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

G-BOAG lives in Seattle now. And so you know it's Concorde with an " e". Very important.

I flew on G-BOAG, BA 2 JFK- LHR, 6 months before the program was shut down in 2003. The experience is hard to describe and only a Concorde fan would appreciate it anyway.

If you see a prototype, you will note that the cabin windows are bigger; the windows shrank due to a certification requirement. In the course we were informed that, with all four a/c groups working, cabin pressure could be maintained with two windows missing at 60 000'.

Possibly so, on first glance. In reality it was considerably more sophisticated than its contemporaries (e.g. 747-200), and the systems behind those switches immeasurably more so.

There's not a lot of space for the necessary controls in the front of a pointy aeroplane, and this was done in era when the appearance of the flt deck was inconsequential compared to its efficiency, utility and safety. It's only from the beige cockpit Boeings and onwards that the trend has emerged to for all these swoopy trim panels to be fitted for cosmetic reasons.

As for commercial failure - that may be true for the constructors but I can assure you that there's no way BA would have been flying them if they didn't contribute to the bottom line, let alone invest in the return to service programme.

It always pays to remember the context of operation of this machine when making comparisons with conventional aircraft,as that's what drove much of the design.

Following on from what EXWOK was saying, you've got to remember that the spec was hammered out in the late '60s - so it's not surprising that the flight deck could *appear* antiquated by 1980's standards. But in this case, as alluded to, appearances are deceptive. While the gauges and switches are very definitely of that vintage, the systems behind them were very much bleeding-edge technology (by aviation standards) in a contemporary sense. Even when Concorde entered production, the most complex digital displays available to aviation were of the 7-segment LED type (as used in the Apollo Guidance Computer), and they were both wildly expensive and of limited use. The flight and engine controls were in fact a pioneering kind of analogue FBW - way in advance of any other type, even those making their debut at the start of the '80s (though FADEC was becoming more widespread by then - with the advent of the B757 and 767).

Ergonomically speaking, both engineers and pilots of the era write of Concorde's flight deck being the best possible balance of form and function available at the time - sure it looks cluttered to the modern eye, but everything was placed in a logical manner and the sheer number of systems used in the aircraft made the accessibility of all that information a basic requirement. It's worth bearing in mind that even those not particularly well-disposed to Airbus will grudgingly admit that the flight deck ergonomics on those types are extremely good - and a lot of the lessons learned were from cramming all that information into Concorde's limited space.

As for the cabin, again appearances are deceptive - I have sat in one of those seats and they are extremely comfortable for the size. Also one must bear in mind that unlike the subsonic Atlantic crossings, these were happening in about 3 hours - so no need to be particularly wide or convert into a bed like we see in Business and First today - not to mention less chance of a queue for the WC!

I have to thank EXWOK for explaining the windows - but I'll add the more prosaic reason that you don't need a particularly large window to see the curvature of the Earth in all its splendour - which is for the most part all you'd be seeing during the flight!

[EDIT : I should also confirm that EXWOK is also correct in stating that BA had Concorde turning a profit from the early-'80s onward, and it took a combination of a financial downturn and the fallout from the terrorist attacks of September 2001 to end the service.

While Concorde herself never recouped the development money granted by the governments of the UK and France, the infrastructure and R&D her development put in place paved the way for the Airbus project which, as we know, ended up becoming a leading player in airliner design and manufacture in the West. ]

BA was able to make money on Concorde as in positive cash flow. But they were basically given the airplanes. The commercial failure aspect comes from the simple fact that no one wanted them to build any more (what I've heard is that at least one production Concorde was built but never put into service - basically becoming a donor for spares - not sure if that's true). I also suspect it was too much of a point design - it didn't have the range to be useful in the Pacific.

If BA (and Air France) honestly thought Concorde was a profit center (rather than brand prestige), they would have wanted more .

BTW, my comments about the flight deck were not intended as criticism - no doubt it was state of the art when it was designed. I was just commenting on how much things have changed since then.

