing at Heathrow, brake temperatures were around 300–400 °C (570–750 °F). Landing Concorde required a minimum of 6,000 feet (1,800 m) runway length; the shortest runway Concorde ever landed on carrying commercial passengers was Cardiff Airport. Concorde G-AXDN (101) made its final landing at Duxford Aerodrome on 20 August 1977, which had a runway length of just 6,000 feet (1,800 m) at the time. This was the last aircraft to land at Duxford before the runway was shortened later that year.

Droop nose

Main article: Droop nose (aeronautics)

Concorde's drooping nose, developed by Marshall's of Cambridge, enabled the aircraft to switch from being streamlined to reduce drag and achieve optimal aerodynamic efficiency during flight, to not obstructing the pilot's view during taxi, take-off, and landing operations. Due to the high angle of attack, the long pointed nose obstructed the view and necessitated the ability to droop. The droop nose was accompanied by a moving visor that retracted into the nose prior to being lowered. When the nose was raised to horizontal, the visor would rise in front of the cockpit windscreen for aerodynamic streamlining.

Concorde landing at Farnborough in September 1974

A controller in the cockpit allowed the visor to be retracted and the nose to be lowered to 5° below the standard horizontal position for taxiing and take-off. Following take-off and after clearing the airport, the nose and visor were raised. Prior to landing, the visor was again retracted and the nose lowered to 12.5° below horizontal for maximal visibility. Upon landing the nose was raised to the 5° position to avoid the possibility of damage due to collision with ground vehicles, and then raised fully before engine shutdown to prevent pooling of internal condensation within the radome seeping down into the aircraft's pitot/ADC system probes.

The US Federal Aviation Administration had objected to the restrictive visibility of the visor used on the first two prototype Concordes, which had been designed before a suitable high-temperature window glass had become available, and thus requiring alteration before the FAA would permit Concorde to serve US airports. This led to the redesigned visor used in the production and the four pre-production aircraft (101, 102, 201, and 202). The nose window and visor glass, needed to endure temperatures in excess of 100 °C (210 °F) at supersonic flight, were developed by Triplex.

Operational history

See also: Concorde aircraft histories

1973 Solar Eclipse Mission

Main article: 1973 Eclipse Flight of Concorde 001

Concorde 001 was modified with rooftop portholes for use on the 1973 solar eclipse mission and equipped with observation instruments. It performed the longest observation of a solar eclipse to date, about 74 minutes.

Scheduled flights

The official handover ceremony of British Airways' first Concorde occurred on 15 January 1976 at Heathrow Airport.

British Airways Concorde in Singapore Airlines livery at Heathrow Airport in 1979

Air France Concorde (F-BTSD) with a short-lived promotional Pepsi livery in 1996

Air France Concorde departing Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2003

Scheduled flights began on 21 January 1976 on the London–Bahrain and Paris–Rio de Janeiro (via Dakar) routes, with BA flights using the Speedbird Concorde call sign to notify air traffic control of the aircraft's unique abilities and restrictions, but the French using their normal call signs. The Paris-Caracas route (via Azores) began on 10 April. The US Congress had just banned Concorde landings in the US, mainly due to citizen protest over sonic booms, preventing launch on the coveted North Atlantic routes. The US Secretary of Transportation, William Coleman, gave permission for Concorde service to Dulles International Airport, and Air France and British Airways simultaneously began a thrice-weekly service to Dulles on 24 May 1976. Due to low demand, AF cancelled its Washington service in October 1982, while BA cancelled it in November 1994.

When the US ban on JFK Concorde operations was lifted in February 1977, New York banned Concorde locally. The ban came to an end on 17 October 1977 when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to overturn a lower court's ruling rejecting efforts by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and a grass-roots campaign led by Carol Berman to continue the ban. Despite complaints about noise, the report noted that Air Force One, at the time a Boeing VC-137, was louder than Concorde at subsonic speeds and during takeoff and landing. Scheduled service from Paris and London to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport began on 22 November 1977.

In December 1977, BA and Singapore Airlines started sharing a Concorde for flights between London and Singapore International Airport at Paya Lebar via Bahrain. The aircraft, BA's Concorde G-BOAD, was painted in Singapore Airlines livery on the left side and BA livery on the right side. The service was discontinued after three return flights because of noise complaints from the Malaysian government; it could only be reinstated on a new route bypassing Malaysian airspace in 1979. A dispute with India prevented Concorde from reaching supersonic speeds in Indian airspace, so the route was eventually declared not viable and discontinued in 1980.

During the Mexican oil boom, AF flew Concorde twice weekly to Mexico City's Benito Juárez International Airport via Washington, DC, or New York City, from September 1978 to November 1982. The worldwide economic crisis during that period resulted in this route's cancellation; the last flights were almost empty. The routing between Washington or New York and Mexico City included a deceleration, from Mach 2.02 to Mach 0.95, to cross Florida subsonically and avoid creating a sonic boom over the state; Concorde then re-accelerated back to high speed while crossing the Gulf of Mexico. On 1 April 1989, on an around-the-world luxury tour charter, BA implemented changes to this routing that allowed G-BOAF to maintain Mach 2.02 by passing around Florida to the east and south. Periodically Concorde visited the region on similar chartered flights to Mexico City and Acapulco.

