I've flown on G-BOAF.

The reason that "birds nest wiring" was used for the backplane wiring on the AICU was indeed to prevent crosstalk.
I carried out a prom change at Cassablanca just days before the C of A flight, and used a prom blower that I carried out from Filton in my hand baggage together with boxes of proms, i remember the strange reaction by the customs man , until someone rescued me by telling him that I was taking them straight through to air side for Concorde. I programmed the proms by selecting the switches for the 8 bits of the line in the program for that particular prom, and then pressing the "blow" button that destroyed the fusible links in the input circuits of the prom. Of course all 64 lines of program in the prom that was changing had to be blown, even if only one line of program was changing. I carried out the programming on all 8 AICUs in 201, and the prom boards were laid out on a desk in the Air France office. Andre Turcat popped in to see what I was doing.

Decent article at Smithsonian.com with a brief history of Concorde and the crash that doomed it.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smith...M4MDQ0MDUyNwS2

How many commercial flights did the fleet of Concordes actually make before they were sadly decommisssioned?

BA's Concordes performed almost 50,000 flights.

AF had a similar sized fleet, though I think their utilisation was a bit less.

About Concorde

For a time the whole video was available on YouTube - certainly long enough for one to rip a copy (and before Plod catches up with me, I used to own the twin-pack VHS version so felt somewhat entitled...)

I may have missed this over the thread, so apologies, but...

Given today's advances in technology. Could a replacement Concorde be built (better engines, better/lighter software/computers, redundant F/E :uhoh:) from the original plans to actually make it a viable success.

Short answer is no. The advances in material technologies and manufacturing methods since the Concorde was designed would make a clean sheet design a much better and easier (read cheaper) to build aircraft.
Further, changes in the regulations/cert requirements would make it very difficult (if not impossible) to certify not just a Concorde clone but any future SST. I honestly don't know how any aircraft can meet the existing Part 25 depressurization requirements when operating at SST altitudes.

It takes a confluence of technologies and market structure to make something viable.

Concorde could not fly as anything but a very expensive subsonic aircraft over populated land, due to sonic-boom noise pollution - ruling out a lot of the marketplace. London-Africa/South Asia, for example, or Paris-Beijing. Or even NY-LA.

Flying the Pacific non-stop requires a doubling or even tripling of range to avoid refuel stops (sitting on the ground once or twice part-way, for 90 minutes or so, plus acceleration/deceleration time, defeats a lot of the speed advantage). Technology has advanced a lot, but nowhere near doubling/tripling the efficiency/range of an Olympus-type turbojet (which, counting the thrust recovery from the brilliant nacelle designs, was already amazingly efficient).

That's why regular Concorde service (and thus aircraft sales) was, practically speaking, limited to trans-Atlantic routes only.

Work is being done on shockwave/boom attentuation, which might open up far more markets. But it is still small-scale experimental.

Airbus recently proposed - on paper - a boom-defeating flight profile: rocket-assisted vertical acceleration to supersonic (boom travels sideways rather than towards the ground) combined with Mach-4.5 cruise at 104-115,000 feet (30-35km altitude attenuates the boom effects at ground level) and near-vertical descent while passing back to subsonic. Quite a roller-coaster ride!

Using liquid H2 fuel that gets it range from London-LAX at Mach 4.5 - but carrying only a dozen or so pax (hydrogen tank fills the rest of the fuselage).

Pattern, I didn't bother to address the viability question, but unless there is a massive technological breakthrough we're not going to see another commercial SST. The costs and fuel burn of an SST compared to a conventional subsonic airliner make the potential number of paying passengers too small for it to be economically viable. There simply are not that many people who are willing and able to pay a massive price premium to save a couple hours of flight time. No matter how efficient the engines and the airframe, fuel burn is always going to be much higher going supersonic (as one of my college professors put it, 'it takes a lot of energy to break windows ten miles below'), and the stresses of supersonic flight mean high maintenance costs.
The one possibility for a future supersonic passenger aircraft is for a (relatively) small biz jet. Something targeted for the super rich who are willing and able to pay a huge premium to save a few hours (I'm talking about the sort of people who have a 747 as their private jet). The business case would have to assume a small production run (less than 100 aircraft) meaning the massive nonrecurring development and certification costs would need to be spread over a correspondingly small number of sales. On the plus side, the biz jet regulations are somewhat more forgiving than those for large commercial aircraft (i.e. Part 25).

.. just like the Lancs that were barrel rolled !

Three engine ferry
 

hi! I know I may be super late to the party here, wondering if you have another picture of that fuel vent schematic? I can’t seem to see that one, maybe it’s been too long. Anyway it’d be much appreciated. Thank you!

There have been many books written about Concorde. Here is an excellent one by Mike Riley, a Concorde training captain, who not only flew Concorde, but also a large number of other types as well. In his book A Concorde in my Toy Box this unashamed flying enthusiast describes his airline career with BEA and BOAC, as well as taking part in international aerobatice contests with the likes of Neil Williams. His descriptions of the challenges of flying Concorde and the handling qualities of the many aircraft he has flown, including the Antanov An-2, are both analytical and amusing.

His writing contains pearls of aeronautical wisdom that bear comparison with those to be found in John Farley's book, A View from the Hover.

