Biggles78
Yes, she was rolled. One of the Aérospatiale test pilots (not sure who) had the technique down, and barrel-rolled one of the French test aircraft on a few occasions. The former BA GM Concorde, Capt Brian Walpole was able to join him on one of those occasions; the French guy rolled one way and then invited Brian to roll other way. These were perfectly co-ordinated barrel rolls of course; pulling a more or less constant +1G; not bad for an airliner
. Brian would have to confirm who the French pilot was.
EW73
The whole idea of this manoeuvre was to avoid overflying the populated areas at high power. The left turn was really quite extreme (to say the least
), and the aircraft would pass just to the north of the main Rockaway Beach area, carry out a very brief noise abatement (reduced power, no afterburner with the primary nozzle wide open to reduce the noise signature) manoeuvre, and then accelerate on dry power only, ready to intercept the east-bound track home. (I'd been over at the Rockaways on many occasions, people used to line the beach area to watch the aircraft departing, particularly the afternoon BA004 departure). The only real high power contact with the human species, was a fairly low pass over Cross Bay BVD, but I guess the drivers just got used to it. The guys 'up front 'always made the manoeuvre look simple, but it did require an extreme amount of concentration, professionalism and practice. Concorde actually became one of the best behaved neighbours that JFK ever had, in spite of the initial hype.
Dude
