Concorde May Fly Again

[TenEightyOne]

The legendary aircraft that is Concorde may fly again if this group of fans are successful in their efforts. They hope to have the plane in the air within 4 years.


How the static Concorde display may look, yesterday.

 

[Famine]

They have marginally better chances of achieving initial swine flight.

 

[JKgo]

...Remind me why the Concorde stopped flying in the first place??

 

[PeterJB]

Noisy, expensive, not spacious, not economical, and a crash that damaged morale.

 

[GTPorsche]

...Remind me why the Concorde stopped flying in the first place??

Too expensive and wasn't particularly that safe near the end of it's active duty.

 

[JKgo]

Too expensive and wasn't particularly that safe near the end of it's active duty.

...Ahh, so that's why. Hmm, so then what are those Brits thinking?

 

[GTPorsche]

Probably nostalgia behind rose tinted glasses.

 

[Holdenhsvgtsr]

Too expensive and wasn't particularly that safe near the end of it's active duty.

Depends on who you ask.

BA on average were making £30-50 million a year profit from Concorde. Concorde was also the safest plane in the skies.

Air France were the ones that spat the dummy, When they had to reinforce the fuel tanks it reduced the fuel tank space which made it unprofitable for them. The agreement was that the running costs which were split between BA and AF but AF said they weren't willing to do it and that BA would have fund it all by them selfs for Airbus then to turn around and say no.

Also as well for it to be made airworthy it needs approval from Airbus (who have stated they will NEVER give it) BAE (who have said the same) and RR (who have said they aren't willing to maintain the 593 which will need to be redone also what will stop XH558 from flying and i remember hearing a while ago that the molds needed have been destoryed)

Concorde will never fly again.

Some great stories of it though from when my dad was in the RAF about some air forces trying practice intercepts on concorde and getting outrun though.

In April 1985, British Airways were trialling a Concorde up and down the North Sea. When they offered it as a target to NATO fighters, Mike and his team spent the night before in the hangar polishing XR749 which he borrowed from the LTF for the occasion, and the next day overhauled Concorde at 57,000 ft and travelling at Mach 2.2 by flying a stern conversion intercept. "Everyone had a bash - F-15s, F-16s, F-14s, Mirages, F-104s - but only the Lightning managed to overhaul Concorde from behind".

Would love to know who donated the £120 million though.... So would a few others in the aviation world looking at things

 

[Dotini]

I'm for it. The Concorde apparently attracts UFOs.

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_yl...o&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-119&fp=1

 

[NOVOCAINE]

And how are they going to achieve this? Forgive me for sounding sceptical but weren't the wings on all remaining Concorde's cut off? You can't just weld the wings back to an aircraft and expect the structural integrity of the airframe to be the same as before they were removed.

 

[Holdenhsvgtsr]

Forgive me for sounding sceptical but weren't the wings on all remaining Concorde's cut off?

You do pretty much every plane built has had its wings cut?

They are bolted to the main body as 2 separate pieces.

 

[Tornado]

...Remind me why the Concorde stopped flying in the first place??

One had a highly publicized crashed right around the time the fleet were going to need substantial upgrades to stay financially competitive with more modern (albeit slower) offerings.



9/11 didn't help (especially since that was the exact day that the first post-crash flight happened), I'm sure.

 

[NOVOCAINE]

You do pretty much every plane built has had its wings cut?

They are bolted to the main body as 2 separate pieces.

Really? They've always looked moulded too the fuselage to me (see the bulge in the side of the fuselage where the wings join too it)...

Admittedly though I'm no aviation expert, so I could well be mistaken.

 

[Holdenhsvgtsr]

Really? They've always looked moulded too the fuselage to me (see the bulge in the side of the fuselage where the wings join too it)...

Admittedly though I'm no aviation expert, so I could well be mistaken.

would be a rather large machine to build it in one piece....

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Really? They've always looked moulded too the fuselage to me (see the bulge in the side of the fuselage where the wings join too it)...

Admittedly though I'm no aviation expert, so I could well be mistaken.

No they're two separate structures and both go through different testing like the stress strain done on wings in the R&D test labs. The Fuselage also has it's own testing obviously, but it's not done as a single unit.

 

[TenEightyOne]

...Remind me why the Concorde stopped flying in the first place??

It was involved in a crash after hitting debris from a broken (incorrect) repair on a Continental plane. Chirac's plane was number 2 for the outbound runway behind Concorde. The conspiracists have it that the choice was to either discredit Concorde or to accept that Paris Charles de Gaulle were at fault for rushing operations.

The truth is more likely that customer confidence fell after that accident and later incidents with tyres. The post-accident reinforcement to the tanks also compromised range and balance. Otherwise it was still a profitable aircraft but it could be seen by the two operators that maintenance/safety costs in the modern age were likely to continue to spiral so they likely pulled the plug while they were ahead.