From December 1978 to May 1980, Braniff International Airways leased 11 Concordes, five from AF and six from BA. These were used on subsonic flights between Dallas–Fort Worth and Dulles International Airport, flown by Braniff flight crews. AF and BA crews then took over for the continuing supersonic flights to London and Paris. The aircraft were registered in both the United States and their home countries; the European registration was covered while being operated by Braniff, retaining full AF/BA liveries. The flights were not profitable and typically less than 50% booked, forcing Braniff to end its tenure as the only US Concorde operator in May 1980.

In its early years, BA's Concorde service had a greater number of "no-shows" (passengers who booked a flight and then failed to appear at the gate for boarding) than any other aircraft in the fleet.

British Caledonian interest

Following the launch of British Airways Concorde services, Britain's other major airline, British Caledonian (BCal), set up a task force headed by Gordon Davidson, BA's former Concorde director, to investigate the possibility of their own Concorde operations. This was seen as particularly viable for the airline's long-haul network as there were two unsold aircraft then available for purchase.

One important reason for BCal's interest in Concorde was that the British Government's 1976 aviation policy review had opened the possibility of BA setting up supersonic services in competition with BCal's established sphere of influence. To counteract this potential threat, BCal considered their own independent Concorde plans, as well as a partnership with BA. BCal were considered most likely to have set up a Concorde service on the Gatwick–Lagos route, a major source of revenue and profits within BCal's scheduled route network; BCal's Concorde task force did assess the viability of a daily supersonic service complementing the existing subsonic widebody service on this route.

BCal entered into a bid to acquire at least one Concorde. However, BCal eventually arranged for two aircraft to be leased from BA and Aérospatiale respectively, to be maintained by either BA or AF. BCal's envisaged two-Concorde fleet would have required a high level of aircraft usage to be cost-effective; therefore, BCal had decided to operate the second aircraft on a supersonic service between Gatwick and Atlanta, with a stopover at either Gander or Halifax. Consideration was given to services to Houston and various points on its South American network at a later stage. Both supersonic services were to be launched at some point during 1980; however, steeply rising oil prices caused by the 1979 energy crisis led to BCal shelving their supersonic ambitions.

British Airways buys its Concordes outright

By around 1981 in the UK, the future for Concorde looked bleak. The British government had lost money operating Concorde every year, and moves were afoot to cancel the service entirely. A cost projection came back with greatly reduced metallurgical testing costs because the test rig for the wings had built up enough data to last for 30 years and could be shut down. Despite this, the government was not keen to continue. In 1983, BA's managing director, Sir John King, convinced the government to sell the aircraft outright to the then state-owned British Airways for 16.5 million (US$25.01 million) plus the first year's profits. In 2003, in a radio interview with Alan Robb on BBC Radio 5 Live, Lord Heseltine, the minister then responsible, acknowledged that the plane was sold "next to nothing" and agreed the deal was among the most disastrous conducted by a government minister; "but if you have your hands tied behind your back and no cards and a very skilful negotiator on the other side of the table... I defy you to do any [better]."

Operating economics

Its estimated operating costs were $3,800 per block hour in 1972 (equivalent to $27,679 in 2023), compared to actual 1971 operating costs of $1,835 for a 707 and $3,500 for a 747 (equivalent to $13,805 and $26,332, respectively); for a 3,050 nmi (5,650 km) London–New York sector, a 707 cost $13,750 or 3.04¢ per seat/nmi (in 1971 dollars), a 747 $26,200 or 2.4¢ per seat/nmi and Concorde $14,250 or 4.5¢ per seat/nmi. On a transatlantic flight, having a cruising speed of more than double a B-707, Concorde required less than half the number of block hours per trip. This illustrates that that these two aircraft types were designed for entirely different flight regimes (subsonic versus supersonic) and different markets, so a direct comparison is not possible. A more direct operating cost per seat mile would be against a subsonic first class seat while factoring twice the flight time as a cost increasing component.

In 1983, Pan Am accused the British Government of subsidising BA Concorde air fares, on which a return London–New York was £2,399 (£10,225 in 2023 prices), compared to £1,986 (£8,464) with a subsonic first class return, and London–Washington return was £2,426 (£10,340) instead of £2,258 (£9,624) subsonic. However, by this time, Concorde was operating in its own P&L division with no subsidy available to it.

Concorde's unit cost was then $33.8 million ($187 million in 2023 dollars). BA and AF benefited from a significantly reduced purchase price from the manufacturing consortium via their respective governments.

After six years of on and off profitability, in 1982 Concorde was established in its own operating division (Concorde Division) under Capt. Brian Walpole and Capt. Jock Lowe. Their research revealed that regular passengers thought that the fare was higher than it actually was (business travellers were the majority of passengers), so the airline raised ticket prices to match these perceptions and, following the marketing research and repositioning, Concorde ran profitably for BA. The ticket price was pitched about 10–15% above subsonic first class (1996 £4,772 versus subsonic first class £4,314) adding to its corporate appeal and ensuring loyalty from regular users which brought regular load factors of around 80%.

Over the next twenty years, BA's Concordes earned over half a billion pounds in profit with (typically) just five aircraft operating and two in various maintenance cycles.

Other services

Between March 1984 and January 1991, BA flew a thrice-weekly Concorde service between London and Miami, stopping at Dulles International Airport. Until 2003, AF and BA continued to operate the New York services daily. From 1987 to 2003, BA flew a Saturday morning Concorde service to Grantley Adams International Airport, Barbados, during the summer and winter holiday season.

