"Concorde aircraft histories Twenty Concorde aircraft were built, six for development and 14 for commercial service. These were All but two of these aircraft are preserved. The two prototype aircraft were used to expand the flight envelope of the aircraft as quickly as possible and prove that the design calculations for supersonic flight were correct. Both pre-production aircraft were used to further develop the design of the aircraft. Changes to design include different wing plan form, more fuel, different engine standard, different air intake systems etc. The production aircraft were different in many ways to the original aircraft necessitating re-examining"
"Paul Patten (copilot), Joseph Tomich (flight engineer), and Richard H. Edwards (flight test engineer). This is the first supersonic flight by a civilian airliner. In total, 20 Concordes were built: two prototypes, two development aircraft and 16 production aircraft. Of the sixteen production aircraft, two did not enter commercial service and eight remained in service as of April 2003. All but two of these aircraft are preserved; the two that are not are F-BVFD (cn 211), parked as a spare-parts source in 1982 and scrapped in 1994, and F-BTSC (cn 203), which crashed outside Paris on July 25, 2000, killing"
"Concorde The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde () is a British-French turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner that was operated from 1976 until 2003. It had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound at Mach 2.04 ( at cruise altitude), with seating for 92 to 128 passengers. First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued flying for the next 27 years. It is one of only two supersonic transports to have been operated commercially; the other is the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144, which operated in passenger service from 1977 to 1978. Concorde was jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later"
"United States Government, as it lacked its own competitor. The US, India, and Malaysia all ruled out Concorde supersonic flights over the noise concern, although some of these restrictions were later relaxed. Professor Douglas Ross characterised restrictions placed upon Concorde operations by President Jimmy Carter's administration as having been an act of protectionism of American aircraft manufacturers. Concorde flew to an altitude of 68,000 ft (20,700 m) during a test flight in June 1973. Concorde is an ogival delta winged aircraft with four Olympus engines based on those employed in the RAF's Avro Vulcan strategic bomber. It is one of"
"result in the development of Concorde. In total, 282 Caravelles of all types were manufactured (2 prototypes or pre-production aircraft and 280 production aircraft); reportedly, Sud Aviation's projected break-even point for the type had been forecast to be around the 200-unit mark. The Caravelle was amongst the first generation of passenger aircraft to utilise newly developed jet propulsion technology; it has the distinction of being the first jet airliner developed specifically for the short/medium-range sector of the market. Early on in the Caravelle's career, its chief competitors remained propeller-driven aircraft, such as the British-built Vickers Viscount and the American-built Convair"
"Concorde, made supersonic travel a reality. Concorde first flew in 1969 and operated through 2003. In 1972, Airbus began producing Europe's most commercially successful line of airliners to date. The added efficiencies for these aircraft were often not in speed, but in passenger capacity, payload, and range. Airbus also features modern electronic cockpits that were common across their aircraft to enable pilots to fly multiple models with minimal cross-training. The 1978 U.S. airline industry deregulation lowered federally controlled barriers for new airlines just as a downturn in the nation's economy occurred. New start-ups entered during the downturn, during which time"
"Lockheed Constellation The Lockheed Constellation (""Connie"") is a propeller-driven, four-engine airliner built by Lockheed Corporation between 1943 and 1958 at Burbank, California. Lockheed built 856 in numerous models—all with the same triple-tail design and dolphin-shaped fuselage. Most were powered by four 18-cylinder Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclones. The Constellation was used as a civil airliner and as a military and civilian air transport, seeing service in the Berlin and the Biafran airlifts. The Constellation series was the first pressurized-cabin civil airliner series to go into widespread use. Its pressurized cabin enabled large numbers of commercial passengers to fly well above most bad"
"six Concordes each. Other airlines in the order book included Panair do Brasil, Continental Airlines, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa, American Airlines, United Airlines, Air India, Air Canada, Braniff, Singapore Airlines, Iran Air, Olympic Airways, Qantas, CAAC, Middle East Airlines, and TWA. At the time of the first flight the options list contained 74 options from 16 airlines: The design work was supported by a preceding research programme studying the flight characteristics of low ratio delta wings. A supersonic Fairey Delta 2 was modified to carry the ogee planform, and, renamed as the BAC 221, used for flight tests of the high"
