flyburg
The Concorde autopilot had more modes than you could shake a stick at, but as Bellerophon quite rightly states, there was none for emergency descent. There were none less than SEVENTEEN autopilot modes (although only sixteen could be directly selected. I remember at entry into service, Flight International did a Concorde 'test drive', and the reviewer stated the only mode missing from the AFCS was 'Home James'. But of course now, in this FMS age, a lot of the modes would be replaced by VNav/LNav. (VOR/LOC mode was even designed to capture a radial at Mach 2, where VOR course set error was modulated as a function of Mach number. What the designer was thinking of here is anyone's guess
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As far decompression goes, the only event that I can ever recall is when on it's first pre-delivery test flight out of Fairford, aircraft G-BOAC lost cabin pressure when the nose was lowered to 5 deg's. Some wally at British Aerospace had omitted to fit a fwd pressure panel, and during the high altitude/high speed portion of the test flight, the droop nose seal was able to hold the pressure. (Max diff was 10.7 PSI !!).Fortunately this event happened fairly 'low down', but even so the flight deck was said to be awash with maps, sid/stars, Playboys etc, as the air rushed out through the rudder pedal area. (For some reason this panel was never fitted with a warning microswitch; a duplicate check was carried out after any 'heavy' maintenance, to make sure that the panel was safely fitted).
Dude