Prior to the Air France Paris crash, several UK and French tour operators operated charter flights to European destinations on a regular basis; the charter business was viewed as lucrative by BA and AF.

In 1997, BA held a promotional contest to mark the 10th anniversary of the airline's move into the private sector. The promotion was a lottery to fly to New York held for 190 tickets valued at £5,400 each, to be offered at £10. Contestants had to call a special hotline to compete with up to 20 million people.

Retirement

Concorde's final flight: G-BOAF from Heathrow to Bristol, on 26 November 2003. The extremely high fineness ratio of the fuselage is evident.

A Concorde at the Intrepid Museum in New York City

On 10 April 2003, Air France and British Airways simultaneously announced they would retire Concorde later that year. They cited low passenger numbers following the 25 July 2000 crash, the slump in air travel following the September 11 attacks, and rising maintenance costs: Airbus, the company that acquired Aérospatiale in 2000, had made a decision in 2003 to no longer supply replacement parts for the aircraft.

Concorde was technologically advanced when introduced in the 1970s, and while in 2003, its analogue cockpit may have appeared outdated, an upgrade was not necessary or a regulatory requirement, as it was still contemporary with other aircraft such as the Boeing 747-300 in service at the time. British Airways had completed patterning of replacement avionics spares with modern avionics equivalents and so had access to the necessary spares it needed to continue operations. The airframes had undergone a life extension survey that proved them to be in better than expected condition with the same number of flight cycles as an average 7 year old B-737 and BA, in conjunction with BAe and Aerospatiale, (dubbed Concorde Relife Group), had the airframe certified for continued operation until 2014/15. There had been little commercial pressure to upgrade Concorde due to its low flight cycles, a lack of competing aircraft and the fact that the aircraft remained sustainably profitable in its current configuration. By its retirement, it was the last aircraft in the British Airways fleet that had a flight engineer.

On 11 April 2003, Virgin Atlantic founder Sir Richard Branson announced that the company was interested in purchasing BA's Concorde fleet "for the same price that they were given them for – one pound". BA dismissed the idea, prompting Virgin to increase their offer to £1 million each. Branson claimed that when BA was privatised, a clause in the agreement required them to allow another British airline to operate Concorde if BA ceased to do so, but the Government denied the existence of such a clause. In October 2003, Branson wrote in The Economist that his final offer was "over £5 million" and that he had intended to operate the fleet "for many years to come". UK Civil Aviation Authority regulatory requirements would have only allowed Virgin Atlantic to add Concorde to its Air Operator Certificate after it demonstrated the engineering and aircrew expertise necessary to operate and sustain it.

It has been suggested that Concorde was not withdrawn for the reasons usually given but that it became apparent during the grounding of Concorde that the airlines could make more profit carrying first-class passengers subsonically. A lack of commitment to Concorde from Director of Engineering Alan MacDonald may have undermined BA's resolve to continue operating Concorde.

Other reasons why the attempted revival of Concorde never happened relate to the fact that the narrow fuselage did not allow for "luxury" features of subsonic air travel such as moving space, reclining seats and overall comfort. In the words of The Guardian's Dave Hall, "Concorde was an outdated notion of prestige that left sheer speed the only luxury of supersonic travel."

Air France

AF Concorde in Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim

Air France made its final commercial Concorde landing in the United States in New York City from Paris on 30 May 2003. AF's final Concorde flight took place on 27 June 2003 when F-BVFC retired to Toulouse.

An auction of Concorde parts and memorabilia for AF was held at Christie's in Paris on 15 November 2003; 1,300 people attended, and several lots exceeded their predicted values. French Concorde F-BVFC was retired to Toulouse and kept functional for a short time after the end of service, in case taxi runs were required in support of the French judicial enquiry into the 2000 crash. The aircraft is now fully retired and no longer functional.

AF Concorde F-BTSD was retired to the "Musée de l'Air" at Paris–Le Bourget Airport near Paris; unlike the other museum Concordes, a few of the systems are kept functional. For instance, the "droop nose" can still be lowered and raised. This led to rumours that they could be prepared for future flights for special occasions.

AF Concorde F-BVFB is at the Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim at Sinsheim, Germany, after its last flight from Paris to Baden-Baden, followed by transport to Sinsheim via barge and road. The museum also has a Tupolev Tu-144 on display – this is the only place where both supersonic airliners can be seen together.

In 1989, AF signed a letter of agreement to donate a Concorde to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. upon the aircraft's retirement. On 12 June 2003, AF honoured that agreement, donating Concorde F-BVFA (serial 205) to the museum upon the completion of its last flight. This aircraft was the first AF Concorde to open service to Rio de Janeiro, Washington, D.C., and New York and had flown 17,824 hours. It is on display at the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport.

British Airways

BA Concorde G-BOAB at London Heathrow Airport. This aircraft flew for 22,296 hours between its first flight in 1976 and its final flight in 2000, and has remained there ever since.

British Airways conducted a North American farewell tour in October 2003. G-BOAG visited Toronto Pearson International Airport on 1 October, after which it flew to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. G-BOAD visited Boston's Logan International Airport on 8 October, and G-BOAG visited Dulles International Airport on 14 October.

