I heard the "That was the difficult part!" story was Edwards to an airline exec when they were still trying to sell the bird. Very true observation by Edwards whoever it was said to.

I've spoken to many Concorde flight crew over the years and surprisingly few have experienced an engine surge. One that did said it was quite dramatic; a really mighty bang about twice second. The other engine of the pair would then surge in sympathy as the intakes were adjacent, so then you had two engines doing that. On the flight deck they'd pull all 4 to flight idle to get them to settle down, which made the other two pop-surge. Then slowly advance power on all 4 back to full to recover to M2 cruise.

One captain told me how he'd gone back into the cabin after it had happened to him and all the pax except two were quite unperturbed, enjoying the hospitality with a 'these things happen and it's obviously no big deal as all's well now' attitude. The two exceptions were Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, who were ashen-faced and uncommunicative!

Why doesn't that surprise me? ;)

I thought they were like that anyway?

A Concorde pilot I used to know, showed me a photo of an engine that had eaten part of an intake door mid Atlantic. It was a bit of a mess.

IIRC one engine surged, part of an intake door broke off, came out of the front and was ingested by the adjacent engine. The aircraft landed at Shannon with one engine shut down and one on reduced power to stop it surging.

I think this would be about 1997.

The Olympus 593 was a tough old mincing machine. A Concorde blew a tyre on t/o from Heathrow but all seemed well so they continued to NY. On landing it was obvious from the state of the leading compressor blades that most of it had gone through one of the engines - with no subsequent vibrations, loss of performance, or adverse instrument readings.

A few Concorde anecdotes...from my time at Terminal 4 doing penance as an Immigration Officer...

In 1995, when the Boeing 777 was the latest thing in the skies, BA were flying it on their London to Paris service until it was ETOPS qualified. I was watching the passengers come off the latest arrival as part of my duties...they were mostly American, and didn't seem too excited to have flown in Boeing's very latest. As they travelled along the moving walkway towards the Immigration control, they went past a Concorde, parked on stand.
They went potty...cameras came out, people started walking the wrong way on the walkway, a great buzz of excitement went up..."GEE...look...it's the Concorde!!"...as they marvelled at the space age lines of the 1960s design icon!

After the Paris crash, when the fleet was being ferried to Bristol for the modifications to be carried put before return to service, every time one left Heathrow you could hardly get near the place for photographers and spotters...cars, stepladders, huge lenses, the lot. Just the same when they resumed service...the "Concorde Groupies" were out in force.

Finally, when she was being withdrawn from use, all flights were full for weeks before the final flight. I dealt with one of the American passengers, who told me he had been an engineer on the Boeing SST project. He said he had had to fly on Concorde to see what a supersonic airliner was really like, and he was astounded at it....."Magnificent!" was his verdict.

I lived in Kew for many years and I can remember the first time Concorde came over, one of the prototypes on diversion due to weather after displaying at Farnborough. I also have a photograph taken from the garden of the last Concorde in her final approach. All gone now; but still the "Queen of the Skies"....

I remember Concorde visiting EDI now and again. She would always fly over my house on her way in (although at this point she was just entering final approach pattern, so still fairly high above the garden).

On her last visit to EDI the empty space next to the runway (former Sunday Market) was swamped with people too.

I remember being on top of LHR T2 at the viewing gallery watching her land on what was the last flight to come in from JFK before the fleet withdrawal for modifications. Some people thought that would be the last flight ever and when she taxiied past there were lots of folk clapping and one man was even in tears! She certainly pulled on many peoples heart strings. :(

She was an example of 'doing what we can do because we CAN!'. A product of life before the accountants were let out of their box. Like the Moon landings. Those were great times to be alive!

Had just a single flight on Concord...JFK > LHR in, I think 1983 or might have been 1984, after my BA flight that Saturday morning went tech and to my huge surprise, the BA desk gave me a ticket on the departing Concorde instead of the hotel voucher I was expecting....

Was even invited for a flightdeck visit after my ID fell out of my jacket pocket as I handed it to the c/c prior to departure....

My two memories are that as I entered into the flightdeck, we were about Mach 1.8 and FL 550 (!!) and I was greeted by the skipper, a Capt McMahon, who was sprawled low-down in his seat, shoeless feet on top of the instrument panel, smoking a Lucky Strike and doing a crossword....Being at the time a newly type rated F27 F/O and without even a decent A/P to help the day's work go by a little less tiringly, I remember feeling a huge sense of amazement that the crew were actually unoccupied at Mach 1.8 and FL 550....

The other memory is that the F/E's instrument panel had a gap of about 15 > 25 cms between the right hand edge and the adjacent trim panel....When I jokingly asked whether he ever dropped his pen / charts / clipboard holder into the gap, he replied that the gap 'appeared' in the cruise, due to heating and then expansion of the aircraft's airframe, and then closed up again as speed dropped back below Mach 1....He said that it was typical of an F/E's life that the only design fault on Concord directly affected the F/E !!

About 30 minutes before landing at Heathrow, the c/c came round offering all the pax a small souvenir - a gold plated note holder in a velvet presentation box both with famous 'C' logo engraved on them.....Although by then I'd already followed the example of the guy sat next to me and enjoyed several good quality ports before slipping the empty crystal-cut glasses, again with the inscribed 'C' logo, into my cabin bag as a souvenir....

Still use the glasses from time to time, but haven't a clue where the note holder is these days....

I remember reading that a Mach 3 aircraft was studied, but the increased acceleration/deceleration times on a trans-Atlantic trip meant that the amount of time cruising at Mach 3 only minimally affected the total flight time. Combined with the economic and technical issues associated with having to go to titanium structures, it didn't make sense.