I don't mean to dispute that the Concorde was an incredible airplane and engineering achievement. Just saying that it never really had a chance to be successful. The same thing would have applied to the Boeing SST if it hadn't been cancelled (I knew a guy that worked on the Boeing SST inlet control system - talk about complex ). Cancelling the SST is probably the best thing that ever happened to Boeing - it likely would have bankrupted the company.

Not as far as I know - the first UK "production" Concorde intended for testing rather than line flying (G-BBDG) did end up as a donor for spares, but it wasn't a case of an aircraft without a home - it was just the way things turned out - they never intended to sell it to an airline. In fact that very airframe is the one now living at Brooklands. Several things kiboshed Concorde as a going concern in the '70s - not least of which was the protest movement in the US making US airlines shy away. Above all it was not an issue with the project itself, but the early '70s oil crisis which had the most drastic effect. In fact, while the UK government effectively wrote off the cost in the '70s, the profits BA ended up making could have made a sizeable dent in the development costs.

There was a B model on the drawing board which could very well have been capable in that arena.

CONCORDE SST : CONCORDE B

In fact, BA significantly underestimated what customers would be willing to pay for Concorde service at first - it was this realisation that enabled them to turn a profit!

Well, that was kind of the crux of the issue. Boeing had already effectively bet the company on the 747 project, and the 2707 still had technical issues on paper that the Concorde project had already solved. As far as my reading suggests, the runaway success of the 747 in fact owed a lot to the issues that ended up swamping the DC-10 and L-1011 - essentially gifting Boeing a market leading position and rescuing the company from the abyss - the 2707 was cancelled long before that became a reality though. In effect, before the success of the 747 was a done deal, Boeing couldn't stretch to doing both.

R.e the Concorde damage in NZ... it was actually caused by a set of HS-748 air-stairs blown across the tarmac by the Canty Norwester.
Many red faces at Mt Cook - and apologies to BA.
The jet was on a charter flight full of American millionaires.
It was left leaking fuel from a puncture underwing.
They towed it around to the Air NZ maintenance hangar and fixed it within 24 hours from memory.
Requests from the local meeja to cover expert Air NZers patching the world's fastest pax jet were bluntly declined by BA's man in London.
The millionaires departed on a charter 767 for Sydney.
And late the next glorious summer evening - a slightly younger Tartare heard the unearthly roar of 4 Olympuses - and watched the Speedbird depart to the North, leaving four trails of soot over the garden city.

ZeBedie

...Was pilot selection purely on seniority?...

Fortunately, Yes!

It was (almost) exactly the same process as pilot selection for any other aircraft move in BA.

• There had to be a vacancy on the type.
• You had to be "unfrozen" and free to bid.
• You had to be senior enough to obtain one of the vacancies.
• You had to pass the conversion course.

There were two minor differences to the normal BA process that applied once you had been notified of a successful bid and allocated a course date.

• Before starting the course, if you changed your mind, you could voluntarily withdraw without penalty and remain on your existing fleet.
• If the Chief Pilot on your existing fleet felt there were clearly defined technical reasons why you would be unlikely to complete the Concorde conversion course successfully, you could be denied the course.

Over the years, there were a very small number who were denied a conversion course on technical grounds, one of whom I knew personally.

There were several people who voluntarily withdrew from a course they had been allocated. Often this was after a look-see trip and a chat with crewmembers about the conversion course and life on the fleet. This was not uncommon, and I got my conversion course, at shortish notice, after just such a voluntary withdrawal by a more senior pilot.

Finally, often people are surprised to learn that - for various reasons - most BA pilots never put in a bid for Concorde. The year I got my course, there were around 600 captains in BA senior to me who had declined to bid.

DozyWannabe

Chris Norris did indeed return to the Concorde fleet as a Captain, later becoming the last Training Captain to be appointed on the fleet.

He was one of the most able and respected Captains on the fleet, as well as an excellent instructor, and his signature appears in my licence when he was the instructor on my last Concorde simulator check in June 2003.