In a week of farewell flights around the United Kingdom, Concorde visited Birmingham on 20 October, Belfast on 21 October, Manchester on 22 October, Cardiff on 23 October, and Edinburgh on 24 October. Each day the aircraft made a return flight out and back into Heathrow to the cities, often overflying them at low altitude. On 22 October, both Concorde flight BA9021C, a special from Manchester, and BA002 from New York landed simultaneously on both of Heathrow's runways. On 23 October 2003, the Queen consented to the illumination of Windsor Castle, an honour reserved for state events and visiting dignitaries, as Concorde's last west-bound commercial flight departed London.

BA retired its Concorde fleet on 24 October 2003. G-BOAG left New York to a fanfare similar to that given for AF's F-BTSD, while two more made round trips, G-BOAF over the Bay of Biscay, carrying VIP guests including former Concorde pilots, and G-BOAE to Edinburgh. The three aircraft then circled over London, having received special permission to fly at low altitude, before landing in sequence at Heathrow. The captain of the New York to London flight was Mike Bannister. The final US Concorde flight occurred on 5 November 2003 when G-BOAG flew from New York's JFK Airport to Seattle's Boeing Field to join the Museum of Flight's permanent collection, piloted by Mike Bannister and Les Broadie, who claimed a flight time of three hours, 55 minutes and 12 seconds, a record between the two cities that was made possible by Canada granting use of a supersonic corridor between Chibougamau, Quebec, and Peace River, Alberta. The museum had been pursuing a Concorde for their collection since 1984. The final Concorde flight worldwide took place on 26 November 2003 with G-BOAF carrying 100 BA cabin crew members and pilots out over the Bay of Biscay and going supersonic over the Atlantic followed by a fly-past over Bristol Filton Airport before landing there in front of a crowd of more than 20,000 people.

BA's Concorde fleet have been grounded, drained of hydraulic fluid and their airworthiness certificates withdrawn. Jock Lowe, ex-chief Concorde pilot and manager of the fleet, estimated in 2004 that it would cost £10–15 million to make G-BOAF airworthy again. BA maintain ownership and have stated that they will not fly again due to a lack of support from Airbus. On 1 December 2003, Bonhams held an auction of British Airways Concorde artefacts, including a nose cone, at Kensington Olympia in London. Proceeds of around £750,000 were raised, with the majority going to charity. G-BOAD is currently on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York. In 2007, BA announced that the advertising spot at Heathrow where a 40% scale model of Concorde was located would not be retained; the model is now on display at the Brooklands Museum, in Surrey.

Displays and restoration

Concorde G-BBDG was used for test flying and trials work. It was retired in 1981 and then only used for spares. It was dismantled and transported by road from Filton to the Brooklands Museum, where it was restored from essentially a shell. It remains open to visitors to the museum, and wears the original Negus & Negus livery worn by the Concorde fleet during their initial years of service with BA.

Concorde G-BOAB, call sign Alpha Bravo, was never modified and returned to service with the rest of BA's fleet, and has remained at London Heathrow Airport since its final flight, a ferry flight from JFK in 2000. Although the aircraft was effectively retired, G-BOAB was used as a test aircraft for the Project Rocket interiors that were in the process of being added to the rest of BA's fleet. G-BOAB has been towed around Heathrow on various occasions; it currently occupies a space on the airport's apron and is regularly visible to aircraft moving around the airport.

One of the youngest Concordes (F-BTSD) is on display at Le Bourget Air and Space Museum in Paris. In February 2010, it was announced that the museum and a group of volunteer AF technicians intend to restore F-BTSD so it can taxi under its own power. In May 2010, it was reported that the British Save Concorde Group and French Olympus 593 groups had begun inspecting the engines of a Concorde at the French museum; their intent was to restore the airliner to a condition where it could fly in demonstrations.

G-BOAF forms the centrepiece of the Aerospace Bristol museum at Filton, which opened to the public in 2017.

G-BOAD, the aircraft that holds the record for the Heathrow – JFK crossing at 2 hours, 52 minutes, and 59 seconds, is on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.

F-BVFB is displayed at the Technik Museum Sinsheim in Germany alongside a Tu-144; this is the only instance of both supersonic passenger aircraft on display together.

Operators

• Air France
• British Airways
• Braniff International Airways operated Concordes between Dulles International Airport and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, utilizing its own flight and cabin crew, under its own insurance and operator's license. Stickers containing a US registration were placed over the French and British registrations of the aircraft during each rotation, and a placard was temporarily placed behind the cockpit to signify the operator and operator's license in command.
• Singapore Airlines had its livery placed on the left side of Concorde G-BOAD, and held a joint marketing agreement which saw Singapore insignias on the cabin fittings, as well as the airline's "Singapore Girl" stewardesses jointly sharing cabin duty with British Airways flight attendants. All flight crew, operations, and insurances remained solely under British Airways however, and at no point did Singapore Airlines operate Concorde services under its own operator's certification, nor wet-lease an aircraft. This arrangement initially only lasted for three flights, conducted between 9–13 December 1977; it later resumed on 24 January 1979, and operated until 1 November 1980. The Singapore livery was used on G-BOAD from 1977 to 1980.

