Yes, indeed.

There were the early days...
At the time there were only two programs that everyone wanted to be on.
They were Apollo and Concorde.
I was a part of one of those

There were the years after that, when Apollo was cancelled, when only 16 Concordes ever saw service, and one felt the world was no longer going forward.

And for me, there indeed was that immense moment of satisfaction, when I finally flew on one of the last AF Concorde flights, and got my brief cockpit visit, to see that everything I had helped to develop long ago still worked exactly as we'd designed it, close to 30 years later !

CJ

Not a very technical Q I'm afraid and a Q asked from a position of total ignorance with regards to airliners in general but:

The concorde galley: smaller or bigger than most? Were there any design considerations (stretching and shrinking), did the quality of nosh provided determine a particular design or equipment fit?

Lastly, trivial perhaps, were c.c. allowed the same nosh as the passengers?

Cron.

In my experience on the receiving end, the amount of personal attention they gave each and every passenger was truly amazing, particularly considering the very complicated meal service offered from a galley with minimal storage volume and a tiny working space

I very much doubt CC had any time available, even for snacking on the 3-4 hour flights.

The Galleys
 

The two galleys were a fairly cramped environment, and the forward galley in particular suffered by being an extremely hot place to work in. This heat came not from the ovens, Bev' makers or such, but kinetic heat from the area surrounding Door 1 Left. There was precious little air conditioning ducting in this area (no passengers sat there you see) and this door area really make one sweat a bit. Coupled to all this, because of the short flight time there was precious little time for the crews to achieve a full three course meal, including wine/Champagne sevice. Speaking for BA, these six crew worked their socks off at a truly astonishing pace, but sat in your airline seat, all you as a passenger ever saw was a truly superb cabin service from a truly professional group of people.
Oh, and the food was totally FIRST class, the wines even more so. (Hic! :yuk:).
So to any ex Concorde cabin crew reading this thread, a genuine and sincere 'well done guys', you did the fleet proud :ok:

Dude :O

ChristiaanJ


In my semi serious 'taildragger' post the reason I mentioned using the 'full down' position of the visor with an attempt to land in that configuration is this.


With an even higher than usual touch down / rollout attitude I theorized that visibility over the nose would be compromised without the visor lowered even further than normal !

Hi again Stilton. We really need one of the flying folk to answer this one fully, I am not sure what drill there was for this scenario, but I'm sure there was one. The Concorde flying manual had a drill for everything, from a four engine flame out at Mach 2 to a blocked toilet (ok, maybe not the loo thing ), and one of my winged friends EXWOK, Bellerophon, SEO Brit312 would remember one.
As far as your point about moving the CG further aft; you never had oodles of fuel to play with , and I'm sure that the guys will mention about handling the aircraft on approach with the CG too far aft. (After landing four tonnes of fuel were transferred from Tanks 5 & 7 into the empty fwd Trim Tank 9, 'to aid ground stability'. ie, help stop the aircraft from trying to sit on it's rear end as the passengers got off).
As far as your visor query goes, well the visor is either up, or retracted into the nose. The nose itself (which I suspect is what you are really referring to) would already be at the fully down 12 1/2 degree setting for landing anyway.
Oh, and back to the ground stability issue, was Concorde ever sat on it's tail by accident? Oh yes, just once to my knowledge. In May 1977, aircraft G-BOAA was returned to Filton for some modifications that were required, and part of these 'mods' was some improvements to the main trim-transfer pipes connecting the three trim transfer tanks 9, 10 & 11, as well as the trim tanks 5 & 7. Now the flow into tank 11 (the rear tank) had to be checked, but there was insufficient fuel at the front of the aircraft for stability. This shortcoming was passed on to the BAe manager in charge of everything, who stuffily refused to listen, and INSISTED that these transfer checks were carried out, 'do as I tell you, I am the manager here'. The man's sole concession to any sort of common sense was to allow a BAe employee to sit on the flight deck 'and watch the CG indicator', what the point of this was, well your guess is as good as mine. The name of the guy sitting on the flight deck was... John Thomas. (Hilarious I know, but true). So in goes the fuel, and in a very short period of time, John Thomas notices that the roof of the Filton assembly hangar seems to be slowly getting closer, and closer, and BANG!! The aircraft nose is high into the roof section of the hangar, but fortunately because the hangar is so huge, the nose did not hit anything, it was just stuck up there, complete with a very worried/terrified John Thomas who is sitting terrified in the captain's seat, staring at the hangar roof. The rear of the aircraft however was not so lucky. The right hand inner elevon came down on top of a hydraulic rig, damaging the elevon badly, as well as FLATTENING the rig. The opened #3 engine bay door came down on some large access steps, tearing the corner of the door. (not much left of the steps either). The rear fuselage, in the area of the hydraulic tanks, was holed quite badly by some access staging, entire spectacle coming to a very 'grinding' halt.
So now we have this Concorde G-BOAA, due to be returned to BA the following day, sat down on top of a lot of equipment, it's nose high in the air with a terrified John Thomas requiring a change of underwear.:uhoh: (The brilliant manager of course was nowhere to be seen). The aircraft was eventually returned to it's rightful attitude by someone WITH some sense instructing Mr Thomas on how to slowly, a little at a time, pump the fuel from Tank 11 forward into Tank 9.
And was OAA returned to BA the following day? errr no. The best skin repair man that BAe had to offer was sent from Weybridge to sort out the holes in the rear fuselage (he did an amazing job) and the crunched bits of aeroplane were repaired or replaced. OAA flew back to Heathrow four short (??) days later.

