Concorde madness

last flight will be to Filton airport in Bristol. After all it is the home of Concorde.
They are planning a low fly past over the city before she lands

 

any idea when?

 

i think the 17th, but not sure

 

Man - it's really kind of depressing hearing about all these last flights - the Bristol one might be one to check out if I can sneak up there....

I didn't know Airbus had anything to do with the Concorde maintenance. Forgive me for slagging off the French (he he he) but aren't Airbus part owned by the French? The same French that DIDN'T have all the safety mods on Concorde that the British had installed in the 80s and 90s - including special work on the wheel areas? The same French who's Concorde blew up due to a wheel bursting?

If I knew then what I know now - that Airbus were maintaining the craft, I'd have stopped my dream of flying on Concorde bloody quick... Let us not forget the wonderful all singing all dancing Airbus fly-by-wire that decided to land itself in the middle of a forest during the 1988 Paris(?) air show....

 

More homework needed, Dom. NONE of the Concordes had any special work on the wheel areas pre-accident, and, to the best of my knowledge, the British didn't install any safety mods that the French didn't, nor did the French skimp on maintenance. All Concordes werer maintained to the same standard. However, all the maintenance in the world won't protect you when the unforeseen happens, as this note on the accident from the website of MIT Engineering shows:

The Concorde crash

Until July 25, 2000, the supersonic Concorde was aviation's star in safety as well as speed. Before its first flight, its engineers tested it longerâ€â€for 5,000 hoursâ€â€than any other plane in history; in 26 years and tens of millions of kilometers of transatlantic flights, the Concorde fleet had suffered not a single fatality. But for all its superb structural, aerodynamic and propulsion design, the Concorde bore a fatal combination of lower-tech flawsâ€â€proving the adage that it's the little things that'll get you. Its high takeoff speeds wore hard on its tires, which would often blow out despite being changed five times as often as those on an ordinary jet. And the fuel tanks in its wings were not strongly reinforced against impact, a precaution standard in newer planes.


It took just one more little mishap to make a disaster: a titanium “wear strip†fell off a Continental DC-10 in the path of an Air France Concorde leaving Paris. When the Concorde's tire hit the strip, a chunk of rubber tore off and smashed into the wing, punching a 600-square-centimeter hole in its skin and causing fuel to leak and ignite. The resulting crash killed all 109 people aboard the flight, as well as four on the ground. Air France and British Airways subsequently installed new tires tested to repel titanium strips at speeds up to 403 kilometers an hour, as well as undercarriage reinforcements and bulletproof tank liners to prevent similar fuel leaks. One arguably foreseeable accident source had, belatedly, been eliminated.

 

Dom - a large part of Airbus is the British BAE Systems allthough the company is based in Toulouse, France and incorporated under French law. Part of what is now Airbus was Aerospatiale - the French company that designed and built Concorde together with the Brits.

Don't forget that Concorde is just as much French as it is British - neither country could have built it without the other.

AFAIK Air France did all the same mods that BA did to their Concordes - the only difference being that Air France used different Michelin tyres to the ones that BA used but the BA Concordes were just as much at risk of the same kind of accident that happenes to the Air France Concorde.

The tyres fitted to all Concordes when they came back into service after the accident were special Michelin (French btw) ones which were inadvertently tested on one of the last BA flights when it landed at Heathrow with a shredded tyre with no drama.

The root cause and IMO primary thing to blame for the Concorde accident is that a Continenal flight a couple of minutes earlier had dropped a piece of metal debris onto the runway which shredded the tyre - it would have been the same for a BA Concorde.

So one of the original Airbus planes crashed at an Airshow? Big deal. Are you going to hold that against them forever?

I'm proud that Airbus, a European company (of which a part is British), is the leading airliner manufacturer in the world today, comfortably putting Boeing into second place. As with Concorde, it's a great sign of what Europe could and can do if petty nationalist and xenophobic views (like you seem to hold about the French) are put to one side and we work together.