Accidents and incidents

Air France Flight 4590

Main article: Air France Flight 4590

On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590, registration F-BTSC, crashed in Gonesse, France, after departing from Charles de Gaulle Airport en route to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, killing all 100 passengers and nine crew members on board as well as four people on the ground. It was the only fatal accident involving Concorde. This crash also damaged Concorde's reputation and caused both British Airways and Air France to temporarily ground their fleets. According to the official investigation conducted by the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), the crash was caused by a metallic strip that had fallen from a Continental Airlines DC-10 that had taken off minutes earlier. This fragment punctured a tyre on Concorde's left main wheel bogie during take-off. The tyre exploded, and a piece of rubber hit the fuel tank, which caused a fuel leak and led to a fire. The crew shut down engine number 2 in response to a fire warning, and with engine number 1 surging and producing little power, the aircraft was unable to gain altitude or speed. The aircraft entered a rapid pitch-up then a sudden descent, rolling left and crashing tail-low into the Hôtelissimo Les Relais Bleus Hotel in Gonesse.

Before the accident, Concorde had been arguably the safest operational passenger airliner in the world with zero passenger deaths, but there had been two prior non-fatal accidents and a rate of tyre damage 30 times higher than subsonic airliners from 1995 to 2000. Safety improvements made after the crash included more secure electrical controls, Kevlar lining on the fuel tanks and specially developed burst-resistant tyres. The first flight with the modifications departed from London Heathrow on 17 July 2001, piloted by BA Chief Concorde Pilot Mike Bannister. In a flight of 3 hours 20 minutes over the mid-Atlantic towards Iceland, Bannister attained Mach 2.02 and 60,000 ft (18,000 m) then returned to RAF Brize Norton. The test flight, intended to resemble the London–New York route, was declared a success and was watched on live TV, and by crowds on the ground at both locations.

The first flight with passengers after the 2000 grounding landed shortly before the World Trade Center attacks in the United States. This was not a commercial flight: all the passengers were BA employees. Normal commercial operations resumed on 7 November 2001 by BA and AF (aircraft G-BOAE and F-BTSD), with service to New York JFK, where Mayor Rudy Giuliani greeted the passengers.

Other accidents and incidents

Damage to Concorde rudder after an accident in 1989

On 12 April 1989, Concorde G-BOAF, on a chartered flight from Christchurch, New Zealand, to Sydney, Australia, suffered a structural failure at supersonic speed. As the aircraft was climbing and accelerating through Mach 1.7, a "thud" was heard. The crew did not notice any handling problems, and they assumed the thud they heard was a minor engine surge. No further difficulty was encountered until descent through 40,000 feet (12,000 m) at Mach 1.3, when a vibration was felt throughout the aircraft, lasting two to three minutes. Most of the upper rudder had separated from the aircraft at this point. Aircraft handling was unaffected, and the aircraft made a safe landing at Sydney. The UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded that the skin of the rudder had been separating from the rudder structure over a period before the accident due to moisture seepage past the rivets in the rudder. Production staff had not followed proper procedures during an earlier modification of the rudder; the procedures were difficult to adhere to. The aircraft was repaired and returned to service.

On 21 March 1992, G-BOAB while flying British Airways Flight 001 from London to New York, also suffered a structural failure at supersonic speed. While cruising at Mach 2, at approximately 53,000 feet (16,000 m), the crew heard a "thump". No difficulties in handling were noticed, and no instruments gave any irregular indications. This crew also suspected there had been a minor engine surge. One hour later, during descent and while decelerating below Mach 1.4, a sudden "severe" vibration began throughout the aircraft. The vibration worsened when power was added to the No 2 engine. The crew shut down the No 2 engine and made a successful landing in New York, noting that increased rudder control was needed to keep the aircraft on its intended approach course. Again, the skin had separated from the structure of the rudder, which led to most of the upper rudder detaching in flight. The AAIB concluded that repair materials had leaked into the structure of the rudder during a recent repair, weakening the bond between the skin and the structure of the rudder, leading to it breaking up in flight. The large size of the repair had made it difficult to keep repair materials out of the structure, and prior to this accident, the severity of the effect of these repair materials on the structure and skin of the rudder was not appreciated.

The 2010 trial involving Continental Airlines over the crash of Flight 4590 established that from 1976 until Flight 4590 there had been 57 tyre failures involving Concordes during takeoffs, including a near-crash at Dulles International Airport on 14 June 1979 involving Air France Flight 54 where a tyre blowout pierced the plane's fuel tank and damaged a left engine and electrical cables, with the loss of two of the craft's hydraulic systems.

Aircraft on display

Main article: Concorde aircraft histories

Of the 20 aircraft built, 18 remain, with 16 on display to the public.

List of remaining aircraft

No.	Reg.	Livery	Location	Photo
001	F-WTSS	Air France	Musée de l'air et de l'espace, Le Bourget, France
002	G-BSST	British Aircraft Corporation	Fleet Air Arm Museum, Yeovilton, England
101	G-AXDN	British Aircraft Corporation	Imperial War Museum Duxford, England
102	F-WTSA	Air France	Musée Delta, Paris, France
201	F-WTSB	Air France	Aeroscopia, Toulouse, France
202	G-BBDG	British Airways	Brooklands Museum, Weybridge, England
204	G-BOAC	British Airways	Manchester Airport, England
205	F-BVFA	Air France	Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia, U.S.
206	G-BOAA	British Airways	National Museum of Flight, East Fortune, Scotland
207	F-BVFB	Air France	Technik Museum Sinsheim, Germany
208	G-BOAB	British Airways	Heathrow Airport, England
209	F-BVFC	Air France	Aeroscopia, Toulouse, France
210	G-BOAD	British Airways	Intrepid Museum, New York City, U.S.
212	G-BOAE	British Airways	Grantley Adams Airport, Barbados
213	F-BTSD	Air France	Musée de l'air et de l'espace, Le Bourget, France
214	G-BOAG	British Airways	Museum of Flight, Seattle, Washington, U.S.
215	F-BVFF	Air France	Charles de Gaulle Airport, France
216	G-BOAF	British Airways	Aerospace Bristol, Filton, England

