Concorde - The Greatest Plane Ever Built?

Credit to Newscast Captain Mike Bannister - Chief Concorde Pilot from British Airways after a successful flight

Concorde takes off with the help of extra power from its after burners. This means the jet exhaust gases are reheated with extra fuel to give 20% more thrust – and unfortunately a lot more noise. Also the plane is designed to cope with effects of the supersonic shock wave. As the plane accelerates from Mach 1 to Mach 2 the shockwave pushes the ‘lift’ on the upper surface of the wings further back. To compensate for this, the centre of gravity has to be moved otherwise the pane would end up nose-diving. Through a combination of 33 fuels tanks and many pumps, one of the two on board engineers shifts 12 tones of fuel toward the rear of the aircraft to counterbalance the new ‘lift’ position. When the plane slows down at the end of its journey fuel has to be pumped to the front again.

Amazingly now that Concorde has finished its active service; there is no direct replacement. In fact the Concorde fleet is still air worthy but the heavy costs of running the service outstrip the revenue it can generate. And it seems the same would be true even for more modern, efficient supersonic aircraft. It is just far more efficient to fly much larger numbers of people across the Atlantic sub sonically in 7 hours rather than 3. When Concorde was first built, the French and British governments swallowed the start up costs. R and D costs were in the tens of billions of dollars, all of it paid for by the taxpayer. Originally 120 planes were planned but only the two airlines bought the planes and costs skyrocketed even further. Finally only 2 prototypes and 14 planes were built. One of the limiting factors was that Concorde could only travel supersonic over water. Overland the sonic boom was too disruptive – it was a technical problem the engineers could never overcome.

Concorde flies faster than the speed of rotation of the earth. It’s like a time machine. If the plane leaves London at 10.30 am it will arrive at New York at 9.30am the same day.