Michael.

 

I think three Airbus 'fly by wire' airliners have crashed due to 'pilot error'. But none recently, presumably the pilots have learned to fly in a new way.

Paul

 

Certainly there are doubts about what exactly caused the Paris airshow crash and the two (I think it's just two) subsequent "similar" crashes. Also, it's clear that Airbus attempted to cover certain things up, particularly about the Paris crash. The pilot of the Paris crash (who survived) is adamant the computer "decided to land all by itself". But then he's not going to blame himself publicly is he?

The most telling thing is that after the the first suspect crash involving fare paying passengers Airbus completely re-wrote all the fly by wire software....but that had nothing to do with previous crashes apparently

All of that was some time ago though and the fly by wire software is completely sorted. I believe the pilots now have the option of total manual override aswell (it used to be just the tailplane which would have been completely useless). If I have a choice of aircraft these days I'll always choose an Airbus over a Boeing (I have often chosen particular flights for this reason). Apart from anything else they're a hell of a lot quieter inside.

Now Airbus, having correctly predicted the way air travel was going, are soon to release the A380 (double decker) whilst Boeing took a disasterous (and incredibly silly IMO) wrong turn with their still born "Sonic Cruiser" idea and are now having to back pedal and say that a lot of that theory will still be applied to their new 7E7, which is still years away and is still just your basic twin engine 300 seater with a few incremental improvements over existing aircraft.

Boeing, having long criticized and quietly chuckled at the "stupidity" of Airbus using "air delivery" of components (because different bits are made in different places and are flown in by special huge "Guppy" transport planes) are now trumpeting the fact that they are doing exactly that for the 7E7

Boeing, under the ridiculous pressures of the short termist, shareholder value, American market economy have become a shadow of their former selves. Cuts and the pressure to deliver ever greater returns each quarter have emasculated them into a company that no longer has the resources to build the next generation of super airliner. All they can do is re-hash old ideas whilst Airbus can forge ahead and build the A380, which will be the 747 of the 21st century.

Michael.

 

I've a funny feeling that Airbus aircraft may also be cheaper to purchase outright and the A330 is definately cheaper to run than the Boeing 777, according to my sources, who are staff at Emirates Airlines (who operate the Boeing 777-200/300, A330-200 and now the A340-600).

Many carriers use A340-300s on long-thin routes - e.g. Hong Kong to Rome, where range is important to fly non-stop, but passenger loads are not high enough to warrant the greater cost of a 747-400. Incidently, Virgin used to fly A340s into Hong Kong, whereas Cathay Pacific and British Airways both used 747-400s.

From a passenger point of view, the A330 may be quieter, but at over 6ft tall, I have to say that I prefer the seating on a B777.

The A330 is fine on flights such is Hong Kong to Beijing which is around 3 and a half hours, but I found a recent routing of Dubai/Bangkok/Hong Kong not too comfortable in Economy for about 10 hours or so.

I also note that Boeings seem to be used on premium routes by airlines - for example, Emirates fly an A330 into Manchester, Gatwick and Birmingham, but a B777 into London Heathrow.

 

The long haul route I fly most often is LHR -> JFK and, since the company pays and their carrier is American I don't get a choice. It's either 767 or 777. Of the two the 777 is certainly a lot more comfortable and spacious (I'm talking about business class - no idea what it's like for cattle class at the back )

I only flew a 747 (and it wasn't a 400 series) once Air Canada to Vancouver (in economy) and that was possibly the most uncomfortable 11 hrs of my life Last year we went to Vietnam for our hols and flew Air France from Paris to Hanoi (with stop in Bangkok) in economy in an Airbus A340-300 - I couldn't say it was 14hrs of bliss but I was mightily impressed. I had been dreading the flight and it was pretty painless (as was the return). Similarly, A340-300 Lisbon to Rio the year before was great. The return on a clapped out A310 was not so nice though

However, comfort has a lot more to do with the airline than the airliner.