Comparable aircraft

Tu-144

Concorde (left) and Tu-144 in Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim

Boeing 2707 3-view diagram

Lockheed L-2000 mockup

Concorde was one of only two supersonic jetliner models to operate commercially; the other was the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144, which operated in the late 1970s. The Tu-144 was nicknamed "Concordski" by Western European journalists for its outward similarity to Concorde. Soviet espionage efforts allegedly stole Concorde blueprints to assist in the design of the Tu-144. As a result of a rushed development programme, the first Tu-144 prototype was substantially different from the preproduction machines, but both were cruder than Concorde. The Tu-144S had a significantly shorter range than Concorde. Jean Rech, Sud Aviation, attributed this to two things, a very heavy powerplant with an intake twice as long as that on Concorde, and low-bypass turbofan engines with too high a bypass ratio which needed afterburning for cruise. The aircraft had poor control at low speeds because of a simpler wing design. The Tu-144 required braking parachutes to land. The Tu-144 had two crashes, one at the 1973 Paris Air Show, and another during a pre-delivery test flight in May 1978.

Passenger service commenced in November 1977, but after the 1978 crash the aircraft was taken out of passenger service after only 55 flights, which carried an average of 58 passengers. The Tu-144 had an inherently unsafe structural design as a consequence of an automated production method chosen to simplify and speed up manufacturing. The Tu-144 program was cancelled by the Soviet government on 1 July 1983.

SST and others

Further information: Supersonic transport

The main competing designs for the US government-funded supersonic transport (SST) were the swing-wing Boeing 2707 and the compound delta wing Lockheed L-2000. These were to have been larger, with seating for up to 300 people. The Boeing 2707 was selected for development. Concorde first flew in 1969, the year Boeing began building 2707 mockups after changing the design to a cropped delta wing; the cost of this and other changes helped to kill the project. The operation of US military aircraft such as the Mach 3+ North American XB-70 Valkyrie prototypes and Convair B-58 Hustler strategic nuclear bomber had shown that sonic booms were capable of reaching the ground, and the experience from the Oklahoma City sonic boom tests led to the same environmental concerns that hindered the commercial success of Concorde. The American government cancelled its SST project in 1971 having spent more than $1 billion without any aircraft being built.

Impact

Environmental

Before Concorde's flight trials, developments in the civil aviation industry were largely accepted by governments and their respective electorates. Opposition to Concorde's noise, particularly on the east coast of the United States, forged a new political agenda on both sides of the Atlantic, with scientists and technology experts across a multitude of industries beginning to take the environmental and social impact more seriously. Although Concorde led directly to the introduction of a general noise abatement programme for aircraft flying out of John F. Kennedy Airport, many found that Concorde was quieter than expected, partly due to the pilots temporarily throttling back their engines to reduce noise during overflight of residential areas. Even before commercial flights started, it had been claimed that Concorde was quieter than many other aircraft. In 1971, BAC's technical director stated, "It is certain on present evidence and calculations that in the airport context, production Concordes will be no worse than aircraft now in service and will in fact be better than many of them."

Concorde produced nitrogen oxides in its exhaust, which, despite complicated interactions with other ozone-depleting chemicals, are understood to result in degradation to the ozone layer at the stratospheric altitudes it cruised. It has been pointed out that other, lower-flying, airliners produce ozone during their flights in the troposphere, but vertical transit of gases between the layers is restricted. The small fleet meant overall ozone-layer degradation caused by Concorde was negligible. In 1995, David Fahey, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States, warned that a fleet of 500 supersonic aircraft with exhausts similar to Concorde might produce a 2 per cent drop in global ozone levels, much higher than previously thought. Each 1 per cent drop in ozone is estimated to increase the incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer worldwide by 2 per cent. Dr Fahey said if these particles are produced by highly oxidised sulphur in the fuel, as he believed, then removing sulphur in the fuel will reduce the ozone-destroying impact of supersonic transport.

Concorde's technical leap forward boosted the public's understanding of conflicts between technology and the environment as well as awareness of the complex decision analysis processes that surround such conflicts. In France, the use of acoustic fencing alongside TGV tracks might not have been achieved without the 1970s controversy over aircraft noise. In the UK, the CPRE has issued tranquillity maps since 1990.

Public perception

Parade flight at the Queen's Golden Jubilee, June 2002

Concorde was normally perceived as a privilege of the rich, but special circular or one-way (with return by other flight or ship) charter flights were arranged to bring a trip within the means of moderately well-off enthusiasts. As a symbol of national pride, an example from the BA fleet made occasional flypasts at selected Royal events, major air shows and other special occasions, sometimes in formation with the Red Arrows. On the final day of commercial service, public interest was so great that grandstands were erected at Heathrow Airport. Significant numbers of people attended the final landings; the event received widespread media coverage.

The aircraft was usually referred to by the British as simply "Concorde". In France it was known as "le Concorde" due to "le", the definite article, used in French grammar to introduce the name of a ship or aircraft, and the capital being used to distinguish a proper name from a common noun of the same spelling. In French, the common noun concorde means "agreement, harmony, or peace". Concorde's pilots and British Airways in official publications often refer to Concorde both in the singular and plural as "she" or "her".

