Speedbird223
the 31L Canarsie departure is obviously extremely well known
Given the noise abatement situation what happened if the weather didn't play ball?
Were there other departure options?
If the runway in use at JFK was not suitable for our departure, we would request a different runway, which JFK ATC were extremely helpful at providing, even though this caused some disruption to their landing/take-off pattern. For our part, we had to accept this request could entail a delay to our departure whilst waiting for a suitable gap in their traffic flow.
Remember that we had two take-off calculations to consider. Firstly, could Concorde get airborne from that runway under the prevailing conditions? Secondly - and this was usually the limiting factor at JFK - could the aircraft then stay with the noise limits at that take-off weight and under those ambient conditions of wind and temperature? If the answer to either question was no, then we needed another runway.
An example might be when JFK was using 04R for landing and 04L for departure. We might have been able to lift the weight off 04L, but would have been way over our noise limit, so we would request 22R for departure.
I assume therefore that arrivals were a lot less liberally governed
Did you mean a lot less strictly governed? If so, the answer is yes.
Concorde would use whatever landing runway was in use at JFK without problem, save requiring a bit more of a gap between herself and the preceding landing aircraft (due to her higher approach speeds maintained to much closer to touchdown) which ATC at JFK were well aware of and which they managed very professionally.
Even so, on the Canarsie approach, it was instructive to see just how quickly Concorde could close the spacing between herself and a preceding lightly loaded and therefore much slower B757.
31R was our preferred runway due to its proximity to the BA terminal, the Canarsie approach onto 13L was good fun and a frequent approach. 04R was also used and was an Autoland runway with Cat3A limits down to 15R / 700 ft RVR, useful in bad weather. Concorde had landing limits on all JFK runways, but, at least in my experience, the others were rarely, if ever, used.
I'm glad you enjoyed your flight on Concorde, it all seems so long ago now probably because it was!
Best Regards
Bellerophon