Thank you. :-)
My first few questions:
1) If the Concorde fleet had kept flying after 2003, what modifications or enhancements would be added to them to both keep them in line with modern safety standards and increase crew efficiency/maintainability?
Would it be 'bolting-on' a flight management computer to the existing analog instrumentation, or (long-term) refitting with a fully-digital avionics package similar to the current A3x0 (where x >= 2)?
1a) If #2 was done (full digital refit assuming budget was available), would there still be a need for a flight engineer, or would a lot of the F/E's functions be handled by the FMC/ECAM (assuming it was properly programmed? ... only looked at an A3x0 manual briefly, hope I got the acronym right
)
2) Who would be doing most of the work for this? Obviously, the R&D would be done at Airbus, but would the actual installation be done by Airbus or BA/AF Concorde Engineering?
3) About how long would such a program be? (I'm guessing in the 10-15 year+ range, including R&D/ground testing/flight testing.)