Dude :O

Hello Stilton,

Now you really have upset my Sunday as after many years being retired I have had to go up to my attic to get the Concorde books out so as to answer your question ;)

Anyway as M2dude has said there were drills for everything on Concorde and if I remeber correctly the figure came to 194 seperate drills with 13 of them having a memory content. Never mind remembering the memory content it was hard enough sometimes to remember which drill had a memory content


Anyway I have found the drill for

"Landing with Nose gear not locked down "

To give just the essence of the drill you are asked to

Jettison as much fuel as possible

Set the C of G for landing to 53%--- sitting over main gear

After gear lowered select Standby lever to down position----- This ensures the gear jacks remain pressurized down on touch down

After lowering nose/visor on normal system seltct visor stby system to visor down---- this removes hyds from nose and visor system down jacks, so allowing nose/visor to raise if nose leg collapses

Brake lever to standby ---If nose leg collapse there is no ref anti skid signal and normal brakes would not work. Standby has no anti skid system and will work

Then on landing nose up attitude should be maintained and normal engine reverse selected as soon as possible remembering that engine reverse tries to pitch the aircraft nose up

Wheel brakes use gently and cease at 120kts

At 110 kts reduce attitude to touch nose wheel down gently

At 85 kts select engine reverse to idle power

At rest " Passenger Evacuation"

----------------------------------------------
So you can see this drill uses the nose up effect of engine revese to hold the nose gear off the ground for as long as possible.

I fear this explanation will gemerate more questios than it has answered, but
off for a cup of coffee now as grey cell are hurting:uhoh:

Hi,

I would first like to thank everyone in this thread for making it so informative and a brilliant read.

If I may I would like to pose a question, the answer to which I can't seem to find in all the books and manuals I have read, this relates to the procedure that was adopted on those ocassions when FL600 was reached.

As far as I am aware Cruise/Climb was carried out with AT1, AP1, FD1 or AT2 AP2 or FD2 and with MAX CLIMB engaged, MAX CRUISE would automatically engage as required. Was 60,000 feet set in the Altitude Select window and was ALT ACQ primed?

If not, what stopped her from continuing to climb past FL600 if conditions were suitable, and, if ALT ACQ was primed and FL600 reached and she then held that altitude what was the procedure if speed started to decay due to external influences? Was a gentle descent initialised using the pitch datum adjust until the speed came back and then MAX CLIMB re-engaged?

