Earlier this year it was announced that Club Concorde has raised the funds to purchase and restore a Concorde aircraft with the aim of returning it to service by , to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the aircraft's inaugural test flight.
In Sir Richard Branson announced plans to launch a new supersonic passenger jet dubbed Concorde II , which it is claimed will be able to speed from London to New York in just three-and-a-half hours. Find out all about it here.
Jump directly to the content. Sign in. This allowed the plane to slow the air flowing into its engines down to 1, mph in as little space as 4. The designers weren't just showing off as this prevented the engines from exploding. The Concorde aircraft featured carbon-fiber brakes and fly-by-wire controls. This might not sound impressive as they are the norm today, but during the s this was a technological marvel and decades ahead of Airbus who made this technology mainstream.
Concorde aircraft's signature feature, apart from the wings , is probably its long, drooping nose. This innovation allowed the aircraft to be streamlined during flight but could be dropped lower to give the pilot a good field of vision during takeoff and landing. This interesting design feature made the Concorde airplane and its company instantly popular among media and passengers.
With all these improvements you were able to fly long distances in half the usual time. Soon enough, passengers started to visit New York and other places across the Atlantic ocean in larger numbers, traveling at the twice the speed of sound 2. Seven years later Brian Trubshaw made his first flight in the British-built prototype. Between and , the Concorde continued to service the wealthy traveler and the aircraft fanatic alike, until a tragic crash in Paris in kills people.
At peak production, twenty Concorde aircraft were built for two customers with 18 other airlines taking options on the plane. With millions of dollars in options on the table, why did manufacturers cease production and end the supersonic age early? The Concorde was a radical departure from conventional jet aircraft.
While it had a smaller passenger capacity than, for example, the Boeing , it could run laps around bigger planes and enable transatlantic travel in only a few hours. One famous example was having breakfast in London and then lunch in New York on the same day.
The speeds and the luxury experience onboard attracted a wealthy clientele. Supersonic transports SSTs opened up a new market segment: those with big wallets but who had no time, such as CEOs and celebrities. The Concorde would enable them to skip one of the worst parts of flying, spending hours in the air, and get them where they needed to be faster. Something that outside of a ticket onboard the Concorde, it was impossible to avoid. Today, what do we offer for the 40 percent high first-class fare?
A wider chair and a free whiskey. To offer eight, instead of fourteen hours, makes it worth 40 percent more. Twenty Concorde planes were built in France and the UK - six prototype and development aircraft and 14 service planes which were operated by Air France and British Airways. Concorde number was moved to its new home by engineers from British Airways and Airbus, who towed the iconic aircraft across Filton Airfield and up a ramp into the new purpose-built hangar.
Two development aircraft built for testing, numbers and , can be seen at the Airbus factory in Toulouse, and the Brooklands Museum in Weybridge. Branson later wrote that Virgin Atlantic had wanted to run the fleet for many years to come, but no agreement was reached. Earlier this year it was announced that Club Concorde has raised the funds to purchase and restore a Concorde aircraft with the aim of returning it to service by , to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the aircraft's inaugural test flight.
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