Posts about: "Air France" [Posts: 78 Page: 4 of 4]¶

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......

the best thread ever on the net and so polite.

all those technicals and in deep infos.

i never flown myself the Concorde but my dad made one CDG DKR RIO and one CDG JFK and as others mention he was smiling back from those flights even the flights were for work.

i had the chance to see the Concorde at night in the AF maintenance at CDG it was called Airbus-Concorde division and despite i was more on the other side : the 747 division i loved to stay around and just watching that wonderful Bird waiting to fly the next morning.

alas when moving to Canada we lost all the pictures and souvenirs of those days but they re back with you.

thank you Lady and Gentlemen.

and Bravo, merci.

ref question from Joliste

As I was working my way from 1 to 85 I read the above which reminded of a paper I filed 35 years ago:
"Development of Pollution Controls for Rolls-Royce RB211 and Olympus 593 Engines" by A B Wassall. I have picked out stuff relevant to the question:


The engines of the day generated smoke in the primary zone and partially consumed it in the rest of the combustor.
It was easier to reduce the production than increase the consumption but leaning the primary zone had an adverse effect on relight capability which then needed its own corrective action as was done on the 211. Metal temperatures went up with the leaning (as intimated by Joliste)
The 593 did not have the leaning option as it had to maintain an over-rich primary zone at TO to ensure an adequate weak extinction margin when throttled back at completion of supersonic cruise when the combustor had to operate at A/F ratios over 180.
In addition to the smoke problem the combustor weight and pressure loss had to be reduced.
These other two requirements led to the annular combustor and vaporizers which also reduced the smoke substantially. These three benefits were expected based on Pegasus experience.

My only reminiscence is trying to persuade my parents that they could not hear Concorde go supersonic when living in Bournemouth,


Dowot.
Well the following may be of interest to you.


When working with the guys at Alderney the boom from Concorde rattled the windows. On enquiring I was told that the AF Concorde usually ignored the noise restrictions and opened the throttles early so it was a regular event and to hell with the complaints.


I was at Heathrow and a guy I worked with said he heard the boom in the Bracknel area. This was confirmed as the AF Concorde and the boom was bouncing off the clouds hence him hearing it at Bracknell.

It would be a pitty!
I don't want to slide in a political argument here, that is not my point at all. I just want to highlight that lobbying against SST, even with totally foolish pleas, had a very negative impact on the commercial outcome of both Concorde and the Boeing SST. Put on top of that what has to be called an economic war between USA and Europe and the fate of Concorde was sealed, no matter how beautifull, technologically advanced and fantastic was the plane. And I think this is the main resaon why no other airliners but BAC and AF bought Concorde.

Concorde Descent.
Further to ruddman's 1, 2 & 3 ( above)


After a small number of years of operating, there was a press report that AF had altered their descent on NY - Paris, which allowed them to carry 2 more passengers ( high revenue). Does anyone recall what this was ?

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.)

For what it's worth I vividly remember Concorde flying circuits in Marrakech (AF training)... Was quite a sight!

@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.

Interesting to see references to the secondary boom here. I lived in Crowborough, East Sussex, close to MAY VOR location, in 70s and 80s, at about 600ft elevation facing southwest. Often at about 2100hr on a quiet evening we would hear a faint boom from the AF Concorde coming up the Channel and turning towards Paris. Local dogs would sometimes bark just before we heard the sound!

Thank you , sir!

I wish I hadn't "assumed" so much based on the AF chart.

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

Were both BA and AF involved / lend aircraft to the short lived Braniff Concorde operation flying the aircraft subsonic from Washington Dulles to the Dallas Fort Worth airport ?


I read somewhere that the aircraft owner, whether it was BA or AF always had one of their captains as an observer in one of the cockpit jumpseats on these flights ?


Not sure if that's true but any other insights or information on this unusual arrangement
would be welcome.

stilton

... so you might use reverse on only one engine? any assymetric issues with that ?...

No issue at all, on the one occasion I can remember that it happened to me.


... why the 4 minute restriction ?...

I believe the correct answer has been given by CliveL, but, when asked during ground school, the BAe instructors’ traditional answer was “Noise Abatement”. (as in a Concorde hitting the ground makes a lot of noise!)


... BA or AF always had one of their captains as an observer in one of the cockpit jumpseats on these flights ?...

Before my time, so I can’t say if BA crew flew on the jump seat, or in what capacity they were acting if they did, but I believe there is at least one contributor to this thread who may yet post an answer.



CliveL

... Can any of our pilot contributors confirm n5296s's remarks re landing in a strong headwind?..

Speaking personally, I never noticed any problem, and as EXWOK has said, I found using VREF +10 made life a lot easier.

However, Mike Riley, a well respected base training instructor on the fleet (and a past British Aerobatics team member) discussed this point in his “The Concorde Stick and Rudder Book”, where he says that there was a greater incidence of hard landings when landing into a strong headwind and goes on to discuss some of the possible reasons why and what to do about it.

His main recommendation was to leave the auto throttle in later than usual, down to 20R instead of 40R, and maintain a constant attitude to touchdown.


... The certificated approach speed is Vref, Vref plus 7 if memory serves, was introduced as an approach noise reduction...

Yes, VREF +7 was used for Reduced Noise Approaches that were flown whenever possible, and which were generally considered easier to land from than VREF approaches.

Casper, I'm not aware of any fuel tank protection by either BA or AF prior to the accident.

Overweight & aft GC was due too much fuel as well as captain authorising baggage to be loaded (in the rear baggage cabin) when the aeroplane was already about 5 tons overweight.

Something else germane to the accident was that the fuel tanks were overfilled leaving no airspace to absorb any shock waves on the basis this extra fuel would be burned off during taxi, but the change of runway (to a downwind one) meant a much shorter taxy so it wasn't burned off and the FE didn't ask for a delay while it got burned off. They just 'went'.

Worse - realising they had a rearward CG, fuel was being transferred from tank 11 (in the tail) to the wing tanks DURING THE TAKE OFF ROLL. an absolute no-no in Conc ops. The idea being as fuel was burned off from the wing tanks and replaced by fuel from tank 11, the CG would move foreward.

The result was the wing tanks were always overfull even though they were supplying fuel to the engines, so when one tank was hit by a big piece of tyre the shock waves travelled up through the fuel, bounced off the top surface of the tank, having found no gap of compressible air to absorb the overpressure, and travelled back down and burst the tank floor from inside.

@Lancman

There a a lot of misinformation sculling around on this.
The final report states that the overfill was 300 litres (237kg) put into the engine feeder tanks 1 to 4. These tanks are grouped to have approximately equal moment about the CG so if it was, as seems likely, 75 kg in each there would have been negligible effect on the CG.

There was no overfill into tank 5.

It is all a long time ago, but as SSDriver says the overfill capability was probably there to cater for extended taxi or waiting time operations.

In this particular case the dispatcher ordered 2000kg rather than the standard AF allowance of 1000 kg to be loaded for taxiing presumably because he/she believed a more distant runway would be used because of maintenance work, but in the event the pilot asked for and was given the usual runway which meant that the aircraft was overweight for take off because only 1000 kg of taxi fuel was used. [Plus of course the additional baggage]

BA's Concordes performed almost 50,000 flights.

AF had a similar sized fleet, though I think their utilisation was a bit less.

About Concorde