Posts about: "British Airways" [Posts: 177 Pages: 9]

BRIT312
This story is totally hilarious, can't quite get this visual out of my head. ('100 KTS, POWER SET' sounds so boring in comparison). I never had the good fortune to meet any of the Braniff guys; sounds like there was certainly a character or two there. It really is a pity that their operation never really got a chance to expand into the proposed Pacific Rim service, who knows, it might really have done something.
It's generally known that the BA aircraft were temporarily re-registered to facilitate Braniff's operation out of IAD to DFW; G-BOAA, B, D & E were re-registered from G-BOAA and so on, to G-N94AA etc. Being an older registration, G-BOAC was re-registered as G-N81AC. At IAD, the 'G' part of the registration was covered over, leaving a now perfect 'American' tail number. Only five aircraft were involved in the operation (at the time BA operated just six aircraft, G-BOAF was still at the manufacturers at Filton, and G-BFKW (later to become G-BOAG) was on loan from British Aerospace. In order for the necessary FAA certification, required for operation by a US airline, a modification package were required by the FAA. Some of these modifications seemed a little 'picky' and irrelevant at the time (they still do). However some modifications were certainly not in this category, and quite honestly should have been 'picked up' by the CAA & DGAC during original certification of the aircraft. As an example, if the flying controls had been operating on GREEN or BLUE hydraulics only (due to an indicated spool valve jam) and that particular hydraulic system was subsequently lost, there was originally no automatic switching to select the standby YELLOW system into the flying controls; the controls would have been completely unpowered until a manual selection was made by the pilot. . One of the 'FAA Mods' was to facilitate just that, so if this (extremely unlikely I grant you) scenario had occurred, then YELLOW would automatically been selected into the controls, and at no time would the controls have been in an unpowered state.
The Braniff operation ended in May 1980, due to heavy losses on the subsonic only route, and it's a rather sad irony that aircraft G-BOAF had been modified and reregistered at Filton, from it's original registration of G-BFKX to G-N94AF. Unfortunately the aircraft was delivered to BA in June 1980, one month too late to participate, and prior to delivery it's registration was converted to it's 'normal' British registration; all other aircraft also reverted to original registrations also.
ChristiaanJ
Not really, being the sad b****d that I am, I still remember the Concorde flare law of: h+5h. = 0, so it was fairly easy to work out the programmed descent rates. (I did have to check the final 1.7'/second figure though). The rest I'm afraid is straight out of this sad old memory of mine.
Bellerophon
A brilliant description of the mechanics of final approach. It's so easy for us mere mortals to forget just what an involved and skilled process it was, to fly, and in particular land our totally amazing aircraft.

Dude

Hi guys, just another SLF enjoying the thread...

How much cooperation was there between the two airlines in terms of training etc? Did any BA crews fly Air France aircraft for any reason for example? Were cockpit proceedures pretty standardised across the two airlines?

Cheers!

telster
One for the pilots really, but there was generally far less co-operation than you'd have thought. I never saw any cases of a BA pilot flying Air France or visa-versa. I know a couple of our guys had ridden jump seat on an AF aircraft, but that's all that I pesonally recall.
On the technical side of things there were meetings between the two airlines, both together and jointly with the airframe and engine manufacturers, but on a day to day basis there was precious little exchange of information, and you'd have thought that we (BA) were the only operator of Concorde, as I'm sure the AF guys felt the same also. In all of my 30+ years on Concorde, I personally went to CDG only once for an exchange of technical views and to help them out with an air intake defect.
I'm so glad that you are enjoying this post, it's great to have you here telster. (It's certainly forcing me to look deep into the dark corners my poor old grey matter).

Dude

ChristiaanJ
It was one of the strange little differences between the BA and Air France aircraft that the French had a small digital TAS indicator (on the lower F/O's instrument panel) and BA had none.
As you rightly say, as an indicator TAS is not that much use to you, BUT TAS is vital for calculating wind speed/direction within an INS/IRS system, hence that is why any air data computer gives a TAS output to the INS or IRS.
Nothing dumb about the question (I wonder if you are even capable of such a thing ChristiaanJ ). Yes, the distance window on the HSI related to the next INS waypoint.

Dude

M2Dude,


You mention a minor instrumentation difference between the AF and BA Concordes.


Were there any other technical differences between the two Airlines respective Concorde Fleets that come to mind ?