Can anyone point me to a reference?

For many years there were free gifts for the pax on every flight and I recall the vast numbers that were left behind and merely binned.

I was fortunate to travel to Andrews Air Force base on the SSC when we took John Major across to meet whoever was president at the time. We parked between a number of fighters and were swamped with US air force staff that wanted a look around and the engineering Manager was in his element lecturing about the a/c's many advanced systems.

Upon departure we had battery issues and asked for a ground power unit to assist. The USAF ground crew returned with a hand held unit for fighter a/c and seemingly had nothing else to offer us. We did get started but the crew were expecting the worse.

I also recall being in Almaty and was told that the TU144 ended up doing freight services between Moscow and Almaty at the end of its brief life. There were 2 TU's present both in poor condition.

Concorde had no APU and always needed external air for engine start, preferably two units as there is no cross-bleed across the aircraft between engines 2 and 3. She also has a ground power socket so I suspect she needed external electrical power as well.

An interesting thread, especially mentioning Sinsheim where both examples can be seen. When the Museum bought a Concorde (Ex-Air France) the public interest was incredible. The crowds waiting around Baden to see it land necessitated a flypast before landing. Even transporting it from Baden to Sinsheim attracted hundreds of spectators on every bridge as the low-loader drove past - the outer wings & Empennage were removed for the trip. All this at 02:00 as the roads had to be closed to transport it. I saw the re-assembled Concorde at Sinsheim before it was hoisted into it's final resting place on the roof and noted a German commenting what an amazing aircraft the french had built. I was forced to correct him stating the the British had also built it and we were still flying it!

ABS

The story I heard about the Flight Engineer's panel and the gap that opened up at cruise involved the last supersonic flight of each airframe. I believe that Concorde had the last Flight Engineers in BA; so to mark the passing of the aircraft and their own demise as aircrew, the F/Es put their hats into this gap at cruise....as the airframe cooled and the gap closed up, the hats were trapped forever!

Watching Concorde start was always entertaining..the two large diesel air compressors, one for each side, roaring away and belching exhaust smoke...

The 'hat in the gap' thing is indeed true. I understand, however, that one such hat was vandalised by a visitor, being cut free leaving part of the hat left trapped in the gap. I think it was one of the 2 BA Concordes that went to the US - either the New York one or the Seattle one.

I think the Tu144 started doing cargo flights there from Moscow, not ended up doing so. This was standard Soviet procedure of the times and was done on a number of new types being introduced to service. It subsequently moved on to intermittent passenger service on the route, though it's not apparent how you actually got tickets on it. It's 1,700 nm from Moscow, about as far as the aircraft could reliably get at the time, mostly over the unpopulated Kazakh desert. I believe standard fares were charged of about 85 roubles one way (about US$85 at the time); undoubtedly the best supersonic fare ever offered.

Almaty (nowadays) was known as Alma Ata in Soviet days when the 144 was serving there.

Most of the Tu144s still exist, scattered around, there are a number in the open at their old base of Moscow Zhukovsky that can be spotted on Google Earth, as well as others on display elsewhere.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Russi...t,+Russia&z=17

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Russi...t,+Russia&z=18

There's no date on the Google maps, but I'd say those pictures were taken some years ago. When I first visited Zhukovsky in an official capacity in 1992 there were five TU-144s, two of which I was told were in flying condition. There were lots of other weird and wonderful flying machines about the place, most of which I'd never seen before.

I was last there in 2012 for the air show and most of the prototypes had gone (I was told they'd been scrapped) and there were just two Tu-144s in the background by the flight test centre.

Like Farnborough before it, Ramenskoye - as it is now called - is being reinvented as a business jet base, so expect to see a lot of 'tidying up' taking place. I suspect the remaining 144s may end up as 'Baltika' cans. :)

Re the Almaty link, I was told that you had to be 'invited', from which I understood it was for senior party members only. I was working in Russia at the time and asked about it, but I was given a very firm 'Nyet' on the basis that my visa did not allow me to travel to Almaty!

If you want to see a picture of the cap go to the following site

http://www.iaopa.eu/mediaServlet/sto...10/pp36-39.pdf

The famous gap became apparent to the BA crews in the very early days of operation to Bahrain. In those days there was limited storage for all the manuals on the flight deck and they tended to end up on the floor.

On one trip outbound to Bahrain at M2.0, a very very senior F/E decided the "Cruise Manual" fitted quite nicely into the gap [ between the rear of the F/E panel and the circuit breaker panel], and there it stayed for the rest of the flight. Unfortunately this manual also contained the tables for P7 and Fuel Flow settings, which would be required for take off.

So prior to the next Take off the manual was reached for[ so as to get these setting] only to find the manual was jammed tight in the gap and could not be removed. Fortunately another manual on board also had these graphs and so the settings could be found and set for the take off, which saved a very red face.

The famous gap became a common talking point when visitors came to the flight deck, with them being invited to put their hand in the gap at Mach 2.0 and then just before they got off to come and see if they could put their hand in the gap then.

Viewing both at Sinsheim
 

http://i1305.photobucket.com/albums/...&1424117244177

Very easy to view both at Sinsheim. And you can walk through the cabins to the cockpits. Skinny tubes they are!

The hat is in place in the Concorde at Duxford, open to the public

Interesting - that's the second British prototype and as such is a very different beast to the production Concordes. It wouldn't have flown with airline staff, just test crew who would have worn helmets, not caps.