Once back on Concorde as a Captain, his previous record and experience as a Concorde F/O would undoubtedly have weighed heavily in his favour on selection for the Training Captain appointment (which was a merit-based selection) however it would have had no bearing on his being offered a return to Concorde as a Captain, which, as described above, was a seniority-based selection.

The annual postings and promotions process in BA, whilst sometimes lengthy and tortuous, had the virtue of being highly transparent. Every application, from every pilot, was listed, along with the results and reasons for the results, and this document was available to any pilot who wished to check!

Here's a link to the six development aircraft, with pix of all of them.

CONCORDE SST : PROTOTYPE FLEET

Several had different paint schemes throughout their history, so that may not be definitive. But there are variations that can narrow down which might be in your painting: long or short tailcone, and small window or large greenhouse cockpit visor.

Three of the six are British G registrations, and three have French F-numbers. Three have "...01" production numbers. As ChristiaanJ says, none would be registered "1-GEE" - but that might have been something added for a specific test flight or for some other reason unrelated to registration. They were repainted occasionally (including one painted in BA livery on one side and AF livery on the other, for a time.)

@ BN2A

I'm sure the real experts will "adjust" my understanding - but I believe Concorde, loaded for the transatlantic "Sierra" routes, could hit about 5000 fpm peak VS when climbing at 400 KIAS between ~10,000 and ~28,000 feet (wherever 400 KIAS = M 0.99). Leaving a coastal airport (New York, Barbados, Dakar), she would quickly be clear of land and could more or less transition directly through Mach 1 as soon as she reached 28-30,000 feet.

Those 4 Olympus engines could maintain Mach 2 with no afterburner at 50,000+ feet, so they had tons of excess power down low. Again my understanding is that they stayed at 100% dry thrust from brake release until TOD (except for subsonic cruise segments), with the AB added for takeoff, and when accelerating from Mach 0.96 through Mach 1.7.

Mach 2.00 was reached in about 30 minutes @ ~51,300 feet, depending on atmospherics - a relatively long slow slog compared to the initial climb and acceleration.

From inland airports such PDG or Heathrow, there was a "pause" for level subsonic cruise (M 0.94-0.96) in the high 20s until clear of the coastline by 20 miles (over La Manche or the mouth of the Bristol Channel.)

@ leb001 - greenhouse visor, BA livery, and short tail - probably G-AXDN (aircraft 101). Although I'll defer to the experts, as always.

leb001 ,
While it's a nice pic, the artist has been taking a fair amount of artistic liberties....
For instance, the door located at the forward end of the wing, just forward of the emergency exit, is pure fiction.
The tail is something between proto and production.
As said, the registration is a few paint smears, and does not correspond to anything real.
AFAIK , G-AXDN (01) never had a British Airways livery.
I'd suggest the picture could have been inspired by DG, or SA (but in that case the BA livery is on the wrong side), or one of the production aircraft delivered to BA in the period that livery was used (such as G-BOAC).

I would consider it as a generic British Airways Concorde from the early days. I don't think there was an attempt to carefully depict one particular aircraft.

Hope this helps!

@tomahawk_PA38

Here's a chart of AF Concorde routings: Concorde route

Given that BA and AF used the same "Sierra November/Sierra Oscar" EB oceanic routes, and Paris and London are about the same longitude, the decel point was likely nearly identical as well.

Handwritten note is a bit small, but I believe it amounts to "50nm east of BISKI."

Waypoints change, however, and BISKI no longer exists - the closest approximation to the actual decel point that I see on a current chart looks like it would be MOSIS. Mouth of the English Channel, just west of the Scilly-Ushant line.

Deceleration clear of land then takes you directly up the center of the channel to SSW of Southhampton (roughly, ORTAC), and then hang a subsonic left to Heathrow.

But I'd also love to hear if someone has more authoritative info.

@tomahawk, pattern is full

You really need an input from a BA pilot, but my memory is that the approach to LHR was up the Bristol Channel not the English Channel.
Original decel point was moved back about 100 n.ml to avoid secondary boom effects over West Couhtry. This put it somewhere south of the southern tip of Ireland

Thanks, guys - I knew the OB route was out the Bristol Channel (described in detail earlier in this thread), and where the SN/SO eastbound routes rejoined at BISKI.