Stilton
Hi again my friend. There were a few; BA used a Delco Carousel 4AC INS, where AF used a Litton system. BA updated the radar to a Bendix sytem, where I believe that AF retained the original RCA fit. (The RCA radar was awfully unreliable (rubbish actually, and very expensive to fix) , although most of the guys would agree that it gave a superbly detailed picture, better for mapping than the Bendix.
BA used quite a sophisticated Plessey integrated flight data system, where the AF recording system was a little simpler.
There were various other minor differences, but I think that's just about it.

Dude

Makes me wonder... In the event of a complete loss of thrust at Mach 2 (say fuel contamination) would the deceleration be significant ? If so I guess the fuel redistribution / pumping to maintain acceptable CG would become interesting...

Concorde did actually have a four engine failure drill, which covered it's complete speed rsnge including Mach 2.0. There was one assumption made in this drill and that the engines would continue to windmill which would allow them to give you full hydraulic pressure

As you could imagine, If all 4 engines cut at Mach 2.0 the F/E would be quite busy and so the the non flying pilot would use his fuel transfer switch to start the fuel moving forward. This was a pretty basic selection where fuel would be pumped out of Tank 11 using all 4 pumps [2 electrical and 2 hydraulic driven] and into the very forward tank which was no 9.

As a rule of thumb transferring 1000kgs from tank 11 to tank 9 moved the Cof G forward by 1%. Now with all 4 pumps in tank 11 running the tansfer forward was so quick that the pilot had to keep switching the transfer off and then on to stop the Cof G moving forward too quickly. It was usually to everybody's relief when the F/E could find the time to take over the fuel transfer as he had the selections to allow him to be more selective as to where the fuel went and so slow the rate down
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This was quite a neat system, as the gear was retracted, a SHORTENING LOCK valve was signalled, allowing a relatively tiny jack to pull the entire shock absorber body into the body of the oleo progressively as the gear retracted. So the shock

Forther to M2dude's explanation Concorde's main landing gear consisted of 3 seperate metal castings . there was the normal two for the oleo and these two were fitted inside the outer casting, which was the one you could see.
As the gear retracted a mechanical linkage , which was driven by the gear's retraction movement, would lift the oleo assembly up into the outer casing, so shortening the length of the leg . If I remember the shortening jack was just to assist in breking the geometric lock of the linkage
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The other difference between AF and BA aircraft was the DC electrical system

AF had Nickel cadmium batteries with an automatic charging system

BA had the good old lead acid battery sysytem, well except for AG where the DC system was one of the systems they never changed when AG was incorporated into the BA fleet

Thanks again M2Dude, since we're into details, prior to the accident did BA and AF use different tyres ?


For some reason I thought that BA used Dunlop and AF Michelin.


I think they both changed to the new design Michelin after the accident, can you offer any more info on this tyre ?


I believe it's design was part of the changes for recertification ?


Any other info on the changes incorporated afther the accident would be welcome.

Stilton -

Pre-accident I think we did use different tyres than AF. I also recall that BA elected to not use retreaded tyres while AF did, but am not 100% on that.

A pivotal part of the return to service was the Michelin 'NZG' tyre. (Near-Zero-Growth).

The tyres on Conc were incredibly hard-worked, partly because of the speed and partly because they took the full weight of the a/c throughout take-off (a conventional wing is producing a fair bit of lift prior to rotate - concorde produces none of note).

A LOT of energy is stored in a heavy tyre rotating this fast, so a burst can shed debris at great velocity.

The make-up of the NZG meant that it contained the expansion caused by rotation better (so less stored energy in the carcass), and had a far more robust and damage-tolerant structure. The videos of the destructive testing compared with the original tyres is frankly amazing.

The tyre was being developed by Michelin for the A380, I believe, and the principle was adopted for new Concorde tyres. In my opinion, this was the contribution which ensured we got back in the air.

Stilton
Prior to the Gonez disaster BA used DUNLOP tyres for both the main and nose landing gear. As EXWOK quite rightly states BA did not use retreads (although I recall these were tried in the very first few years of service). After the disaster Dunlop were approached regarding the development of an improved tyre for Concorde, but declined, and so BA went along with the superb Michelin NZG design. BA subsequently also changed the nose gear tyre to Michelin. A final modification was the curious decision to remove the steel cord that the British alone had fitted to their main gear water deflectors. This cord was fitted as a modification in the the early 1990's, it's purpose being that if a tyre burst occured, the water deflecor was held together in one piece, and would not fragment, with the resulting structuaral damage. After this modification was embodied there were no further cases of ANY BA aircraft having skin puncture as the result of a tyre failure. (Having said all this, it would not have been of any benefit at all in Paris).
EXWOKS explanation of the mechanics of why the Concorde tyre had such an incredibly stressful and vulnerable life, as well as the design makeup of the NZG tyre is as usual 100% correct; a high speed, very high pressure tyre bearing virtually the entire weight of the aircraft right up to the point of rotation.
EXWOK
It was as you say being developed for the A380. As well as all the well known benifits, this tyre lasted roughly twice as long as the original article, a further testament to this incredible design.
Oh yes, you are 100% on the ball here EXWOK. I remember hearing that the CAA was even considering 'de-mandating' the tank liner modification, as the new tyre alone was enough to prevent any chance at all of any potential fuel tank rupture. I don't want to spoil the nature of this wonderful thread by discussing the why's and wherefores of the Paris disaster (most of us 'here' have our own opinions about what really happened and why). What we do know that if there had been any case of a high speed falure of an NZG tyre, the airframe would have been safe from damage.