Many thanks.

Steve.

Hi Steve, good question. You could not prime Alt ACQ directly from MAX CLIMB/MAX CRUISE, but I'm sure the guys would confirm that FL600 was nonetheless set in the AFCS altitude window. If you did come close to FL600, then you would get an altitude alert audio and visual warning anyway, but the crew would obviously know anyway. The guys will have to confirm this but I think that ALT HOLD would be selected at this point, and the autopilot would now constrain the altitude by varying pitch attitude. You would normally be flying in nice cold conditions for this to occur, hardly ever on the North Atlantic, but on the LHR-BGI sector it would occur as often as not. (As usual, apologies to my all flying pals if I'm talking rubbish again :rolleyes:).

Dude :O

Hi Dude,

Thanks for the reply, I never knew you couldn't prime ALT ACQ from MAX CLIMB / MAX CRUISE.

I was thinking though that if you had ALT HOLD selected then the autopilot wouldn't be able to vary the pitch attitude and it would hold at the ALT HOLD level. Once there it wouldn't be able to use pitch to increase or decrease speed if necessary. I can see how the autothrottles could hold the speed back but if it were to get warmer then even at full power it may not be able to maintain speed at a fixed altitude.

I'm sure there is a simple answer which will leave us saying "oh yeah, how obvious, didn't think of that" :) Just strange it doesn't seem to be written anywhere.

Thanks,

Steve.

First of all, THANKS to all you from Concorde family for this fantastic topic. Started reading last night and almost slept in front of computer trying to read everything!

As a Concorde fan for 10 years (since I bought FS2000), and passionate developer of SSTSIM Concorde and FSLabs ConcordeX (flight dynamics, weight and balance), it's simply awesome to have you guys and gal here sharing your memories.

Regarding the CG corridor, here's a fantastic graphic from online Concordepedia, aka ConcordeSST.com, Technical/Fuel System section:

http://www.concordesst.com/graphics/cgcorrid.gif

Interestingly, it doesn't show a warning for CG>59.1% above M1.6, opposite to what M2Dude said earlier on the topic.

I got curious on the Max Climb/Cruise and ALT ACQ not being primed. How the levelling at FL600 was done? Manually?

Regarding the fuel tanks, specially tanks 6 and 8: did these tanks' lateral center of gravity change with quantity? Due to their completely assymetrical shape, I'd expect some change in it.

Operationial question: did BA use the 380kts descent profile? Have heard that only AFR used it, but Haynes' book says that BA started using it too.

There are many doubts regarding procedures as manuals and informations available on the internet are mostly from BA 1976 entry-into-service era. But i understand many things changed along the years, as I can see on a Aug 2000 manual I've got, with percentages showing differences from the 76 era, or even completely new tables.

Well, that's it, hope to be able to contribute on the topic, but mainly learn from you that flew the real thing.

BlueConcorde,
Look at my post #260, second diagram, taken directly from the BA Flying Manual.
There is a "first stage warning" (Mach/CG lights and gong) above Mach 1.6 and below Mach 0.45 for the aft CG limit.
It's only in the "corridor" that there is a "second stage warning" (flashing Mach/CG lights and stick shaker).

CJ

Blue Concorde

The logic of the C of G limit warnigs were

1st stage warning then the F/E rectifys it by moving the fuel

2nd stage warning was considered a more dangerous exceedence and would be remedied by the F/E moving fuel and the pilot slowing or speeding up the aircraft depending on which limit had been triggered

The aft limit second stage warning was a flashing light and a stick shaker to which the natural response from the pilot is to speed up Now you can see from your diagram that above M1.6 increasing will not improve the siuation if the aft boundry has been infringed. Therefore to prevent an auto response from the pilot to a stick shaker [ push the nose down and speed up] the 2nd stage aft warning was not available after M1.6


