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Concorde's supersonic aircraft, people still remember the most in terms of its recognizable form, record speed and high costs.
March 2, 1969 - March 2, 1969, for the first time, the pride of the British-French cooperation, after which the steel bird got its name. Concorde means cooperation, agreement. But the first flight for commercial purposes was January 21, 1976
There were 20 aircraft: 4 for testing and 16 for commercial flights.
Michael Thaler, retired captain of the Airbus 320 aircraft - ''Concorde was such a big technological step in the development of civil aviation, that it's hard to imagine it today, especially if we think that we did not know personal computers 48 years ago. It also says a lot that he has no successor after 48 years. We have to be aware that the designers in the development of this aircraft encountered technical problems that had not yet been resolved.''
Concord testing has been recorded in history as a record expensive and long: prototype production, pre-production and production of the first aircraft required 5.335 hours of flying, of which 2,000 were tested at supersonic speed. And even the cost: until 1977, they were at that time $ 46 million. The development of the airplane was six times more than was predicted. Due to height, passengers were exposed to nearly twice as high ionization radiations as passengers on normal long flights, but the overall "dose" was still lower due to the shorter exposure time. The rule was that the airplane had to go below 14,000 meters ( 45931 feet ) in case of excessive exposure to radiation.
Some statistics: the plane was flying at an average speed of 2,2 mach (around 2,140 kilometers per hour), with a maximum height of 18,300 meters ( 60039 feet ), almost twice as much as a normal passenger plane. It is interesting that the low-speed aircraft engines were very inefficient: - just to get to the take-off run, the Concorde consumed two tones of fuel - and at high speed, it was extremely efficient.
Concorde Engine - Rolls-Royce Olympus 593
In addition to the engines, the hottest part of each supersonic aircraft is its nose: one of the greatest features of the Concord was its moving nose, made of special aluminum. Its movability combined the need for an appropriate form that allows aerodynamic efficiency during the flight while allowing the pilot good visibility during take-off and landing.
A Day That Marked The Fate Of The Concord
On July 25, 2000, 109 people on board the plane and four on the ground died in Gonesse's Air France Concord accident. According to official data, the accident caused a particle that fell from the Continental Airlines DC-10, which took off from the airport ten minutes earlier.
Continental Airlines DC-10 particle
Concord Retirement
Three years later, on 10 April 2003, both companies announced at the same time that they would retire in a year. The withdrawal of the concord indicated the low number of passengers after the accident in 2000, the drop in the aviation industry after the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the increase in maintenance costs.
The last Air France Concorde flew over the ocean on 2 and 3 June 2003 from Paris to New York and back, with only staff members and longtime collaborators working on the concorde project.
Great job! Very cool! Noise - sonic booms - was a big issue.
True. The noise was a very big problem. And expensive tickets.