"and after extensive ground testing, the first prototype Concorde, 001, flew on 2 March 1969 at Toulouse and the second, 002, flew on 9 April 1969 from Filton. In June 1969 both prototypes made their first public appearance at the Paris air show. Later that year, M=1 was reached; the first airline pilots flew it, and government authority was given for three more aircraft. By November 1970, both prototypes had flown satisfactorily at M=2 and demonstrated that a major design objective had been achieved, but much development remained to be done because the prototypes required intermediate stops to achieve the"
"a single plane was sold. By this stage there were options to sell 74 Concordes to 17 airlines around the world (the original hope had been to sell 30), but this went wrong because of the rises in the oil price in 1973 and 1979; in the event only 10 were ever sold, five each to British Airways (as BOAC had become in 1974) and Air France. Heseltine won praise for his efforts at salesmanship, but some civil servants felt that he was more committed to the plane than Tony Benn had been, and that he should have acted decisively"
"Venturas, 2,750 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers (built under license from Boeing), 2,900 Hudson bombers, and 9,000 Lightnings. During World War II, Lockheed, in cooperation with Trans-World Airlines (TWA), had developed the L-049 Constellation, a radical new airliner capable of flying 43 passengers between New York and London at a speed of in 13 hours. Once the Constellation (nicknamed ""Connie"") went into production, the military received the first production models; after the war, the airlines received their original orders, giving Lockheed more than a year's head-start over other aircraft manufacturers in what was easily foreseen as the post-war modernization of"
"granted permission by the Canadian authorities for the majority of the journey to be flown supersonically over sparsely-populated Canadian territory. Concorde The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde () is a British-French turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner that was operated from 1976 until 2003. It had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound at Mach 2.04 ( at cruise altitude), with seating for 92 to 128 passengers. First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued flying for the next 27 years. It is one of only two supersonic transports to have been operated commercially; the other is the Soviet-built Tupolev"
"prior to Concorde entering passenger service. There were some differences between this aircraft and the final production aircraft, such as a thinner fuselage skin. The aircraft was painted in British Airways livery throughout her testing period. The aircraft flew a total of 1282 hrs 9 mins; its final flight was on the 24th of December 1981. After the final flight, she was stored at Filton in a state of semi-airworthiness throughout 1982, where she could be returned to flight in two weeks if required. However this was never required and the aircraft was eventually bought by British Airways as part"
"Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made. The Concorde aircraft used in the film first flew on January 31, 1975, and was registered as F-WTSC to the Aérospatiale aircraft company. It would be re-registered by Aérospatiale as F-BTSC and leased to Air France in 1976. In 1989, this Concorde carried Pope John Paul II. On July 25, 2000, F-BTSC, as Air France Flight 4590, crashed in the small French town of Gonesse, killing all 109 passengers and crew on board, as well as four on the ground. At the time of the accident, F-BTSC had logged 11,989 hours and 4,873 cycles. The"
"Super Constellations. Pakistan International Airlines was the first airline from an Asian country to fly the Super Constellation. Like every other major type in long service and operation, accidents and incidents have been recorded that have substantially reduced the numbers flying. Lockheed Constellation The Lockheed Constellation (""Connie"") is a propeller-driven, four-engine airliner built by Lockheed Corporation between 1943 and 1958 at Burbank, California. Lockheed built 856 in numerous models—all with the same triple-tail design and dolphin-shaped fuselage. Most were powered by four 18-cylinder Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclones. The Constellation was used as a civil airliner and as a military and civilian"
"Described by ""Flight International"" as an ""aviation icon"" and ""one of aerospace's most ambitious but commercially flawed projects"", Concorde failed to meet its original sales targets, despite initial interest from several airlines. At first, the new consortium intended to produce one long-range and one short-range version. However, prospective customers showed no interest in the short-range version and it was dropped. An advertisement covering two full pages, promoting Concorde, ran in the 29 May 1967 issue of ""Aviation Week & Space Technology"". The advertisement predicted a market for 350 aircraft by 1980 and boasted of Concorde's head start over the United"