Tanks 5 and 7 were operated as a pair as were tanks 6 and 8
Because of the odd shapes of the tanks when you were transferring from the set 5 and 7 the F/E had to pump fuel across the ship to keep lateral trim.
Once they were empty and 6 and 8 were being used then again due to their shape the F/E had to transfer fuel across the aircraft to keep lateral trim ,but this time in the opposite direction . well it stopped him getting bored

Thanks on the CG info!! :ok: :D

Right, do this everytime I fly on the sim! :)

Yes, so my not-so-trivial questions, aimed more for F/E and Ground Engineers are:
1) with the same quantity on tanks 6 and 8, for example, 10 tons, there would be a roll tendency? I suspect yes, but not sure.
2) Using valves 6/7 and 5/8 would make lateral unbalance gone or they just leveled the fuel height on each pair of tanks? (Assuming that all these 4 tanks had the same height, what sounds logical to me)
3) Is there any table with these tanks quantities to reach lateral balance or the F/E did fine tune just by making elevons level?

I have these doubts for a looooooooong time, as I never found the lateral arm of the tanks, just the longitudinal (in % MAC that is equal to root chord in Concorde). So I assumed in FSLabs ConcordeX that if all these 4 tanks were FULL and symmetrical as a group, there would be no imbalance, that means: different quantities and different arms gives the same momentum.

Due to this, I always keep 300~500 kgs more on the 7 and 8 (right) tanks than on 5 and 6, but I'm really not sure if it's a realistic value.

The fuel system was just FANTASTIC... and making it work engineer-less under any abnormal condition would be something VERY difficult, in my humble opinion.

Nice week for everyone!!

BlueConcorde
A hearty welcome aboard here from me also. (Sounds like you are doing amazing work on the FS-X Concorde). Brit312 has given you a good idea of just how hard the F/E used to work on Concorde, and juggling the fuel system was always his pièce de résistance. (Might also explain why a beer or several at the end of a trip was absolutely essential). I'd certainly let Brit312 answer the balancing bit, and I'm afraid I've no info on the lateral moment arms of the tanks. (I did have a rummage).
As far as automating the system, I agree that it would be incredibly difficult even now, but with the technology around during the 1970's I would agree that it would say that it was just about impossible to do it with the same level of finesse as Brit312 and the guys..

Dude :O

spfoster
Hi again Steve. At FL600 your aircraft is going to be relatively light, and your autopilot is set to ALT HOLD mode. As the aircraft continues to burn fuel it will 'try' and climb, but the ALT HOLD mode will of course slightly reduce pitch attitude to keep prevent the aircraft from climbing. The autothrottle in MACH HOLD mode can keep us from straying from Mach 2, large positive temperature shears were to my knowledge almost unheard of, and so any speed reduction was exceedingly unlikely. We really need a pilot's input here to further clarify the realities of LHR-BGI supersonic cruise; that's the way the AFCS was designed to do things however.

Dude :O

Thanks again ChristiaanJ, M2 Dude and Britt 312 for your educational, fascinating insights and answers to my questions.

FL600 cruise
 

M2Dude has it all correct here. It only really happened regularly on the LHR-BGI route (low temps at crz alt, and light weight as you've burnt most of the fuel).

In the MAX Cruise mode the aircraft would sniff about vertically, gently climbing and descending to hold M2 (following the temperature changes), but with an overall general climb.

Heading to BGI you were climbing into very cold air, commonly down to less than -70degs, I saw minus 80 on multiple occasions. (Which was all very good news from a fuel point of view). So the climb was more definite and the likelihood of a subsequent descent lower.

It was pretty easy to spot when the aircraft was definitely going to 'stick' at FL600, and to select Alt Hold, with the already armed AT (with Max Crz mode) engagd in Mach Hold. Very occasionally one may have to subsequently make a subsequent return to Max Crz mode if warmer air was encountered, but I don't recall doing this more than once.

