How It Works-Amazing Vehicles

Undercarriage

The undercarriage was unusually strong due to the

high angle the plane would rise to at rotation, just

prior to take off, which put a tremendous amount of

stress on the rear wheels in particular.

Nose

Concorde’s nose drooped to help visibility on

take off and landing and straightened in flight.

Passenger cabin

Concorde could carr y 92

passengers or be

reconfigured internally

to carry up to 120.

Cockpit

Concorde’s were the

last aircraft BA flew

that required a

flight engineer in

the cockpit with the

pilot and copilot.

Thrust-by-wire

Concorde was one of the

first aircraft to use an

onboard computer to help

manage its thrust levels.

A nd yet Concorde still had to contend

with the heat generated by supersonic

fl ight. The nose – traditionally the

hottest part of any supersonic aircraft

• was fi tted w ith a v isor to prevent the
  heat reaching the cockpit while the
  plane’s fuel was used as a heat sink,
  drawing heat away from the cabin.
  Even then, owing to the incredible
  heat generated by compression of air as

Concorde travelled supersonically, the

fuselage would extend up to 300

millimetres, or almost one foot. The

most famous manifestation of this was a

gap that would open up on the fl ight

deck between the fl ight engineer’s

console and the bulkhead.

Traditionally, engineers would place

their hats in this gap, trapping them

there after it closed.

End of an era

On 25 July 2000, A ir France Flight

4590 crashed in Gonesse, France,

killing all 100 passengers and nine

crew as well as a further four on

the ground.

A lthough the crash was caused

by a fragment from the previous

aircraft to take off, passenger

numbers never recovered and

were damaged still f urther by the

rising cost of maintaining the

ageing aircraft and the slump in air

travel following the 9/11 attacks.

A s a result, on 10 April 2003, A ir

France and British Airways

announced their Concorde fl eets

would be retired later that year.

Despite an attempt by Richard

Branson to purchase BA’s Concorde

fl eet for Virgin Atlantic, the planes

were retired following a week-long

farewell tour that culminated in

three Concordes landing at

Heathrow, and the ver y fi nal fl ight

of a Concorde worldwide landing

in Filton, Bristol.

BA still owns its Concorde fl eet:

one is on display in Surrey, a

second is being kept near-

airworthy by volunteers at the Le

Bourget A ir and Space Museum,

and a third, also at that site, is

being worked on by a joint team of

English and French engineers.

The sonic boom

Sonic booms are generated by the passage of an object through the air. This passage

creates pressure waves that travel at the speed of sound. The closer the aircraft gets

to the speed of sound, the closer these waves become until they merge. The aircraft

then forms the tip of a ‘Mach cone’, the pressure wave at its nose combining w ith the

fall in pressure at its tail as it passes to create the distinctive ‘boom’ sound.

Wavefront Overlapping Shock cone

SUBSONIC

SPEED

MACH

ONE

SUPERSONIC

SPEED

© Mar tin J. Galloway

© Pline 09

This Concorde is on display at

Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport

Mike Bannister (top left)

piloted the fi rst Concorde

fl ight following the

Gonesse disaster

The interior of a British

Air ways Concorde

BAC/Aerospatiale

Concorde

Manufacturer:

BAC (Now BAE Systems) and

Aerospatiale (Now EADS)

Year launched: 1976

Year retired: 2003

Number built: 20

Dimensions:

Length: 61.66m

Wingspan: 25.6m

Height: 3.39m

Capacity (passengers):

Up to 120 passengers

Unit cost: £23 million in 1977

Cruise speed: Mach 2.02

(1,320mph)

Max speed: Mach 2.04

(1,350mph)

Propulsion: 4x Rolls-Royce/

Snecma Olympus 593 engines

Ceiling: 60,000ft

The statistics...

DID YOU KNOW? The first Concorde test flight took place from Toulouse on 2 March 1969