 

[Robin]

Other reasons for it's demise don't forget was the restrictions on where it could fly and land. When it launched Concorde was flying all over the world but then due to the sonic booms it eventually could only fly across open sea which pretty much made the London/Paris - New York route the only one they could do which was popular enough to warrant continuing.

Also I reckon the internet had something to do with it (broadband was just starting when they stopped flying), it was no longer absolutely imperative for people to be somewhere abroad in a quick amount of time. It was very much a product of its era which holds little relevance today apart from being technologically advanced.

 

[Holdenhsvgtsr]

It was involved in a crash after hitting debris from a broken (incorrect) repair on a Continental plane. Chirac's plane was number 2 for the outbound runway behind Concorde. The conspiracists have it that the choice was to either discredit Concorde or to accept that Paris Charles de Gaulle were at fault for rushing operations.

The truth is more likely that customer confidence fell after that accident and later incidents with tyres. The post-accident reinforcement to the tanks also compromised range and balance. Otherwise it was still a profitable aircraft but it could be seen by the two operators that maintenance/safety costs in the modern age were likely to continue to spiral so they likely pulled the plug while they were ahead.

So much wrong with that post.

It was a global downturn in air travel not that anyone lost confidence in Concorde itself in fact Concorde was in demand it was Airbus that pulled support which in turn made Air France pull out putting all the support onto British Airways.

British Airways couldn't afford to do it on their own even at a profit.

At the beginning of the 21st century the Concorde had become undeniably dated. As it had had no competition in its unique market niche, developmental pressures that had forced more conventional airlines to economize and introduce computerized flight systems had passed it by. By 2000 its cockpit still had analogue instruments and it was the only aircraft in the BA fleet that still retained the position of a flight engineer in the cockpit.

Then came the much publicized crash of Flight 4760 in France where pieces of a ruptured tyre damaged a wing fuel tank during take-off leading to a subsequent fire and crash of the Concorde involved . While the accident itself was a result of an inherent danger in aviation - that of foreign object damage (FOD) - rather than the design flaw of the aircraft, it forced the shut down of all flights over a year until safety measures put in place and further extensive testing was conducted.
The first flight after the crash was on September 11th 2001, landing soon after the attacks on the WTC and whatever hope the Concorde might have had of making a come back was quickly quashed by the air travel slump that followed. The final nail in the coffin was Airbus's (inheritor of the Aerspatiale's mantle) refusal to support the maintenance and manufacture of spare parts.

It was all down to Cost: The Airlines were not making back the money spent on the safety modifications and other upgrades, with some other big costs coming up (tens of millions, before any life extension programme), BA need to write off £84M now rather than £150M in 3 or 4 years. Air France wrote off a large sum of money too.

 

[TenEightyOne]

So much wrong with that post.

Really? A full Concorde at $5000 per ticket was a profitable flight by quite some margin. Replacing large airframe parts would be prohibitively expensive, it's certainly true that updating to a "glass" cockpit would not have been financially feasible.

The proximity and timing of Chirac's plane was considered causative for some time by the investigators before the idea was dropped once Continental were found to be to blame by dint of the fallen (and bodged) part. Questions about why the runway wasn't visually examined before the flight were asked but then dropped. To me that's always been slightly odd, especially at an airport as capable as CDG.

EDIT: An article about the maintenance failings on the crashed Concorde itself, somewhere I have all the photos and the accident report (I used to present on it once upon a time), I'll dig them out and check the photos for GTP-suitability. The runway photos are very telling.

 

[Holdenhsvgtsr]

Really? A full Concorde at $5000 per ticket was a profitable flight by quite some margin. Replacing large airframe parts would be prohibitively expensive, it's certainly true that updating to a "glass" cockpit would not have been financially feasible.

The proximity and timing of Chirac's plane was considered causative for some time by the investigators before the idea was dropped once Continental were found to be to blame by dint of the fallen (and bodged) part. Questions about why the runway wasn't visually examined before the flight were asked but then dropped. To me that's always been slightly odd, especially at an airport as capable as CDG.

EDIT: An article about the maintenance failings on the crashed Concorde itself, somewhere I have all the photos and the accident report (I used to present on it once upon a time), I'll dig them out and check the photos for GTP-suitability. The runway photos are very telling.

I've seen the report at all and air France were known to be very lax as air France and Airbus wanted rid.

 

[TRGTspecialist]

Regardless of it's many problems as a commercial venture it's just a beautiful thing, fantastic machine. I'd love to see it fly - never got the chance to do so. Will have a lot of hope for this project (false or otherwise)

Now excuse me while I briefly whore out an excuse to be a bit patriotic........