If you had very cold air and a lighter than average load, one would find that the throttles (no 'thrust levers' on Concorde!) were quite a long way back at TOD, maybe 10-14 degrees throttle angle. It was worth noticing this early - the decel/descent was initiated by reducing the throttles to 18degrees, normally this would be from full forward so it can be seen that reducing them by 4 or 5 degrees rather than the usual 18 could result in a disappointing rate of decel. At nearly 20NM a minute this could really screw your descent plan! (I think the record-holders went past BGI still just the wrong side of M1......)

I used to enjoy the last few minutes of the flight at FL600 - before the space station was manned and post-MIR there was a fair chance that at that moment we were the human beings furthest from the surface of the planet. In shirtsleeves, with a cup of tea (or something more palatable if one was in one of the comfy seats).

EXWOK's superb post above really characterises what Concorde was all about; An aircraft with 100 Champagne sipping passengers sitting in total comfort, the aircraft sat at Mach 2 - 2.02, 60,000' and wanting really to both climb and accelerate, but having to be restrained to prevent this and the engines poodling along and nothing approaching their maximum power. Seven cabin crew happily looking after their one hundred charges and three VERY lucky guys, sat at the front of this wonderful aircraft in shirtsleeve comfort and having really the best time of anyone aboard.
ANY fighter of the time would have to have been on full afterburner with the pilot in a sweaty flying suit and bone dome and only able to stay at anything like this speed for a VERY few minutes.
To EXWOK and the other guys (and gal :)) I take my hat off, because you made it happen. Because of all you guys BA had 27 years of highly successful and TOTALLY SAFE Concorde operation. In the VERY few times that things did not go to plan, your skill and professionalism made the hairiest of moments seem like total routine. :D
And stilton my friend, we are in debt to you for starting this thread in the first place. Keep asking away and we'll all do our best to give you as straight an answer as possible; it's really fun for us too.

:O

Whilst on the Concorde conversion course at Bristol, occasionally crews would have the privilege of meeting some of the original design engineers and draughtsmen who had worked on the Concorde project.

They were always fascinating to listen to, and provided an intriguing insight into a design world, now long gone, inhabited by engineers and draughtsmen armed with slide rules, drawing boards and blueprints. As ever, with people of real ability, they tended to talk more about their few failures rather than their many successes, often in the most amusing and self deprecating terms. It is their stories which really ought to be preserved, although it is not for us, even now, to relate some of their tales, told to us with a chuckle, but in strict confidence!

Suffice to say that the senior fire officer who misread litres-per-minute as gallons-per-minute during an Olympus water ingestion test probably would not want any further publicity, likewise the apprentice who didn’t defrost the chicken before firing it into an engine running at full power in the bird ingestion test. My favourite was the supersonic hailstone story, fired as part of a hailstone ingestion test, but with uncertain results, the final resting place of said hailstone still being slightly obscure to this day. If anyone in the greater Bristol area got hit by a particularly hard snowball in the early sixties, the Filton test engineers are very sorry, and would like to apologise!

However, it is often the little insights into the past that amuse one the most and stick in one’s mind. During one such conversation, with a couple of thermodynamicists, I ventured to ask how they had settled on the (rather difficult to memorise) various temperature limits associated with Concorde.

For instance, why a nose temperature limit of +127°C, why not +130°C, much easier for a pilot to remember?

“Isn’t it obvious?” one replied politely, genuinely puzzled by my question.

“Computer generation” replied his colleague to him, pointing his pipe stem at me.

“Ah yes” said the first, “that would be it”.

They then went on to explain, in ever such a kindly manner, that, in thermodynamics, apparently the square, and the square root, of the absolute temperature of a material are terms used in many equations. Being armed mostly only with slide rules (and as they were in the vicinity of 120°C to 130°C as a limit anyway) it had been decided to make life easy and settle on +127°C as the limit, a temperature for which they could easily calculate the square and square root in their heads.