I see where "hanging the left" further out and decelerating up the Irish Sea and Bristol Channel is almost certainly correct, and makes more sense, for BA.

As so many have already said: what a wonderful thread. Please please keep it going.

Given the high quality of expertise and experience here, please accept my apologies for any ill informed inaccuracies. I never flew in Concorde, but I did 'fly' her thanks to the late John Cook.

In the late 1970s I was in the RAF section of the school CCF with his son Richard (tragically later killed in the Mull of Kintyre accident) and John (one of the first BA Concorde pilots) arranged for a minibus load of us to go to Filton on what I wish I'd realised at the time was an exceptionally privileged visit. Passage of time blurs the memory, but it still sticks in my mind as an extraordinary day.

The first 'Concorde' we saw was the full scale marketing mock up, essentially the left side of an external Concorde attached to a hanger wall, with a full interior cabin. I still remember being surprised how small it was - the windows especially - and the mix of different seats and trims inside, presumably to show options to potential buyers.

Next stop was the simulator and - in the analogue days of the 70's - the enormous, detailed 3D model of Heathrow and what looked like the surrounding 10 miles, mounted vertically on a wall. A huge gantry on rails ran back and forth, up and down, so a camera with tiny periscope lens could take off, fly around and land as per the simulated flight, with the resulting pictures projected for the pilots in the sim. The size of the thing - and the attention to detail of the model - was incredible. Off to one side was a large rectangular shallow dish painted light blue. It's sides were raised - like a saucer - and edged with fluffed cotton wool. We were told that once the flight in the sim reached a certain height, it would 'go into cloud' (fade to white) while the camera trundled across to the blue dish. The flight would then 'emerge' from the 'cloud' and the camera went round and round in circles, giving a very plausible impression of high altitude flight until it was time to reverse the procedure and descend, back to 'Heathrow'.

Incredibly, they let us fly the sim, two at a time up front, for a few minutes each. It was simply too much to take in and was over far, far, far too soon. But I can claim a (very poor) approach to Heathrow before the instructors called us off - apparently a crash landing didn't do the camera any favours as the lens would plough into the model. I can see why they were nervous.

(Is this the sim cockpit - without the model I presume - that is now at Brooklands, by the way?)

Final stop was a gantry overlooking one of the hangers where a solitary Concorde nestled amongst (what fuzzy memory recalls as) three VC10s being converted to tankers for the RAF. The Concorde seemed tiny by comparison, but also startling in that it was still largely in green primer, access panels were open and inspection hatches missing and vulnerable areas were covered in what looked like flattened cardboard boxes for protection. Presumably this was one of the 'unsold' numbers before BA took it on (?). Nose down, it looked very sad.

We weren't. I suspect we were insufferable for weeks afterwards.

What I'd give for a time machine to revisit that afternoon...

Roger. Great first post!. I too have been lucky enough to 'flight-deck' Concorde as a passenger, tho' not for the landing. {Did that as a pax in a Trident, amongst others!] I still have the video that I took!. Like you, I was interested in the flying of it, and asked questions, but didn't have the same luck as you with the jump seat.
I recently flew Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur in an A.380, and whilst driving from Croydon to Heathrow, went along the road at the side of BA Engineering, and there, looking beautiful in the sun, was 'my' Concorde, G-BOAB. Happy memories!. There was, I believe, the occasional rudder skin loss on a couple of Concordes, and vibration was experienced if I remember correctly.

Yep - Braniff crews trained to fly the full envelope. But for BA insurance reasons, there had to be a BA captain and flight engineer riding along in the jumpseats.

Another cute trick - the European airlines "sold" the airframes temporarily to Braniff, with new US N-numbers, so they could fly a "domestic" route without violating cabotage laws. Then "sold back" to BA or AF for the transatlantic legs.

CONCORDE SST : Braniff Concorde Services