I have always loved Concorde. To me she is a symbol of achievement, a technological icon and, above all, a thing of great beauty. When I heard that she was being withdrawn from service I decided that I had to try to find a way to fly in her before the end. After a couple of false starts I managed to find Goodwood Travel and they organised my trip. I flew out on a conventional (ie slow) plane on Saturday, spent a couple of days in New York then flew back in Concorde on the Monday morning flight.
This page shows some of my pictures of the trip ... most of them are here now although I may add a few more later.
Here are some haiku I wrote about Concorde and here are some graphs showing the height and speed profile of Concorde during my flight.
The luxury of the experience starts here. The breakfast buffet had sausages, bacon, tomatoes and scrambled eggs in the hot section plus smoked salmon, cereals, fruit, pastries, croissant, toast, tea, coffee, fresh fruit juice and I don't know what else. Oh yes, the pictures reminded me, Champagne. I had mine with orange juice, as you can see in the last picture. Cheers.
The lounge had an area with tables and upright chairs near the buffet counter, a second area with arm chairs lower tables and plants to hide behind, and a third area with more arm chairs and recliners. The air of luxury was slightly spoilt by having plastic knives and forks a security precaution I suppose. Mind you I suspect that the attrition rate of the cutlery would be high now with all us tourists travelling.
The day we were there CNN were filming some interviews and general shots. They didn't interview me, I guess they had enough "geeky Brits" :) but there may be a shot of me chatting in the background and another one of me walking off to board, grinning from ear to ear like an idiot.
Boarding was through gate 6, just a short walk away from the lounge.
Concorde's windows are small. From my seat, 12A, I could see the first section of the leading edge of the wing. This did mean that my view was better than it would have been further back in the cabin as the wing hardly blocked my view of the ground.
The Mach-meter initially just displayed the Concorde image and message but soon we would be seeing a speed and height display here.
The Concorde safety card. I reluctantly left it in the seat pocket for the next passenger.
Once we were all seated the stewardess came around with hot towels.
We were pushed back from the stand and joined a short queue of planes waiting to take off. At the runway the plane ahead of us turned left from the taxiway then took off. Not so for us. Concorde turned right and went to the very end to give her the maximum length of runway possible. Once at the end she did a very tight turn, she seemed very manoeuvrable, then lined up on the centre of the runway.
Concorde needs to be travelling at about 250 mph to take off, some 50-100 mph faster than a conventional jet. In order to achieve this as quickly as possible the engines run at full power with the after-burners on (although the aircraft geeks amongst you may wish to know that engine number 4 can only be used at full power above 60 knots and below this speed it has an automatic limiter on it). The result of this is some 40 seconds of rapid acceleration down the runway seeming as if it is intent on shaking us to bits then a smooth swoop up into the air. Almost immediately the pilots cut the power back and go into a steep left hand turn, the sort of thing a trainee pilot would be chastised for doing, in order to follow the noise abatement procedures at the airport.
This sequence of pictures is over just 3 minutes so you can see that Concorde has an impressive rate of climb, even when not running on full power.
Seven minutes after take off we reach Mach .72 at 12,500 feet.
The actual moment when we broke the sound barrier, just twelve minutes after take off.
Firstly the table cloth ... yes a white linen table cloth for your little fold down table. This is indeed swish but does hide the undulations of the table so you have to take care where you place your glasses so as not to spill their contents.
Hors d’oeuvres : A grape covered in soft cheese and herbs, carrot and celery sticks and a small piece of fish
Appetiser : Ballontine of salmon with crème fraîche
Entrées : There was a choice of four different meals - I had the lamb.
• English breakfast featuring back bacon, scrambled eggs, pork sausages, tomato and mushrooms
• Lamb fillet with mustard and herb crust, spinach and sea salt roasted new potatoes
• Grilled sea bass with caviar cream sauce, Swiss chard and wild rice
• Oriental style vegetable and noodle salad with chilli and ginger dressing
Dessert : Apple tart Tatin
OR
Cheese : Stilton, Chevre and Pont L'Eveque
and to drink ...
Champagne : Pol Roger Curvée Sir Winston Churchill 1986
Port : Warre's 1982 Colheita Port
These were the best external shots of Concorde I could get from the walkway connecting the plane to the airport buildings at Heathrow terminal 4.
After the flight we managed to get a look around the flight deck. The second picture was taken by the Captain with me at the side of the engineer's seat.
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