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Bye bye Concorde
leo
The British airline announced a special deal for Concordes in the coming months -- with a one-way flight costing just $3,118, $5,458 for first class.
I wonder what the "standard" fare is?
In the region £5,000+ if I remember rightly (not sure in $ though)
[edited by: creative_craig at 1:51 pm (utc) on April 10, 2003]
That's some kind of machine. It is too bad I never got to ride on one. It's as close to a space flight as most humans could get.
A _long_ time ago I worked a short time as a ramp agent ("ramp rat") at JFK for a company that serviced BA.
While we were in training during Winter out on the tarmac, it was bitterly cold. We did have to train to service the Concorde. It's very small up close.
To get out of the cold wind about 3 or 4 of us climbed into the luggage area. My initials may have been carved inside- I forget.
Inside was OK. Just a long tube 2 rows of 2 seats. You were paying for the speed, after all.
One thing I don't think would ever happen again- I was almost late one day and being new still didn't have all the security badges I neeeded.
I was able to walk up to an area that accessed the tarmac and talk my way into the gate as the security guard didn't seem to care much. :-O
I'll tell ya one of the scariest things I've had to do was service 747's during deep winter with high winds. The water gets filled by a water truck that has a hose and a cherry picker to stand in. You go all the way up to just under the tail. Cold, windy, gloves on, nothing but a couple of chains to keep you from falling.
All for $6/hr and I was making more than some of the other guys!
We are talking some 13 years ago. Wow. I'm old! :)
AW
The problem was Boing hadn't got any plane to compete agaisnt the Concorde, they were not planning to have one, and they didn't want the Concorde to eat the market of high class people.
This way the Concorde found it very difficult to become profitable: it could not stop in enough US airports to fill the passenger list.
Misses the point though: it still was cool to fly faster than sound!
Hmmm, a Google concord?
Misses the point though
Doesn't miss the point of the post # 14.
lawman
Au revoir and good luck, Concorde!
London to NYC in just over 3 hours.
Expensive? only if you can't afford it.
Sure travel on a "bus" for a lot less
You want a Ferrari you have to pay.
Concord would not have a problem attracting customers if allowed to fly truely worldwide.
But hey all is fair in love and war, if I were the owner of an airline company I also would loby my government to "ban this "noisy nuisance" in the sky, and not worry about the actual fact this plane is gonna be one pigeon we cannot compete with on a level playing field.
Noise, Bull...t excuse, if ever I heard one.
I wouldn't have guessed this bird was started in 1962 and the last one was built in 1978.
Although I've seen them parked up at Heathrow, I've only seen one in flight once, and that was coming in to land at my local airport. It's an astonishing aircraft.
In some respects it looks like a jet fighter, and with a top speed of 1300MPH it's a match for most in terms of speed. But it's also very elegant and WHITE, a little like a swan. I guess the closest thing I can thing of in terms of technology and sheer awesomeness is a Space Shuttle.
It's also very much a child of the 1960s. Built by an Anglo-French consortium (the French insisted on the "e" on the end) it was a statement about how those countries saw the future, and a source of immense national pride then (and now) at being the first, and only, supersonic airliner.
Concorde is kind of like the the Ferrari of the skies, and makes other airliners look like a bus. Unfortunately, most people choose to travel by bus rather than Ferrari.
Spoken like somebody who has never had to deal with the restrictions on noise created by airports. The Concorde RUINS noise contours that airports work very carefully to manage.
Noise, Bull...t excuse, if ever I heard one.
Noise is a huge, and I think legitimate, concern of folks who live near airports. The Concorde makes much more noise than any other commercial passenger aircraft. For people that live in metropolitan areas of the U.S., one of the side effects of the days right after September 11 was noticing how quiet the skies were without any planes. I'm glad I don't live anywhere near where the Concorde flies, er, flew.
Yeah, I did not say it was "quiet"
The excuse was noise, unfortunately this was not the real reason some airports banned it.
Of course some "caring" authorities then go and build more runways to take more traffic, so long as it suits them
"The Concorde RUINS noise contours that airports work very carefully to manage"........see above
Live near an airport? you kiddin