You can find it here on Amazon:-

Concorde at JFK
 

I've attached a couple of photos of Concorde at JFK in 1992.
If anyone would like full size copies (2,240x1,488 - ~3MB) PM me and I'll gladly send them.
If anyone thinks this post shouldn't be here, let me know and I'll delete it.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d36b1cb847.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....3523c5d376.jpg

Seventeen years ago today, she touched down for the very last time...:(

For those of you who are interested in Concorde, may I recommend Mike Riley's blog in which he writes about Concorde and many other aircraft too:-
https://www.flyingthings.org/

Mike Riley wrote: "On June 18th, 2020, the President of France and PM of Britain celebrated the 60 years since President de Gaulle gave his speech from 10 Downing Street to encourage his countrymen to maintain heart and resist all attempts to extinguish the character of their country"
1960?

Probably the speech he made 18 June 1940, link contains speech text, 80 years, but who's counting..
,
https://wiki2.org/en/Appeal_of_18_June

Hi Christiaan
 

I have noticed that I missed a bit in my earlier reply, You will not find a CPU chip as you suggested ,instead an ALU was used with sub-routines it was a RISC before they were invented.].

Fastest Transatlantic Crossing 2 hr 52 min and 59 sec by Concorde JFK- LHR on 08 Feb 1996. 25 years ago.
How time flies

a quick question : was it possible to have 2 supersonic runs on the same flight?
Meaning 2 separate Supersonic legs with a subsonic one in the middle for say tech reasons or just sonic bang suppression over a sensitive area ..
And another while I am here , on the LHR -Bahrein route when did supersonic flight actually started and where it ended...?

Regarding your first question I don't see any regular routing where this would have happened. I think there would not be any technical impossibility, though.
For the second part I guess somewhere above the Adriatic? But would be curious to know too...

Did the BAH to SIN route involve slowing down over India?
I saw a night T/O from BAH, impressive afterburner flames.

Probably the early marketing flight planning software had no means of calculating that.
I believe a double acceleration-deceleration on a single sector was considered to be too fuel thirsty.
There may have been other limitations such as managing the c.g.

AF registrations
 

Hi all,
thanks for the read. I think I've managed every single post (although I skimmed some of the *deeply* technical stuff).
As SLF (but always subsonic) I hope I can ask a question.
The registrations used by BA are clear in their origin - but for Air France, any particular reason for F-BVFx and F-BTSx?

ATC Watcher

it was possible - if the total route was short enough. And you had ~60000 kilos of fuel to waste.

Key points:

- Concorde's speed was directly related to altitude - going subsonic required descending to FL400 or below. With a corresponding decrease in Mach/true airspeed. Very poor fuel efficiency below Mach 1.7 - couldn't hold speed without afterburner/reheat. Don't forget how much Concorde's flight profile and range absolutely depended on turning the engine/nacelle system into a ramjet from Mach 1.7-2.02 to work "commercially" at all. The old "at Mach 2.02 cruise, 85% of the thrust came from the nacelle" idea.

- to get back to supersonic flight required repeating the whole climb-and-accelerate profile with AB/reheat fuel flowing by the tonne, until re-acquiring Mach 1.7 at FL400±.

which leads to:

Nope. It was far more efficient to simply maintain Mach 2.02 and bypass India (and Sri Lanka) to the south. Circling all the way around them while maintaining supersonic speed and altitude used less fuel than: descend - slow to subsonic - cross India on a direct route - climb and accelerate back to supersonic.

You can google up some maps of Concorde routes (e.g. Paris-Dakar, Dakar-Rio). Actual routes, not airline "schematics." And see that it was almost always preferable and more efficient to get out over an ocean ASAP and get the ramjet effect going at Mach 1.7+, and then stay out over water as long as possible. Even if it meant an indirect "dogleg(s)" route covering more miles. Except for some intentionally "transcontinental" routes like KHI-CCU, Perth-Sydney, Dulles-Dallas.

Sounds like a topic for a new thread. If it's as good as this one I can't wait.

It's the only way they would have available to control the effects of the movement of the wings lift centre of pressure rearwards when supersonic.

I thought the Tupolev had to stay in after burner continuously to maintain M2

It did stilton, paper on a NASA in flight evaluation.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/...0000025077.pdf

megan

I thought the Tu-144 had canards instead, leading to an entirely new world of weight and complexity pain.

I think the canard were for low speed control and stability as I think they retracted for supersonic flight.

They did retract, you can see the mechanism here.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1c38676286.jpg

Interesting picture, first time I see this. It does show the effective Sovjet engineering capabilities, however course. Thanks.

There are various sources on the web that claim varying Mach/supersonic time restrictions for the the Pepsi-branded Concorde, mainly based on the inability/reduced capability of the dark livery to "deflect heat". This seems a bit strange given the black paint of the SR-71 and I'd appreciate comments by anyone in the know about this.

This extract from Norman Harpur’s 1966 paper on “The Structure of the Concorde” explains it pretty well I think. Norman was the chief structures engineer on the British side so he can be classed as someone with definitive knowledge.
“At Mach numbers of about 2 it pays to paint the external surface white. Despite what the textbooks say, a white surface can be made almost as good as a black surface at radiating heat away from itself whereas it is much better than a black surface in reflecting solar radiation. Under these circumstances, at these speeds, a white surface will result in a cooling of something like 10 deg C. If we increase the speed of the aircraft, up to say a Mach number of 3, far more heat is transmitted by skin friction and the effect of solar radiation is relatively small. In these conditions it now becomes important to have the highest possible emissivity on the surface to reduce the heat as much as possible and here, even though relatively small, the gain between white paint and black paint is important. Therefore the Mach3 supersonic transport should really be painted black.