Dude

Well, the deHavilland Dash 7 has one, and I will take exception to anyone denying it airliner status. A small handpump is used to ensure downlock after freefall extension. (The Dash 8 and Fokker 50 have - much larger and draggier - backwards retracting main gear, assisted by handpump and springloading respectively for downlock after emergency freefall extension.)

Thanks to all Concorde experts for this truly wonderful thread. The ingenuity of design and the complexity of design that enabled the technological marvel that is Concorde never cease to amaze this humble airline driver. Having missed the opportunity to fly on Concorde is high on my list of aviatic regrets as well, and I'll have to make do with the memories of watching Air France Concordes taking off from CDG during our turnarounds there.

I could (and actually have) spent hours following this thread.

Is it true that Concorde was always flown by the highest seniority BA captains, copilots and flight engineers? Would Concorde usually be the last rung on the ladder before retirement for Captains/FEs or was it usual to return to slower equipment after a stint on Concorde?

And, sorry if I missed this, would Concorde thrust levers move during autothrottle operation?

Lastly, Concorde was originally to have had a large moving map system. Any insights into why and how that got scrapped along the way?

Thanks!

Alpine Flyer
And a darned good airplane too
One for my 'winged' friends really, but with BA it was an issue of seniority, with a long waiting list for selection. As far as I recall there were only ever a couple of cases when a captain left the fleet for another aircraft, most would very happily fly Concorde until retirement at 55. The senior first officers generally had to (reluctantly) change fleets when they got their commands, however there was as far as I remember two exceptions here, where an SFO was able to 'jump seats' to captain. SEOs would stay on Concorde until retirement. (In all the years that I can remember there was only one case of an SEO switching fleets from Concorde). A pilot friend once put it to me that if your passion in life was as a flyer of aeroplanes, then there was really nowhere to go after Concorde.
Oh yes, Concorde had a 'real' full flight flight regime autothrottle. The autothrottle actuator would drive all four levers together via individual isolation clutches and the computer used the sum of all four lever angles. In the unlikely event of an engine being shut down in flight, the A/T could still be used. There was an isolation switch on the roof panel that would enable the affected engine's thrust lever to be isolated and closed to idle, the computer using the sigmals from the other three engines, demanding a now higher lever angle to compensate for the failed engine.
The prototypes I recall had a DECCA moving map, but with the availability of INS (and the decline and finally shutting down of the DECCA chains) made the system a waste of time (not to mention space).

Dude

ALPINE FLYER

Is it true that Concorde was always flown by the highest seniority BA captains, copilots and flight engineers? Would Concorde usually be the last rung on the ladder before retirement for Captains/FEs or was it usual to return to slower equipment after a stint on Concorde?



To answer your question fully the fleets history has to be broken into two halves, that is the first 10 years and then all the time after that

The first ten years

When the fleet was very new 1976 and crews were bidding for it you have to remember that it was a BOAC aircraft and only BOAC crews could bid onto it. Very few people saw a long future for the aircraft and so were reluctant to go through the long training if it was only going to last for a few years

Also because it always had a limited route net work then there was far more money to be made on say the B747 with it's large route network

Anyway this all opened up the fleet to the younger members of the flight crew fraternity, and indeed the youngest Captain on Concorde at that time was only 32 years old with the youngest F/E being 29 years old. Indeed most of the crews on joining the fleet were in their 30's or early 40's and nowhere near being the most senior. With the exception of the F/Os most of these crews stayed with the aircraft until retirement so in the end it became a senior fleet. Indeed 20 years and even up to 24 years was the term that some stayed on the fleet for.

After 1985 when cross bidding was allowed between the old BEA and BOAC
and Concorde started recruiting crews again then people had to be fairly senior to get onto the fleet as people could see a future for the aircraft and realized it looked exciting.

