Slashdot Mirror
Club Concorde Wants To Put a Concorde Back In the Air
The Verge (relying on The Telegraph) reports that the Concorde, grounded since just a few years after the disastrous loss of flight 4590 in 2000, may yet fly again, with the help of a private coalition of Concorde enthusiasts that's already managed to raise $160 million. ("A massive war chest," says Jalopnik.)
The Verge explains that Club Concorde ("a club for all things Concorde, run by ex-Captains, ex-charterers and people passionate about Concorde") would like to buy two of the existing but idle Concordes, turning one of them into a ground-based tourist attraction for gawking and for dining on Concorde-style meals. But as for the second? The more ambitious initiative is to purchase the second plane, have it restored, and get it in the air once more. Concorde Club president Paul James is aiming to resume flights by 2019, while the tourist attraction would be opened around 2017 if all goes according to plan. British Airways and Air France have no plans to resume commercial Concorde flights, meaning it would likely cost quite a lot of money to grab a private ticket if and when the plane gets off the ground again.
Most beautiful plane ever built.
British Airways and Air France have no plans to resume commercial Concorde flights, meaning it would likely cost quite a lot of money to grab a private ticket if and when the plane gets off the ground again.
More interesting than that is whether any airports have plans to permit anyone to resume commercial Concorde flights.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
One of the main problems with Concorde was It didnt have the range to do transpacific routes, and its not permitted to go supersonic over most countries.
And despite the trappings of luxury, that money bought you speed but no real comfort. The seats were narrow, the aisle was narrow, you were relieved of coats and other encumberances because there was no room in the cabin for them. There were fewer catering options than 1st class owing to space limitations. The extinguishing and relighting of the afterburners as part of noise control procedures was rather disconcerting for infrequent travellers, as was the temperature of the inner skin of the aircraft. And you had to sit next to the incurably self-important.
I've only flown Concord by accident (when the 747 service was cancelled) and while it was a novel experience, the plane was a technical curiosity rather than a practical form of transport - and well past its sell-by date by the time it was taken out of service.
Anything within the limits of physics is possible if you have enough money.
When BA/AF said there was essentially no way to get parts to maintain the aircraft, what they meant was that there was no *economical* way to get those parts. Anything can be fabricated as a one-off part, it will just cost several hundred or thousands of dollars more than a mass-produced part. Send a drawing with the proper specifications and GDT to a well operated machine shop and they'll turn out nearly any part you need. Something more complicated simply takes more time and setup. It is possible you could have to pay to construct an entire facility to make a custom set of turbine blades, make ten, test 8, and have only two for spares? Sure. Again - it's only money.
Whether they will be able to make such a venture possible given schedules and maintenance requirements of modern aircraft is simply an exercise in capital funding and cash flow. If Virgin can take you to space for $200k, you can probably rehabilitate the Concord and offer seats on a flight for no more than half that.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The solution to this problem is money. Just 'cause AF and BA can't afford it (or rather, don't think it's remotely feasible to afford it) doesn't mean that someone with more money than brains can't do it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There are three Concordes around Paris that I know of:
- The air & Space museum at Le Bourget has one in a hanger that you can walk through. It was of the first 2 built & was used to prove Concorde's air worthiness. It's in the state it was left in in the mid 70s -- no seats or cabin furnishings, just late 60s recorder instrumentation.
- They have one up on a canted stand to make it look like it's taking off and banking left as you leave Charles de Gaulle Airport towards Paris. I assume it was stripped and strengthened to make it secure on it's stand.
https://www.google.fr/maps/pla...
- There is one parked behind Orly Airport at the Musee Delta. This one looks fairly operational but abandoned.
https://www.google.fr/maps/pla...