Noticing my bewilderment at the thought that anyone might be able to calculate the square or the square root of 127 in their heads, they proceeded to explain it to me still further, very slowly; in the manner that one would speak to an aged and rather deaf great aunt!
These are the people with the amusing stories to tell!

Best Regards

Bellerophon

I was Googling to see if I could find some info on how the CG indicator on Concorde functioned and found the following two links. The first one is an AAIB report from 2003 regarding a minor fire aboard G-BOAC whilst in transatlantic cruise which resulted in misreadings and failure flags on fuel guages. The second one is from the PPrune archives also dated 2003.

The last two comments at the bottom of that old PPrune thread are interesting since as evidenced by this ongoing thread (as well as the others running in the tech forum), seven years later, many many people are still fascinated by this gorgeous aircraft.

http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources...pdf_029047.pdf

http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-109948.html

Hi,

Many thanks for your answers it is much appreciated.

Regards,

Steve.

See post #328 for the rest of the story.
In "Concorde - The Inside Story" by Brian Trubshaw there is actually a photo of what is almost certainly the same incident.

But there is another story....

After the first-ever landing at Bahrain, a crowd of Very Important Persons was allowed to visit the aircraft.
Of course they had to see it all, including the rear cabin.
Since the aircraft hadn't been refuelled yet, the inevitable happened... the aircraft started slowly but inexorably tilting backwards.
A very undignified stampede towards the front resulted, just in time, so the aircraft did not actually sit on its tail.

But there was a sequel. The incident had been watched by the airport manager, who promptly decreed that from then on a tractor would have to be chained to the nose gear whenever the aircraft was on the ramp.

Urban legend has it, that from then on there was a new item in the pre-taxy checklist for Bahrain.

CHAIN REMOVED FROM NOSEWHEEL - CHECK

CJ

Galley Service.
 

Hello again all,

M2dude is quite right about the galleys being small. The crew on jets these days have far more space than we ever had, and the only galley smaller than Concorde in my opinion was that on the BAC1-ll. :eek:

As far as the service was concerned, there were actually three galleys involved. One at the front, (devilishly hot!!) one in the midships which was 'constructed' by means of fixing a table top between the bulkheads after the seat belt sign had been switched off, and of course, there was the rear galley. This could also prove to be a very hot place, especially on AF which we used to call the 'greenhouse' effect. (It was also the noisiest crew positions for the two at the back, especially on take-off, as you can imagine.)

The mid galley would be used simply as a replenishing station....a designated crew member would set it up at the begining of service with extra ice, water, glasses, lemon, wine, champagne etc., so the crew on the trolleys wouldn't have to waste precious time by going back to the galleys for these items during the meal service.

The crew member who took the forward galley position would be barricaded in by means of another table top at the begining of service, and stay there until the meal service was completed. They would have the responsibility of making up drinks orders, cooking the meals, (including F/D, cc meals and any pre-ordered special meals.) The galley person at the rear would be doing the same, but without having to be barricaded in as there was enough galley space there to work un-hindered. Unlike today, there would be no chance of the CSD or rear purser overseeing the service...they were on the trolleys!

That takes care of two crew members. The other four would be two at the front and two at the back, each having a side of the aircraft to look after. They would have memorised the names of each of thier pax, on a full flight that would be twenty-five each. (Not difficult as most of them would be familiar faces in one way or another!)(If not royalty, celebities , mps then regulars.) Because there were more pax in the rear cabin, the two crew in the forward cabin would take the first two rows in the rear cabin. (There was no row 13.)

We did have meals put on for us, but generally not the same as the pax. The F/D would have three different meals in case of food poisoning. (I have never known a case of F/D food poisoning in over 35 years of flying, but I do know it has happened.) We didn't have much time to eat, but we did throw a mouthful down, generally standing up in the galley! (How can you tell a cc member at a party? they are the ones wiping thier hands on the curtains.)

