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

Landroger ,
What triggered my remark was merely that I don't think there's any record of a BA and AF Concorde flying in formation near to the LearJet....
But yes, we would all want to have taken photos like that.

And all of us still hope that there is a video somewhere, somehow, of one of Jean Franchi's barrel rolls.....

CJ

I've been away 'cruising' for a few weeks (lecturing about Concorde) and thought it was time I popped back into this wonderful forum.
There were a few questions regarding ground running Concorde, so here are some 'facts' as far as I recall (Wrinkled old brain permitting).

Concorde was ALWAYS ground run in the detuners at the BA Engineering base at Heathrow, with the parking brake ON. (Save idle runs on the ramp after, say, replacing a PNC actuator etc. on departure. The required high power nozzle trim run could be deferred until the aircrafts return to LHR). Sadly I can confirm that the Concorde 'Hush House' was being demolished when I was last over the engineering patch a few weeks ago, and is probably all gone now.

The detuner chocks were like nothing else you could imagine. They were HUGE steel affairs that needed wheels to be wound down in order to move into position (took a couple of guys at least to move). Once in position forward and aft of the undercarriage, the wheels would be retracted and these 'chocks' would be tension chained together. Believe me, nothing was going to move these suckers!!

Engines WERE NOT run in symmetrical pairs, but the adjacent engine always was run at idle power. The reason for this was so that there was airflow over the T1 probe of the adjacent engine, a winding in this being used by the alternate engine control lane if needs meant it might be required if the main lane failed during the engine run. The way that the aircraft was tethered meant that symmetrical high power running was not any sort of issue.

We were very mean too. In the summer the hangar doors of TBK opposite would invariably be open during the day, the challenge was to see how long it took for us to make them close the doors to shut out the din. (Like I said, Concorde engineers were mean ).

Good to be back
Best regards to all
Dude

Concorde Profitability
Ahhh that question again. Just concentrating then on matters on the UK side of the English Channel. Prior to the Paris crash, BA was making a very healthy profit indeed on it's Concorde operation. There were some blots on the horizon that had to be overcome (Relife 2, SFAR regulation implementation, EGPWS and GPS navigation enhancement etc.) but all these things were 'doable' and under both study and disussion.
After the Paris crash came the horrible events of 9-11; around 40 regular BA Concorde passengers were tragically lost in the twin towers alone. When the aircraft returned to service in November 2001 the loads (and profitablity) were understandably taking a major hit, but as all times in her service life Concorde had the ability to weather the storm and was already bouncing back well. Unfortunately in 2003, due to some totally disgusting goings on, on the French side of the Channel, the aeroplane never got the chance to fully recover and BA services ceased in October of that year. (It is to the eternal shame of certain individuals on THIS side of the Channel that this French Disconnection was never challenged legally).
Concorde was only ever run (that is at least in the UK) for profit, but the hike in oil prices would obviously pushed up ticket prices significantly, and the massive economic downturn of last year would have certainly meant a temporary reduction in services. But in spite of all this, I firmly believe that Concorde would have weathered this storm, and would have been now earning those bucks for BA yet again.

John Hutchinson - The Wind Beneath My Wings
A superbly interesting read, written about arguably the most eloquent of all Concorde pilot speakers. One of lifes true gentlemen and a superb pilot, it is a long overdue biography, well done Hutch.

Best Regards
Dude .

71 pages later my personal edification is complete!! All contributors, particularly the 3 venerable concateers (you know who you are!), many thanks for the most captivating of insights.

3..2..1..Now indeed! Bravo I salute you !!

sAx

PS Having watched the Concorde Story, some consideration of sorts would need to be taken of events in the immediate aftermath of the Gonesse crash. AF from their perspective took the responsible position to ground aircraft, where BA continued flights later that evening following a business as usual approach. This proved quite upsetting on the French side of the Channel, as reasons behind AF4590's crash where unknown at that stage. The Gonesse Mayor being very critical about what appeared to his eyes to be a quite callous BA attitude, placing commercial consideration before public safety.

To rule any two individuals, the age old philosophy is to divide them. By the time recriminations started to fly from the BA side concerning AF maintenance standards, then the joint collaboration had achieved this for themselves. This left little room for manoeuvre for the CAA, who had to be seen to be placing the public interest before any cash as usual continuity. Their stance would need to be unequivocal, showing the public that the 'gamekeeper' would not be making any attempt to be seen in collusion with the 'poacher' and hence removal of the air worthiness certificate. This is not a riposte of any previous post, but just my $0.02c of what may have played a contributory part in the final decision to retire Concorde. Regardless of any attempt to present a united front, the end result may well have been the same. but it would have gone someway to underline public confidence in the responsible attitudes of both AF and BA.