It was never really a fleet for the most senior as you could as a Captain or F/E only bid for the fleet if you had at least 7 years to go to retirement and the F/Os had to be willing to forgo their oppurtunity for cammand for at least 5 years although this was sometimes ignored

F/O had to leave the fleet to get their command, but many came back as soon as their new Captains seniority allowed them to

Some Captains and 2 F/Es did leave the fleet for another aircraft prior to retirement

Therefore you can see with crew numbers hovering around 20 sets and this was reduced near the end it was no wonder that Concorde was known as the Boys club and Barbara was one of the boys too

On Circuit training tyres were always our problem, especially when we could not have the spare hubs /tyres made up locally by a man from the tyre workshop. Instead we had to bring ready made up wheels with us and the rest delivered by truck. This was no real problem when we did our circuit training in the UK ,but when we moved it to France then the logistics became more difficult.
If I remember correctly you would be lucky to get more than 20 landings out of a tyre, with the rear mains taking the biggest hammering and often being changed quite a bit before 20 landings. With up to 6 details a day and each detail consisting of up to 10 landings you can see that tyre usage on training was heavy

Fingers tired now

Two names...

Barbara Harmer at British Airways.
The first female Concorde airline pilot.
She became F/O on Concorde in 1993.
After the end-of-service, she continued to fly 777s with BA.
.
B\xe9atrice Valle at Air France.
After a long career as a pilot, she finally was selected for Concorde... and then the Paris crash happened.
But she persisted, and in the end she did 35 return flights CDG-JFK before the final end-of-service.
She then became captain on 747s.

Apart from Jacqueline Auriol , well-known French 'aviatrice' and test pilot, who flew once on the Concorde prototype, I do not know of anybody else.

And no, there is no record of any female F/Es.

CJ

Shaft109
The world has only ever had one Concorde female flight crew member, a really wonderful lady who is known as Barbara Harmer. Barbara was an SFO on the BA Concode fleet, joining us in 1993. You can read all about her here:
Barbara Harmer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

After she eventually left the Concorde fleet, Barbara became Captain Harmer, flying the Boeing 777 for BA.

Oops ChristiaanJ, never knew about B\xe9atrice Valle, salutations to her also.

Dude

The two galleys were a fairly cramped environment, and the forward galley in particular suffered by being an extremely hot place to work in. This heat came not from the ovens, Bev' makers or such, but kinetic heat from the area surrounding Door 1 Left. There was precious little air conditioning ducting in this area (no passengers sat there you see) and this door area really make one sweat a bit. Coupled to all this, because of the short flight time there was precious little time for the crews to achieve a full three course meal, including wine/Champagne sevice. Speaking for BA, these six crew worked their socks off at a truly astonishing pace, but sat in your airline seat, all you as a passenger ever saw was a truly superb cabin service from a truly professional group of people.
Oh, and the food was totally FIRST class, the wines even more so. (Hic! ).
So to any ex Concorde cabin crew reading this thread, a genuine and sincere 'well done guys', you did the fleet proud

