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Originally Posted by Biggles78

All due respect but this is the CONCORDE thread and it would be really nice if it could stay as such.

I would say that the SR-71, and the Tu-144, are in a way honorary members of the Concorde family, so I don't mind if they fly into the discussion every now and then.

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LandLady said in a post many moons ago that there was a pool of some 240 "Concorde Ambassadors" (sorry but CC and FAs don't sound right for this aeroplane) for Her. What was the numbers of Captains, First Officers and the all important Flight Engineers (sucking up to M2 with that one

)

The full list of names (up to 2002) for both BA and AF can be found in "The Concorde Story" by Chris Orlebar. For BA, a quick count shows about 170 names. That book also mentions, that the maximum number of crews qualified at any one time was 28, in 1980, and that the average was about 20 crews.

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I looked at the photos posted by a thoughtful member in an earlier post and wonder how former crew felt looking at them. The photos give the impression that you could kick the tyres and light the fires and they would be once again gracing the skies. Obviously they are unairworthy BUT the photos project a different image.

Photos can lie.... or rather, they are rarely close-up enough to show clearly where corrosion has set in.

As an example, F-BVFC at Toulouse, which was the last one to remain at least taxyable, now has some patches of corrosion starting to show, when you know where to look. Not to mention the nasty smell of damp and mould in the cockpit which bodes no good for what's going on underneath the floor.

And even F-BTSD, kept "live" to some extent at Le Bourget, leaks some hydraulic fluid (like all Concordes did on the ground), so it's easy to imagine the dried-out hydraulic and fuel seals on the other museum aircraft.

And yes, that's kitty litter...
The composite material of the floor and the hydraulic fluid don't agree too well.

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Final one for this post. If She was still flying, do you still think that BA (sorry but going to ignore AF on this one) would have sufficient patronage to keep Her as a going and profitable concern?

I'll leave M2dude to answer that one.

CJ

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