BA made the right call regarding continuing to fly their Concordes following the crash, and it was a massive mistake by the CAA to ground the British fleet. The whole crash has been one massive cover-up by the French who operated Concorde badly with regard to their maintenance procedures. The crash lies firmly at the door of Air France.
Of course we could go into the list of near crashes by Air France, such as the time when they topped up the hydraulic fluid on Concorde SD with the wrong fluid. The French had problems with their Concordes that the British never suffered, and I am surprised that there were not further crashes with their fleet.
Well done BA for a wonderful nearly 28 years of safe supersonic passenger services!

Well said M2dude!
I appreciate your comments greatly, which I am fully aware of are based on nearly 37 years of experience, starting with the construction of the Concorde airframes for BAC at Filton, and following this as an engineer with BA keeping these beautiful birds flying.
You are one of the real heroes and stars of the Concorde world, one of the most respected Concorde engineers in the world, add to this fact that you also basically wrote the book for BA on the air in-take system!
It's a pleasure to read all your truly amazing posts based on such great knowledge gained from your mass of Concorde experience, unlike some posts on here which are based on reading books, and listening to the rubbish that\x92s out there written by those who lack any experience regarding this great aeroplane


Steve

I second that M2Dude and thank you for correcting this m*ron




Interesting how this 'accident waiting to happen' enjoyed a thirty year plus accident free record with BA.

There will never be another Concorde, she came from an age that saw flying as something amazing, beautiful and exciting, and there was glamour and style. Today\x92s world sees flying as cheap and very unglamorous.
But what we have to remember is the as far as the BA operation was concerned, this fuel eating plane as you called it Kalium, paid for itself and made a massive profit for the company, and could have been doing the same today in 2011.
Building another Concorde isn\x92t about the money, or the dreams. It\x92s about having the vision and drive to achieve something that can help deliver something truly amazing, Concorde did so much for this country alone, what about all the small companies that were involved with the project, even making the simple items such as ash trays, the project provided work and the workers paid taxes.
We have lost the drive and alone with that the skill to deliver anything of any greatness in this country, we let the world in so many areas and for awhile in aviation, then handed it all over to other countries like France and walked away.
The latest joke is the way we are turning our backs on these amazing new aircraft carriers; they will be world leaders in design and provide so much work for so many.
What is important now is that we fight for the heritage of Concorde, and make sure that we protect the few airframes that we do still have, each one is a prototype, they are so different, what a really shame that the short sighted governments didn\x92t allow the teams to build production model number 17, this one would of made so much difference and possibly sold in mass numbers.
Concorde, born of a time when we had vision and drive to achieve so much, Concorde was grounded by people with a lack of vision and of course by the nasty Alan (I killed a plane) McDonald!

In actual fact BA looked very seriously in the mid 1980s at a limited glass cockpit, where the primary flight and engine instruments would be replaced by and EFIS/EICAS setup, ala Boeing 757. Studies were quite advanced, the main cited advantage was 'reduced cost of ownership.' It seems that the reason it never went any further was, now here's the irony, 'increased training costs. (You have to remember that the 757 was the only glass cockpit BA had at the time, with nothing much else on the horizon).
There would certainly needed to be other upgrades avionics wise, in the fullness of time, but the glass cockpit was not really top of the list. Glaring requirements were improved navigational accuracy, as well as EGPWS together with predictive and reactive windshear protection. (Although to really get the most out of this an EFIS type system is crucial). We (BA) were already looking at both EGPWS and the replacement of the DELCO Carousel 1VAC INS. The Litton 92 had been suggested early on, as it was the only l@ser INS available with a GPS card fitted, but it is possible that given time an IRS with separate MMR interface would have been used. (This of course now requires an FMC, with a potentially rather involved VNAV profile). As far as EGPWS (and GPS navigation), the main problem was going to be 'where to put the darned GPS antenna' up there on the fuselage crown, but this was being looked at right up to 2003. Providing there was an adequate way of displaying the warnings, predictive windshear protection would have been a breeze, as the Bendix RDR4B radar system (itself retrofitted in the mid 1990s) had the PWS capability merely disabled on Concorde). As Concorde was a highly profitable enterprise for BA during the vast majority of her service life, it is my view that natural avionics updates, such as those described, would have found their way onto Concorde given enough time. (EGPWS, GPS NAV as well as PWS protection would almost certainly have been on board by now).