Pax meals were amazing: caviare boats, pate du fois gras, quails eggs were amongst favourite canapes; lobster curry another favourite main, a delicious pudding tray (served on a half tray after the mains tray had been cleared) and a selection of English cheeses served from the trolley, served with celery and fruit accompanied by claret and port. (The wines were exceptional - such as Krug, Chateu Talbot and Meursault.) The trays always looked exquisite with a pink carnation and a white box sporting the speedird livery containing two Thornton's chocolates.

By the time all this had been cleared in, imigration forms handed out and coats delivered back to their owners, it was seat-belts time again! Level flight was a rarity as we were climbing until half-way accross the pond and then on our way down, so the trolleys were hardly ever level.

It has been lovely remembering all these little details again. Every crew member knew their roles inside out, which created reassuringly calm atmosphere from the passengers point of view. If the system was followed to the letter, we always had time for a cup of tea before checking belts and securing the cabin!

I feel honoured to be regailing you all with these snippets of life on the Concorde fleet, especially as this thread is really concerned with the mechanics of the lady. There arn't too many crew left flying now, (it's just that I started when I was two!!!) I will try and persuade others, (retired), to help me jog my memory.

Kind regards.
Landlady.

landlady,

Don't forget it was you and your colleagues that made the Concorde experience so special just as much as the three guys in the front office, or the ground staff, or the engineers, or us wavers of slide rules.
So yes, the experience from your side is as much part of the "Concorde Story" as ours !

Your description of a typical regular flight is much as I imagined it.

Did you ever do any of the BA 'round-the-Bay' charters?

My only flight was one of the last Air France 'round-the-Bay' flights.
Total duration from take-off to touchdown was only about 1h 50min, yet even so the CC managed to serve us all the classic glass of champagne, a three-course meal that we barely had time to finish, and of course the little box with two choccies... Fauchon in our case.

And all this notwithstanding the steady flow of pax down the aisle, first to have their photo taken next to the Mach meter at M 2.03, and then again for the cockpit visits.

How they managed it I will never know....

CJ

Landlady

Did Concorde F/As fly it exclusively at BA or did you fly it on and off? Excuse me, I am not familiar with BA contract rules.

GF

ChristiaanJ

Yes, we all did our fair share of 'round the bays' which were, as you say, about 90 mins in duration and manic! It was a matter of pushing each pax into the F/D and hanging on to the bottom of thier jackets to be be able to pull them out again a minute later! Such a shame that flight deck visits are no longer allowed. It was a fabulous perk to be able to offer the pax a glimpse.
The nicest 'round the bays' were on mother's day, when along with all the mothers and grandmothers on board who had been treated to a 'flight of fantasy' by their families, those among the crew who were mothers got a special day too! (We were able to do the flight and then go back to our own celebrations at home!) (Of course, it worked for the chaps on father's day, too!)

Galaxy Flyer

We were licenced to fly three aircraft, all short-haul, as Concorde was designated a short-haul aircraft. (Although not in her early days of BOAC.) We were all specially selected to fly Concorde and had to pass the training course 100%. We were all, (250 of us), flying on Concorde, B757s and B737s. If we did an airport stand-by, they would generally keep us for the Concorde trips as there were more than enough crew to cover the other aircraft types.
We worked a six day on, three day off pattern, and usually there was the late JFK on your first and second days, any other short haul trip/nightstop on your third and fourth days, then maybe the early JFK on your last two days. However, there were special charters, (I did one round-the-world), Washington-Miami trips year-round and BGI in the winter. (Lovely to spend a week there in January!)

Those were the days! :O

Hi again
I remember that around 1980 one Concorde was painted on one side in the Singapore livery. Obviously the flight to Singapore would need at least one fuel stop. What I have always wondered is which part of the route was flown supersonic? Was she granted any overland supersonic rights? Also was it feasible to have a short supersonic section followed by a subsonic bit and then back to supersonic? I guess that having to use reheat to accelerate twice to mach 2 would use too much fuel.

