@ Volume
Sorry for slight delay; I hadn't a clue and had to ask an old friend who was directly involved in Flight Test. This is his verbatim reply:
I remember the Concorde braking parachute quite well and as I recall the parachute door indicated open during the first flight of 002 although the chute functioned normally on landing.
As I recall the parachute was used quite a bit in the early days even during the 1972 overseas “Sales Tour”. Remember the prototypes were operating well above their max landing weight because of the amount of test equipment on board.
The parachutes were repacked by our own Safety Equipment people who were fully qualified on all the safety Equipment we used on Concorde and on the Canberra.
I don’t recall ever having life problems with the parachutes. I imagine the total number number of deployments would not be that high. I think it would have been an on-condition item.
I can’t see that the Concorde parachute would bear any relation to the Caravelle system. Concorde was a much heavier aircraft with higher landing speeds. I feel sure that Concorde had a specific new design.
Having been on board several times when the chute was used I think the crew liked the initial deceleration which the chute provided . Although I do recall landing at Bombay in very bad weather when the parachute was deployed and immediately jettisoned since it was pulling the aircraft off line.
I think that is about as much as one could hope for after all this time