About 2 months ago was driving by the one behind Orly and noticed that they had pulled access ramps up to it, opened the doors & people were walking in & out. It was back to it's abandoned state on the next day. I wonder if this project has anything to do with the people examining the Concorde?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
There's a Concorde in Seattle at the museum of flight. It belongs to Air France I think and it's on extended loan. As part of the conditions of the loan, the museum has to keep the airplane in near-flying condition at all times should they ever want it back. This does not mean it could fly without serious work, but it does mean they keep the plane clean and free from corrosion, inside and out. This means that on certain days they cannot open the airplane for tourists when the humidity is too high. The engines are intact and sealed off.
I imagine the Concorde at Orly is operating under similar protocols. That's possibly why the second day you saw it and it was all closed up. I don't know for sure though.
Was a pretty amazing aircraft for it's time. Like others have said it is dated now. And it's really not that comfortable inside as the cabin is really tiny.
This and the fact that you also need to get a valid airworthiness certificate from the local authorities for it to fly. Getting that without OEM support is not impossible, it's just improbable for this aircraft. We keep WWII aircraft flying with one off machined parts all the time, but those parts are not difficult to machine by a modern shop. The materials used are common and the older manufacturing techniques aren't cutting edge anymore. Those older aircraft also tend to have much more simple control mechanisms (Concorde was a primitive partial fly by wire system). You would end up scouring collectors and museums for spares, not to mention corralling certified maintenance techs to work it.
Then we get to the engines, they'll need to be rebuilt and eventually be rebladed. There are enough surplus parts to keep the J79s from the 60's going, but there were thousands of those built. The Olympus 593s were a one off just for the Concord, not a lot of surplus parts floating around. Manufacturing new blades would be incredibly cost prohibitive.
My personal belief, if they want to throw billions into it, the best they'll be able to do is static runs and taxi displays. I don't think they'll get it into the air again and certainly not carrying passengers. I just don't think they have the muster to get a full D check completed and any local authorities to authorize it.
A good write up on what it would take. Impossible, no, improbable, yes.
Americans hate the Concorde, because it was better than anything the USA managed to build. Admit it.
Concorde was the future. When I was a kid, I sometimes caught glimpses of it around Dulles airport near DC, and as a young man I got to see some fantastic take-offs. I'd like to see commercial SST and humans on the Moon again in my lifetime. I was too young to have a clear memory of the latter. All I have is a vague memory of being kept up late for a change because "he should see this", and a lot of people being proud of what we were doing. We've regressed to not have these things, even if they are only for a select few. We've learned a lot since then. We can probably do it much more efficiently and safely now.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If you've got another spare 500 million laying around, sure. Like the OP stated, with enough money anything is possible (even designing an entirely new SST). But, in the case with the 593s, they were designed to work specifically with the air frame, intakes and nozzles. At mach 2 supersonic flight, thrust generation breaks down to roughly 8% from the engine compressor core, 29% from the nozzle, and 63% from the intake. It really is a magnificent system. More complex systems exist (aka SR-71, etc), but they are to be considered fully unified from a design standpoint.
So a new engine would mean a new intake design and nozzle, which further translates into structural modification to the wings, which translates into the aircraft no longer being allowed to operate under it's current type certificate by the authorities. This means the aircraft would end up needing to be re-certified through an approved flight test program to operated under an amended/derived type certificate. Aka, you might as well just build a new aircraft (you're going to burn through the $$ anyway).
We're loosing our language.
Kid-proof tablet..
Nostalgia is nice, but "retro" can accommodate it in a modern way. Like putting more efficient engines in a lighter-weight (composite fiber construction) look-alike, of the original Concorde. Building a modern look-alike might cost less (3D manufacturing for special parts) and be safer, too (no years of age and wear-and-tear on a new plane).
Why, what else could they use that money for? It's not as if they're going to use it for anything useful, like reducing income inequality!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
After the 2000 crash, several Concordes were modified to prevent a recurrence, and were put back into service. They were grounded in 2003 due to reductions in passenger numbers (9/11/2001 plus a general recession) and due to a decision by Airbus to stop maintenance support.