I was at EGBB when one flew in on the farewell tour (alpha charlie I think). I had my scanner operating and was thrilled to hear ATC offer the captain a chance to overfly the airport - which he readily accepted. It was an emotional day for me, although I was unable to stick around for the takeoff. A wonderfully beautiful aircraft, sadly missed.

2 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

the concorde is (was?) a formodable gas guzzler, and could not contend with rising gas prices and the ever aging fleet and the fact that it had a 15mile Sonic boom footprint, due to an airframe failing to stop pressure waves of converging

Prove me wrong. 

Will gladly fly it in MSFS though. 😉

You threw out the challenge which I’ll happily take up.

95T of fuel to transport 100 pax 3,500 miles from LHR to JFK. That’s 1T per passenger. No idea if the price of fuel back then I’m afraid.

The airframes would have lasted at least another 10 years and that’s a fleet built in the 70s to 1980.

The sonic boom footprint was 55nm ahead but 20nm either side of the aircraft. Pilots were scrupulous about not laying down a sonic boom and it was only heard very occasionally in SW England due to unusual atmospherics.

It took 20 mins after takeoff from Heathrow before BA001 reached the accel point in the Bristol Channel south of Cardiff. Once the reheats were engaged it would hit Mach 1.7 within 10 minutes and by the time it was south of Ireland Mach 2 had been achieved unless the air was very warm.

It was withdrawn from service because of:-

1) The French

2) Lack of bottle from BA executives. Richard Branson offered to buy the BA Concorde’s but no way were BA having a Virgin logo on such a prestigious aircraft.

18 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

But unless they flew it as the real Concorde was flown it wouldn’t achieve Mach 1 around FL320 or Mach 2 at FL500. Mach 2 might just not be possible.

You seem to be assuming a realistic flight model paired with an over-simplified control scheme in which case you'd be correct.

On the other hand, it's entirely possible to have an *unrealistic* flight model paired with any control scheme you wish. This is how all those fictional aircraft worked in previous sims. Some who have been around long enough will remember the C4-SST in FS2002, which was a fictional Mach2 bizjet. No fuel balance management, full GPS nav, very easy to get up into the flight levels and make sonic booms. Nothing realistic about it because the flight model didn't require it.

 

 

6 hours ago, HighBypass said:

As an FSX:SE user who cannot afford a new PC for the new sim (even if I could, I'd be waiting a few months at least to see the progress on ironing the bugs out), I might be offended at that statement..

If you haven't already, give MSFS a try? $1 for 30 days on XBox Game Pass for PC.

The Robin and Cub (steam gauges) run fine IMO.  MSFS great for VFR.

12 minutes ago, eslader said:

You seem to be assuming a realistic flight model paired with an over-simplified control scheme in which case you'd be correct.

I’m making no assumptions about this flight model because I have no idea how accurate it is. I was simply pointing out the speed and altitude an accurate model would achieve which matched the actual performance.

45 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

95T of fuel to transport 100 pax 3,500 miles from LHR to JFK. That’s 1T per passenger. No idea if the price of fuel back then I’m afraid.

I think....1T = 1000kg?  1L (water)  = 1Kg... so about 1,000L of fuel?  IDK but maybe $0.50/L back in the 80's... so $500 per passenger?

Doesn't seem like much, how much were tickets, $5,000+?

@MatthewS, close. $12,000 for a return ticket in 1976. But the bosses never knew the price as their secretaries booked it. BA asked them to guess how much they cost and when they guessed a high price BA just charged them that!

Most of BA’s profits in the 80s onwards came from Concorde. And they had just 7 aircraft! 😄

11 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

95T of fuel to transport 100 pax 3,500 miles from LHR to JFK. That’s 1T per passenger. No idea if the price of fuel back then I’m afraid

that is an astonishing high number, no matter how you slice it. Compare that to numbers of an A321 flight (I have the dispatch figures in front of me)

PAX 220

FUEL 16,9 

Ground Distance: 2141nm

TRIP TIME: 0443

AVG FF/HR : 2967kg  

Truly worlds apart. However there is no denial It was an impressive machine for its time.

 

23 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Most of BA’s profits in the 80s onwards came from Concorde. And they had just 7 aircraft! 😄

Makes you wonder if the rise of corporate aviation didn't have some impact on the financial viability of Concorde. After all, it's neat to fly supersonic once just to say you did, but even the President of the US doesn't have a need to cross the ocean in less than 4 hours and at FL500+, Mach 2 feels just like Mach 0.85. 