Best regards
Dude

We cannot let this thread be consined to the annuls of forgotten history

There must still be a million questions that you always wanted to ask about this wonderfull plane

So here is mine

On Wikipedia they tell us there were 20 Concordes built, 14 production and 6 pre production

Also Wiki tell us there were 67 olympus 593 engines built

Forgive me but this does not seem possible, not enough engines were built to satisfy 'new' engines for 'new' planes on the production line


Does this mean that the 6 pre production a/c donateded some engines to production aircraft so some BA and AF planes flew, even from new, with 'used' engines??

Many thanks

All questions still welcome!

Not quite....

There were two prototypes , 001 and 002 (the ones with the odd porthole visors).
There were two preproduction aircraft: 01, the British one, with a full 'look-through' visor' and 02, the French one, the first one that looked like the production model, with both a 'full' visor, and the 'pointy' tail.
Then there were two 'near-production' aircraft, that were used for certification, route-proving, and suchlike, but that never entered airline service (201 and 202, now best known as 'F-WTSB' and "Delta-Golf").

And yes, then there were 14 production aircraft, that in the end all made it into service with BA and AF.

This is still a slight puzzle.....
The '67' figure probably refers only to the version of the 593 engnes for the production aircraft (4x14=56, plus spares), and not to the earlier versions used for development/testing, for the prototypes, the preprods and the cerification aircraft.

AFAIK , all the production aircraft flew with 'new' engines.

Funnily enough, there's a current discussion on a French Concorde forum on the same subject, trying to figure out not only exactly how many engines were built, but also the "where are they now?".

It would be a nice item to add to the "Concorde Story". We may have to appeal to the RR Historical Trust to open their archives, and tell us exactly how many Olympus 593's were built, and what they can tell us about their history.

CJ

Someone's dreaming! It cannot be used as an engine according to the text (BA restriction) so it has value either as a museum exhibit or as scrap.

So either no monetary value (museum exhibit) or a few hundred pounds (scrap). Minus a few hundred pounds to transport it to the scrapyard!

LOL.... OK.
Anyway, for modelers (not your case, I take it) a Munsell chip ref wouldn't be much use..... they'd need a Humbrol paint number !

"Matching colors" is a Concorde problem to this day....
A small group of enthusiasts is trying to re-paint F-WTSA (the French preprod Concorde, now at a small museum south of the Paris Orly airport) in the same paint scheme as in the olden days... ancient BA livery on one side, ancient AF livery on the other side.
Getting hold of all the paint color references is not obvious!

CJ

IIRC (somebody else can confirm?) that's right.
It was a JFK-LHR BA Concorde which landed at Cardiff (in Wales) with some kind of tech problem. The paxs were ferried to LHR and the repairs were done at Cardiff.
Then the a/c was flown back to LHR. Since the take-off was over the sea (so no noise abatement needed), and the plane was empty, with only little fuel, she went "like a scalded cat" and hit Mach 1 in about 6 minutes.

Mr Hoppy ,
I am aware it doesn't quite answer your question... I hope one of the pilots can answer that. But I doubt they would normally have kept specific records.

CJ

I had a guy on a tour at MAN last week who asked a question - what were the differences between the BA Concordes and the French ones ?

Broadening it out a bit this was touched on earlier in the thread with the APU for Iran discussion and a bit about AF & AG being slightly different.

Is there a definitive list anywhere of what each of the airlines wanted ?

Just thought I'd drop by and see what was happening on this thread........

My best personal experience of a quick t/round was a tech stop at SMA which we turned around in 45mins. Fuelling was taking place for about 30 of that. AF used to tech stop SMA on the way to GIG, I believe, so the station had some Conc experience.

As for the differences between AF and BA a/c I think most have been dealt with before. AG stood out in BA as a partly 'French' hull; the stuff noticed by pilots was generally:

NiCd main batts, with slight differences to the DC system (no SSB I recall).
No ability for flt crew to 'steal' pax O2.
Perspex flip up visual level on the glareshield instead of open metal construction. Sounds trivial, but I hated it!
No annunciation of DTG to next INS WPT on HSI unless in NAV mode (or was it TRUE?)
Undercarriage monitor not fitted.
Different audio select panels - get this: 6 a/c in the fleet you pushed for TX and pulled for intercom.....AG.......the other way round. Genius.
Probably a lot of other stuff under the skin that I've forgotten.

Allegedly this was representative of the AF fit (certainly as far as the batts/DC) but I can't say for sure. Obviously the cabin fits were very different and over the years the two airlines will have carried out different non-mandatory mods (e.g. the infamous 'cowcatcher' mod).