Dude

Hi again Stilton. We really need one of the flying folk to answer this one fully, I am not sure what drill there was for this scenario, but I'm sure there was one. The Concorde flying manual had a drill for everything, from a four engine flame out at Mach 2 to a blocked toilet (ok, maybe not the loo thing ), and one of my winged friends EXWOK, Bellerophon, SEO Brit312 would remember one.
As far as your point about moving the CG further aft; you never had oodles of fuel to play with , and I'm sure that the guys will mention about handling the aircraft on approach with the CG too far aft. (After landing four tonnes of fuel were transferred from Tanks 5 & 7 into the empty fwd Trim Tank 9, 'to aid ground stability'. ie, help stop the aircraft from trying to sit on it's rear end as the passengers got off).
As far as your visor query goes, well the visor is either up, or retracted into the nose. The nose itself (which I suspect is what you are really referring to) would already be at the fully down 12 1/2 degree setting for landing anyway.
Oh, and back to the ground stability issue, was Concorde ever sat on it's tail by accident? Oh yes, just once to my knowledge. In May 1977, aircraft G-BOAA was returned to Filton for some modifications that were required, and part of these 'mods' was some improvements to the main trim-transfer pipes connecting the three trim transfer tanks 9, 10 & 11, as well as the trim tanks 5 & 7. Now the flow into tank 11 (the rear tank) had to be checked, but there was insufficient fuel at the front of the aircraft for stability. This shortcoming was passed on to the BAe manager in charge of everything, who stuffily refused to listen, and INSISTED that these transfer checks were carried out, 'do as I tell you, I am the manager here'. The man's sole concession to any sort of common sense was to allow a BAe employee to sit on the flight deck 'and watch the CG indicator', what the point of this was, well your guess is as good as mine. The name of the guy sitting on the flight deck was... John Thomas. (Hilarious I know, but true). So in goes the fuel, and in a very short period of time, John Thomas notices that the roof of the Filton assembly hangar seems to be slowly getting closer, and closer, and BANG!! The aircraft nose is high into the roof section of the hangar, but fortunately because the hangar is so huge, the nose did not hit anything, it was just stuck up there, complete with a very worried/terrified John Thomas who is sitting terrified in the captain's seat, staring at the hangar roof. The rear of the aircraft however was not so lucky. The right hand inner elevon came down on top of a hydraulic rig, damaging the elevon badly, as well as FLATTENING the rig. The opened #3 engine bay door came down on some large access steps, tearing the corner of the door. (not much left of the steps either). The rear fuselage, in the area of the hydraulic tanks, was holed quite badly by some access staging, entire spectacle coming to a very 'grinding' halt.
So now we have this Concorde G-BOAA, due to be returned to BA the following day, sat down on top of a lot of equipment, it's nose high in the air with a terrified John Thomas requiring a change of underwear. (The brilliant manager of course was nowhere to be seen). The aircraft was eventually returned to it's rightful attitude by someone WITH some sense instructing Mr Thomas on how to slowly, a little at a time, pump the fuel from Tank 11 forward into Tank 9.
And was OAA returned to BA the following day? errr no. The best skin repair man that BAe had to offer was sent from Weybridge to sort out the holes in the rear fuselage (he did an amazing job) and the crunched bits of aeroplane were repaired or replaced. OAA flew back to Heathrow four short (??) days later.

Dude

First of all, THANKS to all you from Concorde family for this fantastic topic. Started reading last night and almost slept in front of computer trying to read everything!

As a Concorde fan for 10 years (since I bought FS2000), and passionate developer of SSTSIM Concorde and FSLabs ConcordeX (flight dynamics, weight and balance), it's simply awesome to have you guys and gal here sharing your memories.

Regarding the CG corridor, here's a fantastic graphic from online Concordepedia, aka ConcordeSST.com, Technical/Fuel System section:



Interestingly, it doesn't show a warning for CG>59.1% above M1.6, opposite to what M2Dude said earlier on the topic.

I got curious on the Max Climb/Cruise and ALT ACQ not being primed. How the levelling at FL600 was done? Manually?

Regarding the fuel tanks, specially tanks 6 and 8: did these tanks' lateral center of gravity change with quantity? Due to their completely assymetrical shape, I'd expect some change in it.

Operationial question: did BA use the 380kts descent profile? Have heard that only AFR used it, but Haynes' book says that BA started using it too.

There are many doubts regarding procedures as manuals and informations available on the internet are mostly from BA 1976 entry-into-service era. But i understand many things changed along the years, as I can see on a Aug 2000 manual I've got, with percentages showing differences from the 76 era, or even completely new tables.

Well, that's it, hope to be able to contribute on the topic, but mainly learn from you that flew the real thing.

BlueConcorde ,
Look at my post #260, second diagram, taken directly from the BA Flying Manual.
There is a "first stage warning" (Mach/CG lights and gong) above Mach 1.6 and below Mach 0.45 for the aft CG limit.
It's only in the "corridor" that there is a "second stage warning" (flashing Mach/CG lights and stick shaker).

CJ

EXWOK's superb post above really characterises what Concorde was all about; An aircraft with 100 Champagne sipping passengers sitting in total comfort, the aircraft sat at Mach 2 - 2.02, 60,000' and wanting really to both climb and accelerate, but having to be restrained to prevent this and the engines poodling along and nothing approaching their maximum power. Seven cabin crew happily looking after their one hundred charges and three VERY lucky guys, sat at the front of this wonderful aircraft in shirtsleeve comfort and having really the best time of anyone aboard.
ANY fighter of the time would have to have been on full afterburner with the pilot in a sweaty flying suit and bone dome and only able to stay at anything like this speed for a VERY few minutes.
To EXWOK and the other guys (and gal ) I take my hat off, because you made it happen. Because of all you guys BA had 27 years of highly successful and TOTALLY SAFE Concorde operation. In the VERY few times that things did not go to plan, your skill and professionalism made the hairiest of moments seem like total routine.
And stilton my friend, we are in debt to you for starting this thread in the first place. Keep asking away and we'll all do our best to give you as straight an answer as possible; it's really fun for us too.