The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Remembering the rapid rise of the highest of fliers
CONCORDE
This was surely the most distinctive and elegant passenger aircraft ever built; and, along with its Russian rival, the Tupolev Tu-144 (or Concordski), easily the fastest, cruising at twice the speed of sound. But it wasn’t just the sheer power that impressed. There was something supremely beautiful about the way Concorde would glide gracefully in to land, nose drooping down, body tilted back, cushioned by those shapely delta wings.
I was lucky enough to fly on Concorde, just once, in 2003. It was the 27th and last year of service and the end of a brief, romantic but – in truth – completely impractical era of commercial supersonic flight.
That trip from London to Barbados seems a long time ago now, but the memories are still strong. I remember how small it looked on the tarmac against the big jumbo jets. I remember the sense of being part of a club – Concorde seated only up to 128 passengers and we had access to a special lounge right by the air bridge. I remember too the understated elegance of the interior. Concorde didn’t need full-stretch legroom and the huge convertible beds which define business-class cabins today. The flight from London to New York, the mainstay of the British Airways service, took only three and a half hours. So the large brown leather seats, arranged in pairs either side of the aisle, were more than comfortable enough.
Most especially, though, I remember the sudden jolt in acceleration once we had cleared the Cornish coast and powered through the sound barrier. Then, the incredible view as we roared up to 55,000ft at Mach 2. At this point, we were flying more than twice as fast as any other passenger aircraft, and more than 10,000ft higher. Overhead, the sky – perhaps I should call it space – was no longer blue, but almost black. Below, you could clearly see the edges of the earth curving away from you.
At Mach 2 you are travelling at 26 miles a minute. And the five-hour time difference between London and New York meant that, on the outbound journey, you would typically arrive at JFK at least an hour before you left London.
Of course, it’s easy to over-sentimentalise Concorde. The Paris crash of 2000, which killed 113 people, will always overshadow the story. And, on a practical level, it was hardly environmentally friendly. On a typical flight, fully loaded it used three times more fuel per passenger than a 747. And, although incredibly quiet on board, for those on the ground it was extremely noisy in subsonic mode. The impact of the sonic boom also meant it could be flown at full speed only over the ocean.
It was also an economic disaster. Although BA and Air France (the only two airlines to fly Concorde) operated the aircraft profitably, that was after the enormous development costs had been written off by the governments in London and Paris. What had been intended to represent a model of Anglo-French technological co-operation had quickly become a folie de grandeur. Initial orders in the early 1960s when the project was launched were impressive – in all, some 18 airlines took out options on more than 70 aircraft. But, as oil prices soared and the operational limitations became clear, nearly all were cancelled before Concorde even entered service in 1976. Ultimately, only BA and Air France took delivery of their orders and only 14 aircraft entered commercial service.
There are several Concordes on display in aviation museums around the world, including those at Brooklands Museum near Weybridge (brooklandsmuseum.com/concorde), the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune, Edinburgh (nms.ac.uk) and the Imperial War Museum at Duxford (iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-duxford)