"the early 1960s, the designs had progressed to the point where the go-ahead for production was given, but costs were so high that the Bristol Aeroplane Company and Sud Aviation eventually merged their efforts in 1962 to produce Concorde. In the early 1960s, various executives of US aerospace companies were telling the US public and Congress that there were no technical reasons an SST could not be produced. In April 1960, Burt C Monesmith, a vice president with Lockheed, stated to various magazines that an SST constructed of steel weighing could be developed for $160 million and in production lots"
"of the length of the arrangement, there was no profit to be shared. After Concorde was privatized, cost reduction measures (notably the closing of the metallurgical wing testing site which had done enough temperature cycles to validate the aircraft through to 2010) and ticket price raises led to substantial profits. Since Concorde stopped flying, it has been revealed that over the life of Concorde, the plane did prove profitable, at least to British Airways. Concorde operating costs over nearly 28 years of operation were approximately £1 billion, with revenues of £1.75 billion. The last regular passenger flights landed at London"
"in air travel following the September 11 attacks, and rising maintenance costs. Although Concorde was technologically advanced when introduced in the 1970s, 30 years later, its analogue cockpit was outdated. There had been little commercial pressure to upgrade Concorde due to a lack of competing aircraft, unlike other airliners of the same era such as the Boeing 747. By its retirement, it was the last aircraft in the British Airways fleet that had a flight engineer; other aircraft, such as the modernised 747-400, had eliminated the role. On 11 April 2003, Virgin Atlantic founder Sir Richard Branson announced that the"
"state that there were a total of 18 Condors constructed, while one other says that the total number is unknown, but includes at least 18 Condor IVs built under licence in Argentina. At least one Condor was converted to a motorglider. The Condor design was a record-setter from its earliest flights in the 1930s. In 1935 one was flown to a new world distance record of . Condor IVs were flown in the 1952 World Gliding Championships held in Madrid, Spain. During that contest Ernst-Günther Haase set a new world record in the multi-place category for speed over a triangle"
"the break-even point was anticipated to be around 125–150 aircraft. However, due to the lack of other orders, the production line was shut down on 15 December 1975. Only a total of two prototypes and ten production aircraft were built. One of the prototypes (number 02) was eventually refurbished and purchased by Air Inter to add it to its fleet. On 29 April 1995, the last two Mercures in service flew their last commercial flights. Throughout their combined cumulative operational lifetimes, the Mercure accumulated a total of 360,000 flight hours, during which 44 million passengers were carried across 440,000 individual"
"result, American Airlines replaced its fleet of Boeing 747-100 aircraft with DC-10 trijets after only four years. Within its own category in commercial aviation, the supersonic airliner Concorde began service in 1976. Its four Rolls Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets allowed it to cruise at twice the speed of sound. At the time of inception it was regarded as the future of air transportation. However, in large part due to high operating costs and noise issues, Concorde never achieved the predicted level of success.In the 1980s, the increased reliability of jet engines prompted the introduction of ETOPS ratings for twinjets, allowing"
"turns into a Concorde. The Concorde was the title aircraft and star of the 1979 film ""The Concorde ... Airport '79"" in which it was flown primarily by Alain Delon and George Kennedy's characters. In the 1982 episode ""Time-Flight"" of the series ""Doctor Who"" a Concorde, its passengers, and crew are pulled through time to a prehistoric version of Earth. In the 2010 Charles Stross novel ""The Fuller Memorandum"", the occult arm of the British government maintains four Concordes for use as supersonic reconnaissance aircraft to monitor the Sleeper in the Pyramid. In the event of the Black Pharaoh awakening,"
"four for 8 ADON); 1986, 11; 1987, 10; 1988, 10; 1989, 9; 1990, 11 (including the three for export to China), 1991, 3. Of the 106 examples built, one never flew (being used for static tests) and three were exported. The Five-Year Plan in force when the USSR ceased to exist called for 40 more aircraft to be manufactured by 1995, but the manufacturing facility closed in early 1992. All-metal low-wing land monoplane with four wing-mounted low-bypass turbofan engines. Cantilever three-spar structure of modified trapezoid planform. Centre section integral with fuselage. Inboard sections, outboard sections and detachable leading and trailing"