 

[ECGadget]

I spend the first few years of my life watching this beauty fly. I even did a study on it for projects through college and uni, and there is something about this machine that just makes it extra special. Realistically it probably won't fly. But IF it does manage it, I am going to be there to see that flight and I know so will thousand and thousands of other people. I think that the program should have been handled better, particularly by Air France (that whole incident with the debris) and had it been I think Concorde would still be flying today, but maybe not in the same capacity as it used to. Overall, I really really want to see it fly. It was an old but very safe plane. Sure it was not very efficient, especially subsonic due to the aerofoil profile but it didn't spend much time subsonic anyway. I think politics got in the way of this aircraft continuing to fly (especially as it was profitable), and that is very very sad.

 

[wfooshee]

One thing I've read (and of course cannot find again.....) was that while the Concorde was profitable, and extremely so on a per passenger basis, it simply didn't carry enough passengers.

When they were grounded, BA discovered that they kept their passengers, who then flew first class on 747s. The fuel cost per passenger on a 747 is significantly less, like a quarter as much, on the 747, although still actually not very significant in the ticket price. The fact that passengers had already demonstrated loyalty to the airline in the time after the crash but before flights resumed was as much a part of the decision as anything else, along with investments needed for modernization in the cockpit.

 

[Carlos]

Would LOVE to see a Concorde flying, never seen one in real life Could've though, since they were coming to Schiphol quite frequently but I wasn't that interested in planes at young age

 

[ECGadget]

This is what I miss the most...

Only two passenger aircraft have given me a feeling that I am seeing something really special, one is the B747 and the other is Concorde.

 

[Swagger897]

The problem with the Concorde continuing flight per say in today's world of aviation, is the fact that it wouldn't be more profitable.

Airlines make as much if not more profit via cargo than they do with passengers. Cargo has priority on all long haul flights and people will be pulled off the listings if the weight numbers don't add up.

I'm not sure if anyone has been flying recently and heard "we are currently offering travel vouchers for those who are willing to give up their seats, as we have a full flight." No, the flight isn't full of people, the boxes to be ticked for weight is full, and you're just the next piece of lard being removed for those iPhone boxes being sent to China to be packaged and shipped back.

BA is the only true airline that could bring her back. They have the largest 747 fleet in the world still operating long haul flights, which barely break even on passenger profit. To have a "one-a-day shuttle" ride from New York->London would be the only way they could sustain themselves, once their 747 fleet is gone and replaced with 787-9's and the A350Neo's...

Then again, the accountants would still say no. Chartering this aircraft is the only way it's going to fly again. Just like it's the only way for the 727/747/757 to still continue flying. They are just not efficient enough or the market isn't looking for jets that encompass those roles. You may think it's a sad day when the last 747 flies, but the truly sad day will be when the last 757 does. An aircraft that is labeled the "Ferrari of the sky", more efficient per passenger than some of the 737's it's being replaced by, only because the market took a hit during 9/11...

Sometimes it's not the aircraft itself, but how society keeps changing. It seems like it's for the greater good, but really we all will missing something about the oldies.

 

[Holdenhsvgtsr]

BA can't bring it back as there's no manufacturers to build the spare parts ie Airbus.

 

[Swagger897]

BA can't bring it back as there's no manufacturers to build the spare parts ie Airbus.

I didn't say can, but if the same group that contributed $120million wants to double, or even triple that to make their own Concorde, that could be done. That's why I said a charter airline would be best suited for it, as they don't need to have OEM parts to continue airworthiness, but rather have small groups or even colleges build what's required.

 

[Holdenhsvgtsr]

I didn't say can, but if the same group that contributed $120million wants to double, or even triple that to make their own Concorde, that could be done. That's why I said a charter airline would be best suited for it, as they don't need to have OEM parts to continue airworthiness, but rather have small groups or even colleges build what's required.

You do though that's why XH558 isn't flying because the manufactors won't rebuild the engines and it's a rule by the CAA to have support from the manufactors or it ain't flying.

• Concorde no longer has a Certificate of Airworthiness. This is a document issued by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and is a legal requirement for all civilian aircraft types before they are allowed to fly. Concorde's was withdrawn by the CAA soon after its final flight in 2003. For there to be any hope of Concorde's certificate being re-instated it would be essential to have the support of the manufacturer. Unfortunately, Concorde does not (see the following paragraph).
  
• And the real show-stopper - Concorde was originally manufactured by BAC of the UK and Aerospatialé of France who both later became part of the Airbus consortium. Unfortunately, Airbus have repeatedly stated they have no interest in participating in returning Concorde to the skies. Airbus was the key supplier in the Concorde operation. Not only did it build Concorde, it specified and controlled the maintenance programme and was the end supplier of the parts that made it fly. Without their support it doesn't make any difference how much money is made available - the whole idea literally is a non-starter.

 

[ExigeEvan]

Agreed on many of the "it'll never happen" points.

Without buy-in from all the design authorities then you will not get certification. I'm not even sure what the airframe hours are on the fleet by the end. XH558 benefited from being low on its hours when first restored.