After they got the Concorde trip under their belts, I wouldn't be surprised if the bigwigs started eyeing Gulfstreams and working to justify their company buying a couple of 'em.  Companies owning planes declined in the '04 recession but before then it was overly commonplace. Even the regional big box hardware store chain where I live had a couple of jets, and that was just to fly 3 or 4 states away.

 

1 hour ago, SAS443 said:

that is an astonishing high number, no matter how you slice it. Compare that to numbers of an A321 flight (I have the dispatch figures in front of me)

PAX 220

FUEL 16,9 

Ground Distance: 2141nm

TRIP TIME: 0443

AVG FF/HR : 2967kg  

Truly worlds apart. However there is no denial It was an impressive machine for its time.

Not a fair comparison because the A321 isn’t capable of crossing the pond. Can you really fit 220 in an A321?

Dig up the numbers for an A330 and the LHR-JFK route for a better comparison. And the subsonic flight time is around 8hrs isn’t it? Concorde did it in 3h 20m.

The record time back to LHR is an astonishing 2h 52m 59s with a favourable tail wind.

It’s still an impressive machine. 😉 And in a sim you don’t pay for the fuel. 😁

That fuel burn is exaggerated by the short time reheats we’re engaged. 52T/hr with them on. That was 1m30s for takeoff and around 7-9mins at FL280 when it went supersonic with then turned off at Mach 1.7. For the rest of the flight fuel burn was very reasonable as there’s effectively no weather above FL500.

47 minutes ago, eslader said:

Makes you wonder if the rise of corporate aviation didn't have some impact on the financial viability of Concorde. After all, it's neat to fly supersonic once just to say you did, but even the President of the US doesn't have a need to cross the ocean in less than 4 hours and at FL500+, Mach 2 feels just like Mach 0.85. 

After they got the Concorde trip under their belts, I wouldn't be surprised if the bigwigs started eyeing Gulfstreams and working to justify their company buying a couple of 'em.  Companies owning planes declined in the '04 recession but before then it was overly commonplace. Even the regional big box hardware store chain where I live had a couple of jets, and that was just to fly 3 or 4 states away.

 

I think it was down to two things. The Paris crash followed by 9/11. Don’t forget too the internet was also taking off so video conferencing would have been an option. A lot of employees of one financial company died on 9/11 which also impacted on demand.

The British PM flew Concorde a few times to G8 conferences just to make a statement I guess. Why not showcase an aircraft you helped design and build?

Believe me if any head of state had access to a supersonic aircraft they would have found a reason to use it. But for comfortable subsonic flying the Gulfstream would be a very nice alternative.

7 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Can you really fit 220 in an A321?

Some charter airlines managed to pull of Y220 configs in their A321 😉 

On 9/7/2020 at 5:04 AM, Andreas Stangenes said:

I think I read somewhere that there USED to be a sub-sonic speedlimit in game, but it has since been lifted.

There was a 'clown' who made a long video where he edited the engine.cfg file for the C152 to give it 1,000,000 HP and max rpm of 250,000. He was clocking up 806+ nm/hr (completely uncontrollable of course), so yes I have to assume that 'mach limit' has been removed.

4 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

Some charter airlines managed to pull of Y220 configs in their A321 😉 

Ryanair or Pakistan Airlines? 😁

24 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Believe me if any head of state had access to a supersonic aircraft they would have found a reason to use it.

Speaking of which... the US Air Force has funded two companies to develop proposals for a future supersonic Air Force One. Both would be derivatives of commercial airliners they have in development, one aimed at Mach 1.8 and the other at Mach 5. 

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/air-force-eying-supersonic-air-force-one/

Sounds like a pipe dream to me, not to mention a typical waste of taxpayer dollars. Any future supersonic airliner would probably have Concorde's slim profile, and wouldn't fit all the gear that has to be crammed into AF1. There's a reason the replacements for the current ones are another 747.

Also, unless they achieve some miracle in reducing the sonic boom, it could never be used for flights in-country, or even some overland foreign routes. I know there has been a lot of work done on that recently, but a boom you "almost can't hear" is still annoying to many people, and would have domestic and foreign political consequences when tied to AF1.