50 years ago today 02/03/1969 Raymond Baxter said those words as Concorde took to the air for the first time. What a shame that iconic aircraft is no longer flying
Rising fuel costs is what’s holding back anything similar being built, also a lot of countries now have a supersonic ban in place so you can’t fly over them while at Mach 1 plus Still the only aircraft to supercruise without afterburners, used them to get there but didn’t need to keep them on to stay at the maintained speed
It still looks 'modern' even by today's standards. We talk of beautiful bikes, but that's one beautiful aircraft. Cannot believe it's 50 years gone.
Have to agree it was way ahead of it time along with the SR71 blackbird, both still haven’t been bettered performance wise
A brilliant aircraft, the best civil aircraft ever made. I did actually fly on one. Luckily they only took around 3.5 hours to get to the USA. Just as well really. As it wasn’t very comfortable. The width of the seats were very narrow. Unfortunately Concorde was killed off at birth. The USA refused to allow it fly supersonic over land and then other countries followed suit. The real reason was that they were jealous that it wasn’t thier invention. Still it had a good life. And will be remembered fondly by all that did and didn’t fly in one. Rumour has it Boeing are developing something, but the future lies in semi space travel if you want to get to Australia quick. I’m not sure semi space travel would warrant the cost to get to the USA. Who knows one day it might happen again but I won’t be holding my breath.
As Kevin has just said, the ban flying supersonic was actually introduced over most countries along Concordes proposed routes very early on in its life. I think the scheduled flight to JFK saved it. Saw a really interesting documentary about BA flying concorde through the decades. They nearly scrapped it in the early 90s (I think it was) because of falling profitability. A handful of Concorde pilots came up with a few ideas to make it profitable again. Similarly.... The building of A380s was scrapped last week. Seeing a shift towards smaller more fuel efficient aircraft that can land at more local airports. The Typhoon can super cruise, no champagne served on one of them though.
I was fortunate enough to fly on her 2 or 3 times, and I even have a photo of me at the controls flying at Mach 2 over the bay of Biscay in Police rather than pilots uniform which is another story. She used to fly right over the top of my house at the same time every day inbound and outbound (with the occasional exception) and you could set your watch by her. The prototype mock up was built at Vickers in Weybridge (you might know it better as Brooklands) and is now a museum and the site for Mercedes and Yamaha. I lived 2 minutes from the site and used to watch the VC10's being built take off and I still remember now watching my Father (who was also a Police motorcyclist) escort the various parts such as wings, fuselage, tail and so on into the site Isn't it amazing that it is probably one of the few areas where technology wise (until the next generation appear) that we have actually taken a step backwards.
