Slower than the speed of sound....
It's all true. (written some time ago)I want to tell you now about a time I did have a bad experience. Potentially a very bad experience. But the truth is that without the use of alcohol or strong drugs, it was so well handled that I did not really care. Here’s how it happened.
It was a beautiful sunny day and I was lucky enough to be heading on a business trip to New York on Concorde, that most amazing of all flying machines. It was not my first trip on the bird but I was still excited. It was a beautiful sunny day as we took off towards the west. The only way I can describe take-off is that it was a bit like hurtling up stairs in a rocket. Concorde was not quiet, it was not particularly luxurious, but boy was it fast. I had already done an hour in our Heathrow office that morning, we took off at 10:30 and by 10:00 I was expecting to be in the New York office. Bizarre!
We were only a few minutes into the flight when our captain’s voice came over the intercom. After the usual pleasantries he told us in that way that only the British can that there was a spot of bother. I forget the exact technical details but I think it was something to do with the rudder. Most of the passengers, myself included, probably did not even realise that Concorde had such a thing. Anyway, nothing to worry about we were reassured, and here was what was going to happen. “I am sorry for the inconvenience but I am afraid we will have to return to Heathrow.” came the soothing tones. “That won’t take long, and I have already radioed ahead so a replacement Concorde will be waiting for you as soon as we land.”
A different planet from ‘rail replacement buses!’ British Airways had seven Concordes, so luckily they always had a spare one hanging around somewhere, as you do.
“So the only tiny problem,” continued the voice of God (or so it seemed), “is that as we have only just taken off we have too much fuel onboard and the plane is too heavy to land.” Too heavy to land? Oh no, I thought, is this going to be the old joke about the Englishman the Irishman and the Scotsman arguing about who is going to be thrown off first? Luckily not. “What I am going to do is go out of the Bristol channel, dump most of the fuel, turn around and then fly back to Heathrow.”
Dump most of the fuel? Oh no! How much was ‘most’? I hoped he had a little gauge like I did on my car with a read out of ‘miles remaining’. What if he threw away too much? Would we have to crash land in Swindon? How many miles was it anyway from Bristol to London? A hundred? I seemed to remember reading somewhere that Concorde averaged 5 gpm. Yes, 5 gallons per mile…so that was an awful of petrol he had better not dump on the poor fish in the Channel.
The flight back to Heathrow was magical, among the most memorable I have ever taken. The previous day we had actually been visiting friends in Bath so as we returned to London following the line of the M4 motorway flying at about only 10,000 feet I could re-trace the journey I had taken only yesterday. But this time it was like what I imagine it would be like to travel in a rocket-propelled hot air balloon. Oh look down there, that’s the service station we didn’t stop at! Is that a cow? Are we nearly there yet? Yes, as soon as we turned around we were nearly there, you stupid boy! You are never not ‘nearly there’ on Concorde.
And so, only 10 minutes later, to the skies above Windsor. “Now,” said our captain, “you may not know it, but these poor chaps at Heathrow don’t get much chance to practice the old emergency drill stuff. So what I have agreed with them is that they can use our landing this morning for a jolly good practice. So when we land, don’t be alarmed, but what you are going to see is these boys and girls racing alongside us in their fire engines and ambulances to see if they still remember the training. OK, now down we go.” He didn’t quite let out a ‘wheeeeeee!’ but he might have done.
Relaxed? You bet we were. 99 people all smiling, even although they had just given back their empty champagne glasses. And sure enough as we hit the tarmac with a bit of a bump mind you, it was like the Fisher Price airport out there with all the yellow and red vehicles trundling in parallel trying to keep up with us.
We came to a stop, not at the terminal, but somewhere in the outer reaches of the airfield. Why? Did they really think the plane might explode? (Actually, yes, but the trick is no one bothered to tell us that bit.) So we promptly deplaned and were escorted onto a bus. That was the funniest part. 99 people, 98 of whom had paid thousands of pound to rocket off to New York – I was on an airline ‘duty travel’ fare - and here they were boarding a bus! Not something to shout about back on the cocktail circuit in St George’s Hill.
And so that, dear reader, was my most frightening emergency landing. Thanks to the way it was handled I have not been so scared since the time I dropped a pillow on my foot.
The next day when I was already back in London I saw the newspaper front page headline shrieking “M25 closed as Concorde makes emergency landing!”. Too late to be frightened now.