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Concorde supersonic aeroplane, 1976-2003

It seems that these boards have mellowed over the years. One of the first threads i ever started, and certainly the most popular one in terms of posts, was one about the demise of Concorde on its final day in the air. It turned into something of a screaming match as many on the boards at the time said that it was a rich persons plaything and its demise was something to be applauded. Unfortunately the thread was lost in the early 2000s as a result of one of the board updates.
 
1927 said:
It seems that these boards have mellowed over the years. One of the first threads i ever started, and certainly the most popular one in terms of posts, was one about the demise of Concorde on its final day in the air. It turned into something of a screaming match as many on the boards at the time said that it was a rich persons plaything and its demise was something to be applauded. Unfortunately the thread was lost in the early 2000s as a result of one of the board updates.
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Well, I guess if Concorde was still in service many might still say that around here :D But now that it is gone, the aircraft can (and IMO should) be admired by anyone ever remotely interested in engineering & design excellence.

It's a semi-well known fact that in the very early days, Concorde fares were not much more than business class fares on subsonic planes. British Airways conducted a survey among a pool of Concorde passengers and most of them, being the kind of people who didn't buy tickets themselves but got their secretary to do it for them, were utterly surprised at how 'cheap' the tickets actually were. BA then asked them what they would have expected a flight on Concorde to cost, and on the strength of that survey they put the fares up by several thousand Pounds, to what most of the people surveyed had said a ticket had cost all along.
 
weltweit said:
There have been many wonderful things created which only rich people could afford.
That does not prevent them from being magnificent things.
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That was along the lines of the argument 18 years ago. The debate also included the Vulcan bomber as i recall. some argued that it was possible to admire its design and technical magnificence despite its ultimate intended use!
 
1927 said:
It seems that these boards have mellowed over the years. One of the first threads i ever started, and certainly the most popular one in terms of posts, was one about the demise of Concorde on its final day in the air. It turned into something of a screaming match as many on the boards at the time said that it was a rich persons plaything and its demise was something to be applauded. Unfortunately the thread was lost in the early 2000s as a result of one of the board updates.
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Not just a rich person's toy, but a noisy, fuel-guzzling spewer of all manner of pollutants, surely!

Tbh those arguments miss the point. Concorde certainly ended up for the rich, but it wasn't intended that way. It was always going to be expensive, but it was supposed to be the first of a new generation of airliners that in time would bring the cost of supersonic travel down to a level many could afford, just as had happened with air travel in general a few decades before - and the car and the railway, for that matter. What its designers didn't foresee was that fuel wasn't always going to remain cheap and easy to get, that a decade or so later people would start to realise that it's not actually a good idea to emit that much pollution, and that actually once you've got the transatlantic run down to 7 or 8 hours - from three days, as it was on the fastest ships - there wasn't actually that much need to go faster. But that doesn't diminish Concorde's achievement as a piece of engineering. I'll always regret that I never got to travel on Concorde - it was a magnificent thing.
 
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squatting in stockwell I use to check my watch with tthe late flight everyday. Never had an inkling of a chance to flyh on one, tiny thinmg compared to other "regular" aircraft, must have felt cramped.
 
Just remembered having been in one in a museum when I was a nipper on a school trip - would have been 002, one of the prototypes that’s at the Fleet Air Arm museum in Yeovil. At the time (early/mid 80s) the production aircraft were still in service.
 
Badgers said:
Nice :)

My grandad worked on the Concorde project. When he died I got all of his Concorde paperwork, uniforms, general memorabilia and such.

The main thing I got was his retirement gift. They sent a jet to take photos of Concorde going supersonic above the clouds. All the project staff and test pilots all signed each print of this and they all got one each on retirement.

I had to frame it in museum glass (Is Museum Glass Really Worth It For Your Bespoke Frame?) which was costly (£230 IIRC) but it is a nice thing to have.

Took photos of it and sent to Brooklands Museum a while back. They helped identify the signatures and invited me to bring it to the museum. I got a quick tour of (a grounded) Concorde which was nice.
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Got an email from the chap at Brooklands yesterday asking me if I had any memorabilia for some exhibition or something.

They are taking (on loan) his pilot uniform, some menus, luggage tags, photo's, documents, model aircraft, general tat and a few other bits I have in store.

Pleasing :)
 
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