In 2006, 37 years after its first test flight, Concorde was announced the winner of the Great British Design Quest organised by the BBC (through The Culture Show) and the Design Museum. A total of 212,000 votes were cast with Concorde beating other British design icons such as the Mini, mini skirt, Jaguar E-Type car, the Tube map, the World Wide Web, the K2 red telephone box and the Supermarine Spitfire.

Special missions

The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh disembark Concorde in 1991

The heads of France and the United Kingdom flew in Concorde many times. Presidents Georges Pompidou, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand regularly used Concorde as French flagman aircraft in foreign visits. Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Ministers Edward Heath, Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair took Concorde in some charter flights such as the Queen's trips to Barbados on her Silver Jubilee in 1977, in 1987 and in 2003, to the Middle East in 1984 and to the United States in 1991. Pope John Paul II flew on Concorde in May 1989.

Concorde sometimes made special flights for demonstrations, air shows (such as the Farnborough, Paris-Le Bourget, Oshkosh AirVenture and MAKS air shows) as well as parades and celebrations (for example, of Zurich Airport's anniversary in 1998). The aircraft were also used for private charters (including by the President of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko on multiple occasions), for advertising companies (including for the firm OKI), for Olympic torch relays (1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville) and for observing solar eclipses, including the solar eclipse of 30 June 1973 and again for the total solar eclipse on 11 August 1999.

Records

The fastest transatlantic airliner flight was from New York JFK to London Heathrow on 7 February 1996 by the British Airways G-BOAD in 2 hours, 52 minutes, 59 seconds from take-off to touchdown aided by a 175 mph (282 km/h) tailwind. On 13 February 1985, a Concorde charter flight flew from London Heathrow to Sydney – on the opposite side of the world – in a time of 17 hours, 3 minutes and 45 seconds, including refuelling stops.

Concorde set the FAI "Westbound Around the World" and "Eastbound Around the World" world air speed records. On 12–13 October 1992, in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the New World, Concorde Spirit Tours (US) chartered Air France Concorde F-BTSD and circumnavigated the world in 32 hours 49 minutes and 3 seconds, from Lisbon, Portugal, including six refuelling stops at Santo Domingo, Acapulco, Honolulu, Guam, Bangkok, and Bahrain.

The eastbound record was set by the same Air France Concorde (F-BTSD) under charter to Concorde Spirit Tours in the US on 15–16 August 1995. This promotional flight circumnavigated the world from New York/JFK International Airport in 31 hours 27 minutes 49 seconds, including six refuelling stops at Toulouse, Dubai, Bangkok, Andersen AFB in Guam, Honolulu, and Acapulco.

On its way to the Museum of Flight in November 2003, G-BOAG set a New York City-to-Seattle speed record of 3 hours, 55 minutes, and 12 seconds. Due to the restrictions on supersonic overflights within the US the flight was granted permission by the Canadian authorities for the majority of the journey to be flown supersonically over sparsely-populated Canadian territory.

Specifications

Other line drawings of Concorde

Concorde G-BOAC

Data from The Wall Street Journal, The Concorde Story, The International Directory of Civil Aircraft, Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde 1969 onwards (all models)

General characteristics

• Crew: 3 (2 pilots and 1 flight engineer)
• Capacity: 92–120 passengers
  (128 in high-density layout)
• Length: 202 ft 4 in (61.66 m)
• Wingspan: 84 ft 0 in (25.6 m)
• Height: 40 ft 0 in (12.2 m)
• Wing area: 3,856.2 sq ft (358.25 m²)
• Empty weight: 173,504 lb (78,700 kg)
• Gross weight: 245,000 lb (111,130 kg)
• Max takeoff weight: 408,010 lb (185,070 kg)
• Fuel capacity: 210,940 lb (95,680 kg); 119,600 L (26,300 imp gal; 31,600 US gal)
• Fuselage internal length: 129 ft 0 in (39.32 m)
• Fuselage width: maximum of 9 ft 5 in (2.87 m) external, 8 ft 7 in (2.62 m) internal
• Fuselage height: maximum of 10 ft 10 in (3.30 m) external, 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) internal
• Maximum taxiing weight: 412,000 lb (187,000 kg)
• Powerplant: 4 × Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 Mk 610 turbojets with reheat, 31,000 lbf (140 kN) thrust each dry, 38,050 lbf (169.3 kN) with afterburner

Performance

• Maximum speed: 1,354 mph (2,179 km/h, 1,177 kn)
• Maximum speed: Mach 2.04 (temperature limited)
• Cruise speed: 1,341 mph (2,158 km/h, 1,165 kn)
• Range: 4,488.0 mi (7,222.8 km, 3,900.0 nmi)
• Service ceiling: 60,000 ft (18,300 m)
• Rate of climb: 3,300–4,900 ft/min (17–25 m/s) at sea level
• Lift-to-drag: Low speed– 3.94; Approach– 4.35; 250 kn, 10,000 ft– 9.27; Mach 0.94– 11.47, Mach 2.04– 7.14
• Fuel consumption: 47 lb/mi (13.2 kg/km)
• Thrust/weight: 0.373
• Maximum nose tip temperature: 127 °C (260 °F; 400 K)
• Runway requirement (with maximum load): 3,600 m (11,800 ft)