On my twice a month trips to London (from home in Lisbon) with BA they used to use 757s and now use (smaller) A320s and A319s. That's where I really appreciate the extra quietness of the Airbuses.

Which airlines use which planes for which routes is a complex one and not necessarily to do with prestige. I can see a lot of airlines switching their 747-400s and 777s for A380s when they come out.

Oh, and one final point: it may not, statistically, be an issue but I'd much rather take long haul flights on a plane with 4 engines (all long haul Airbuses) rather than 2 (all Boeings except 747)

Michael.

 

The 767 is not the most comfortable of aircraft - I've flown on several QANTAS flights on them. In comparison, I much prefer the 777 - and that was in Cattle Class


The A340 is reasonably comfortable actually - I've flown Virgin from Hong Kong to London-Heathrow and back and was very impressed with the seating. The Inflight Entertainment wasn't as good as other carriers (smaller screens), but then that was due to the system being an older Rockwell-Collins setup, as opposed to Matsushita MAS2000.

A380s would make sense for those carriers running two to three long-haul sectors into Heathrow - e.g. Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Malayisan and Thai. Then they could cut down to two or one services a day.

Agree with about aircraft/routes - for example, Hong Kong to Bangkok is operated by several carriers, ranging from an Airbus A321, up to a 747 - and that's only for a two and a half hour flight.

The Space Bed flat-bed seat on Singapore Airlines is pretty comfy though in their Raffles Class (Business Class). Managed to use some airmiles on a trip to Hong Kong once and luckily, the upgrade seat became available.

 

I stand corrected on the Concorde thing - though I know it's an anglo-french project. I heard somewhere on the news about the French not having all the mods the Brits had - hence my comment re the maintenance etc.

As for other planes - I've only ever been on 4 flights in my life:
1 Virgin 747 to New York (Newark)
1 Virgin 747 back from NY to Gatwick
1 British Caledonian DC10 (well, the rebadged one) to Verona
1 British Caledonian DC10 back from Verona...

The Virgin flights were ace - my first ever flight - and I did it with (some) style - can't get over how awesome the feeling of rocketing down the runway in that huge plane was!

The British Caledonian flights on the other hand were fairly scarey. Particularly since they couldn't shut the rear cargo door properly when we were due to leave Verona on the way home. Anyone who's read about disasters will know that the DC10s had a spate of accidents where the rear door would blow out, causing the cabin floor to collapse and thus jam the control surfaces, causing the plane to do the inevitable. A particularly nasty mess happened in a forrest just outside Paris. McDonnall-Douglas renamed the planes after redesigning the door, but I can't remember what they were called after that.

Now - how do you go about using Airmiles? I reckon I've got enough for at least 1 return trip to Paris or Amsterdam (or at least the nearest airport to Amsterdam)?

 

Schipol, Amsterdam's airport, is one of Europe's busiest and is quite close to the city. See

http://www.schiphol.nl/

 

It's sometimes mockingly referred to as London's 5th airport

The airport is all on reclaimed land from what used to be part of the sea (or at least, an inland sea) and the name Schipol comes from the Dutch for "Ship's Hell"

Michael.

 

last flight 26th 1pm

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/3256797.stm

 

Landing 1PM today, 1/3mile from home

if the damn weather clears ill have some pics

 

Concorde comes home to Filton Airport, Bristol today. Several of my colleagues are panicking because they have to go up to a meeting in Filton this afternoon. Apparently 50,000 people are expected to show up to see Concorde and there will be several major road closures including the main A38 Gloucester Road. North Bristol is a traffic nightmare at the best of times. Should be really fun today :lol:

 

they reckon most people will go to the downs, weston beach is another good spot aswell

but im local and wanna see her come home

 

Graham
The XB 70, or Valkyrie, was never put into production because they couldn't get the engines sorted. Also I remember the footage at the time of one of the prototypes hitting a chase F 104 and coming apart in the air.

Bob