"Cunliffe-Owen Concordia The Cunliffe-Owen Concordia was a 1940s British twin-engined small airliner built by Cunliffe-Owen Aircraft. The ""Concordia"" was 12-seat medium range transport aircraft. A separate luggage compartment could accommodate 45 lbs of luggage per passenger. Designed by W. Garrow-Fisher and built at Eastleigh, Hampshire in 1947. The prototype aircraft Y-0222 was first flown at Eastleigh on 19 May 1947. A second aircraft G-AKBE was displayed at the 1947 SBAC Show at Radlett and made an extensive European sales tour. Work was suspended on 18 November 1947 on a production batch of six aircraft. These included one aircraft for the"
"and crew, and four employees of the Hotelissimo hotel, were killed in the crash. Most of the passengers were German tourists en route to New York for a cruise. The cockpit crew consisted of pilot Captain Christian Marty, 54, First Officer Jean Marcot, 50, and Flight Engineer Gilles Jardinaud, 58. Until the crash of Air France Flight 4590 in 2000, Concorde had been considered among the world's safest planes. The crash of the Concorde contributed to the end of the aircraft's career. A few days after the crash, all Concordes were grounded, pending an investigation into the cause of the"
"which might have represented a significant advance over the Concorde, was intended to carry 250 passengers (a large number at the time, more than twice as many as Concorde), fly at Mach 2.7-3.0, and have a range of 4,000 mi (7,400 km). The program was launched on June 5, 1963, and the FAA estimated that by 1990 there would be a market for 500 SSTs. Boeing, Lockheed, and North American officially responded. North American's design was soon rejected, but the Boeing and Lockheed designs were selected for further study. Most of the major US aviation firms spent at least some"
"to only 150p in September 2001, showing how heavily the company had been hit. With the crash of Air France Flight 4590 in 2000, 9/11, and escalating maintenance costs, the future of Concorde was limited, despite expensive safety modifications made after the Air France accident. It was announced on 10 April 2003 that in October that year BA would cease scheduled services with Concorde, due to depressed passenger numbers. The last commercial Concorde flight from New York to London was on 24 October 2003. The airline retained ownership of eight Concordes, which were placed on long-term loan to museums in"
"than originally thought. In November 1962, still to the surprise of many, the Concorde project was announced. In spite of marginal economics, nationalistic and political arguments had led to wide support for the project, especially from Charles de Gaulle. This set off something of a wave of panic in other countries, as it was widely believed that almost all future commercial aircraft would be supersonic, and it looked like the Europeans would start off with a huge lead. As if this were not enough, it soon became known that the Soviets were also working on a similar design. Three days"
"Sud Aviation, at the direction of the French and British governments, formed a consortium with BAC in November 1962 to merge their design and production efforts to create Concorde. The company designed helicopters which went on to be built in large numbers, including the Alouette II (the first production helicopter powered by a gas turbine; first flight in 1955), the Puma (1965) and Gazelle (1967). In 1967 an agreement between the British and French governments arranged for joint production and procurement of the Puma and Gazelle, together with the British Westland Lynx. Sud Aviation merged with Nord Aviation and ""Société"
"on the Concorde. Juan Trippe leaked the information earlier that month, stating that the airline would not ignore the SST market, and would buy from Europe if need be. Kennedy introduced the National Supersonic Transport program on June 5, 1963 in a speech at the US Air Force Academy. Requests for Proposals were sent out to airframe manufacturers Boeing, Lockheed, and North American for the airframes; and Curtiss-Wright, General Electric and Pratt & Whitney for engines. The FAA estimated that there would be a market for 500 SSTs by 1990. In spite of not having even a selected design, orders"
"with design changes and changes to intake and engine control laws would address most of the issues except airfield noise and the interaction between adjacent powerplants at speeds above Mach 1.6 which meant Concorde ""had to be certified aerodynamically as a twin-engined aircraft above Mach 1.6"". Rolls-Royce had a design proposal, the RB.169, for the aircraft at the time of Concorde's initial design but ""to develop a brand-new engine for Concorde would have been prohibitively expensive"" so an existing engine, already flying in the TSR-2 prototype, was chosen. It was the Olympus 320 turbojet, a development of the Bristol engine"
"to operate Concorde at a profit, in spite of very high maintenance costs, because the aircraft was able to sustain a high ticket price. Among other destinations, Concorde flew regular transatlantic flights from London's Heathrow Airport and Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, and Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados; it flew these routes in less than half the time of other airliners. Concorde won the 2006 Great British Design Quest organised by the BBC and the Design Museum, beating other well-known designs such as the"