Avionics

• Digital Air Intake Control Units
• Fly by wire flight controls
• Analogue electronic engine controls
• Triple inertial navigation units, one per flight crew
• Dual VHF omnidirectional range instruments
• Dual automatic direction finder instruments
• Dual distance measuring equipment instruments
• Dual instrument landing systems
• Automatic flight control system with dual autopilots, autothrottles, and flight directors: full autoland capability with visibility limits 250 m (820 ft) horizontally, 15 ft (4.6 m) decision height
• Ekco E390/564 weather radar
• Radio altimeters

Notable appearances in media

Main article: Aircraft in fiction § Concorde

See also

• Barbara Harmer, the first qualified female Concorde pilot
• Museo del Concorde, a former museum in Mexico dedicated to the airliner

References

Bibliography

• Armbruster, Michel (January–February 2005). "How to Avoid Uncontrolled Droop". Air Enthusiast. No. 115. p. 75. ISSN 0143-5450.
• Conway, Eric (2005). High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolitics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945–1999. JHU Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-8067-4.
• Beniada, Frederic (2006). Concorde. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Zenith Press. ISBN 978-0-7603-2703-6.
• Calvert, Brian (2002). Flying Concorde: The Full Story. London: Crowood Press. ISBN 978-1-84037-352-3.
• Deregel, Xavier; Lemaire, Jean-Philippe (2009). Concorde Passion. New York: LBM. ISBN 978-2-915347-73-9.
• Endres, Günter (2001). Concorde. St Paul, Minnesota: MBI Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-7603-1195-0.
• Ferrar, Henry, ed. (1980). The Concise Oxford French-English Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-864157-5.
• Frawley, Gerald (2003). The International Directory of Civil Aircraft, 2003/2004. Aerospace Publications. ISBN 978-1-875671-58-8.
• Gordon, Yefim; Rigmant, Vladimir (2005). Tupolev Tu-144. Hinckley, Leicestershire, UK: Midland. ISBN 978-1-85780-216-0..
• Gunn, John (2010). Crowded Skies. Turnkey Productions. ISBN 978-0-646-54973-6.
• Kelly, Neil (2005). The Concorde Story: 34 Years of Supersonic Air Travel. Surrey, UK: Merchant Book Company Ltd. ISBN 978-1-904779-05-6.
• Key Publishing (2023). Concorde. Historic Commercial Aircraft Series, Vol 10. Stamford, Lincs, UK: Key Publishing. ISBN 9781802823752.
• Knight, Geoffrey (1976). Concorde: The Inside Story. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-77114-2.
• Lewis, Rob; Lewis, Edwin (2004). Supersonic Secrets: The Unauthorised Biography of Concorde. London: Exposé. ISBN 978-0-9546617-0-0.
• McIntyre, Ian (1992). Dogfight: The Transatlantic Battle over Airbus. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 978-0-275-94278-6.
• Nunn, John Francis (1993). Nunn's Applied Respiratory Physiology. Burlington, Maryland: Butterworth-Heineman. ISBN 978-0-7506-1336-1.
• Olivier, Jean-Marc (2018). 1969 First Flight of the Concorde. Editions midi-pyrénéennes. ISBN 979-1-09-349833-1. OCLC 1066694697.
• Owen, Kenneth (2001). Concorde: Story of a Supersonic Pioneer. London: Science Museum. ISBN 978-1-900747-42-4.
• Orlebar, Christopher (2004). The Concorde Story. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85532-667-5.
• Ross, Douglas (March 1978). "The Concorde Compromise: the politics of decision-making". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 34 (3): 46–53. Bibcode:1978BuAtS..34c..46R. doi:10.1080/00963402.1978.11458481.
• Schrader, Richard K (1989). Concorde: The Full Story of the Anglo-French SST. Kent, UK: Pictorial Histories Pub. Co. ISBN 978-0-929521-16-9.
• Taylor, John W. R. (1965). Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1965–66. Marston.
• Talbot, Ted (2013), Concorde A Designer's Life The Journey To Mach 2, The History Press, ISBN 978-0-7524-8928-5
• Towey, Barrie, ed. (2007). Jet Airliners of the World 1949–2007. Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK: Air-Britain (Historians) Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85130-348-2.
• Winchester, Jim (2005a). The World's Worst Aircraft: From Pioneering Failures to Multimillion Dollar Disasters. London: Amber Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-904687-34-4.
• Winchester, Jim (2005b). X-Planes and Prototypes: From Nazi Secret Weapons to the Warplanes of the Future. Amber Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84013-815-3.

External links

Legacy

• British Airways Concorde page
• BAC Concorde at BAE Systems site
• Design Museum (UK) Concorde page
• Heritage Concorde preservation group site

Articles

• Donald Fink (10 March 1969). "Concorde Enters Flight Test Phase" (PDF). Aviation Week & Space Technology. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 March 2015.
• "First Concorde Supersonic Transport Flies" (PDF). Aviation Week & Space Technology. 17 March 1969. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 March 2015.
• Capt R. E. Gillman (24 January 1976). "Concorde as viewed from the flightdeck". Flight International.
• Dave North (20 October 2003). "End of an Era". Aviation Week & Space Technology.
• "The day Concorde flew into the history books". Airbus. 2 March 2019.

Videos

• "Video: Roll-out." British Movietone/Associated Press. 14 December 1967, posted online on 21 July 2015.
• "This plane could cross the Atlantic in 3.5 hours. Why did it fail?." Vox Media. 19 July 2016.