OAF was a standard BA machine, except that being younger it (like OAG) didn't have the 'crown area' mods done.

All from memory, usual health warnings apply......

OAF was indeed a true BA aircraft, it title was bought for \xa31000 and 10,000FF, but significant sums ( million+) were then spent to deliver it to the BA spec. BA did fund and purchase it as their 6th Concorde, albeit at a greatly reduced price.

OAG sort of fell into BA's use. They had "bought" it for under \xa3100,000k, with a must sell back clause , before OAF was delivered to give their services resilience while OAC whet back to Filton for repair. During its use it suffered contamination of its hyd systems, so was grounded, before this was repaired the Concrde programme all but shut down and BA held onto the aircraft fully registering it as OAG, initially it had been G-BFKW.

OAG flew for a short while but was eventually grounded, as I understand it mainly for spares recovery, but as it was a million miles aware spec with from the other BA ( cabin was even different) it was a easy choice to make.

When BA acquired all the spares and full access to G-BBDG a decision was made to bring OAG as close to BA spec as possible and be the first to have a new interior on the fleet. OAG was then then launch Concorde in the land our livery and a lot OAF was a standard BA machine, except that being younger it (like OAG) didn't have the 'crown area' mods done the air to air shots from this time are of it in 1985.


Crown area mods...were these not mandated and embodied fleet wide at the 12,000 major?

Many thanks for this thread. Thank heavens Concorde didn't have an APU otherwise I wouldnt have had the pleasure of reading it.
I was at school in Basingstoke when Concorde first attended the Farnborough air show. Maths lessons were constantly interrupted by the third floor windows filling up with a very noisy aeroplane flying over at high alpha and wheels down. After the third circuit, the teacher (an Australian,) shouted at us that we'd seen your BXXXdy aeroplane now get back to work. Phillistine!
I never saw one flying without looking up in reverent awe and I cannot recall a time when anybody else wasn't doing so.
Came the day that I woke up to hear the sad news on the morning radio of the retirement. I emailed my comment and it was read out on the Today programme. Looking on the 'net at work at the other comments there was a small window telling me that BA were offering celebration flights. 1,000 tickets at \xa32,000 a go.
I'd just bought a house and my meagre savings were needed for a bathroom, hot water and some further essentials. I held out until tea break and dialled There were three tickets left. Make that two, please. I booked the first flight I could get in case something went wrong and the project was canned early.
Paying was another matter. All my money was in France and the BA desk at Southampton wouldn't take my cheque so I transferred money to my British account and tried it again. "There must be some mistake" said the nice lady at the desk. "This booking ref is coming up very expensive. I'm going to see if I can get it cheaper."
"Please don't." I replied.
"But you don't understand, This flight is VERY expensive. "I know." The people behind me were becoming disgruntled.
"I just don't get it. What class are you travelling?"
"Concorde."
The people behind me suddenly backed off.
I had a good trip out, my first trip on a 747. Ask for a Whiskey and get a nice little bottle of Johnny Walker.
I had a better trip back. Ask for a Whiskey and get enough eighteen year old Glenfiddich to drown a small child.
The experience changed my life. The only thrill that could get anywhere near it would be to pilot an aircraft myself. I now have about eight hours solo. It doesn't compare. Being SLF on Alpha Golf was the thrill of a lifetime and I have never regretted a penny of it.
To those contributors who worked on the programme in any capacity, Thank you for the enormous priviledge of being able to experience such a fine and beautiful thing.
Having rambled on for far too long already, I'll just recall a line from Radio 4's Week Ending: "Following a question in the House, the minister admitted that Concorde made more noise than the Bay City Rollers but pointed out that it was of far better quality."

Rolling Thunder,
There were quite a lot of Concorde flights to Kai Tak over the years. The first was Air France which was a checker board approach (got out of bed on a damp Sunday morn to watch it arrive). At one time BA had a deal with Cunard where you could fly Concorde to HKG and return on the QE2 or vv so there were regular arrivals in the summer for 2 or 3 years. Normally Concorde was required to take off on 13 presumably for noise reasons. The BA/Cunard flights usually departed around noon. On one occasion I saw a BA Concorde taxiing to the end of 31, so phoned home to tell my wife to go up on the roof as we lived close to the flight path but she was out so missed out on a great sight and a great noise! There may have been other 31 take offs but that was the only one I witnessed.

BA 2 JFK-LHR 23.08.1992


Could I please ask if someone can tell me which aircraft flew this flight?

The Captain was Stack Butterley. Any other information concerning the other flight deck crew would be gratefully received.

Many thanks in advance.