Thanks Landlady for your posts on Concorde. As SLF I never flew on her but thanks to you I now have an idea of what a wonderful experience it would have been.
Regards
Nick

Thank you M2Dude.



All I did was ask a simple question, but I'm glad I did



In return you and your colleagues have provided us with an Aviation literary delight.



It has been like reading a great book :O

Blue concorde
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, so my not-so-trivial questions, aimed more for F/E and Ground Engineers are:
1) with the same quantity on tanks 6 and 8, for example, 10 tons, there would be a roll tendency? I suspect yes, but not sure.
2) Using valves 6/7 and 5/8 would make lateral unbalance gone or they just leveled the fuel height on each pair of tanks? (Assuming that all these 4 tanks had the same height, what sounds logical to me)
3) Is there any table with these tanks quantities to reach lateral balance or the F/E did fine tune just by making elevons level?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In answer to your questions , unlike the chart for C of G purposes there was no such chart for lateral trim rreasons. We would just transfer fuel across the ship so as to keep the elevons level at between 0 and 1 degree down. However when transfering fuel across the ship as the paired tanks are fore and aft of the C of G then when getting lateral trim you also affect the
C of G.

It is along time ago now and I cannot recall actual figures but your suggestion of between 500 and 700 kgs is I think a good ball park figure

The interconnect valves were never used under normal circumstances, but give it a go it might just over come your problem.

Nick Thomas

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remember that around 1980 one Concorde was painted on one side in the Singapore livery. Obviously the flight to Singapore would need at least one fuel stop. What I have always wondered is which part of the route was flown supersonic? Was she granted any overland supersonic rights? Also was it feasible to have a short supersonic section followed by a subsonic bit and then back to supersonic? I guess that having to use reheat to accelerate
twice to mach 2 would use too much fuel.

It was actually G-BOAD that was 1/2 painted in Singapore Airlines colours in the last part of !977
For more info on this subject check out this web site

CONCORDE SST : Singapore Concorde Services

The original route LHR- Bahrain flew subsonic across Europe and then accelerated to supersonic just off the coast in the north of the Adriatric. It was Supersonic then all the way to Bahrain avoiding islands in the Med but crossing the coast of the Lebenon still at supersonic speeds. This sector even with the long subsonic period [0.95 Mach] still cut the journey time LHR to BAH by 2.5 hours. For the crews the return trip to LHR was more exciting as once the throttles were opened to full power their position never changed until TOD. Once airbourne ---- reheat off at----------------- 500 ft
climb rating[switches] at----1000ft
climb/accel at 0.95r/heats back on and
away you go

The Bahrain - Singapore sector were my favourite though with only a short delay after Take Off before being cleared supersonic and because of the cold air temps at 50000ft plus the old girl would go up to 60,000ft and cruise there at Mach 2.0 and we would roar just south of Sri Lanka north of Indonesia and down the Malacca Straits slowing down and trying to avoid all the thunder heads

Although nothing actually to stop accelerating twice in a sector the fuel use on a long trip would usually not make this viable

NOTE How do you get the posh blue quote inserts

I've read every word of this absolutely fascinating thread and like many others, I must offer my thanks to all those posters who've made this the best thread I've ever found on pprune.

I have but one cherised memory of Concorde.
In 1980 I was working on a merchant ship as a radio officer and was lucky enough to see and hearConcorde take off from Singapore.
I still remember that noise - goose bumps stuff!

Thanks again from a humble student pilot.

Rob.

Think this thread might continue for some time!

Just a quick question..when Concorde was grounded for the tank liners to be fitted, what happened to the flight crews? Were they moved onto another fleet, or just take extended leave?

Thanks in advance...

Extended leave doesn't happen so much in this very commercial world.......

To start with we stayed current in the sim. After a month or so it was obvious that this was a long term event and the company would find something for us to do in return for our salary.

A minor complication was that we knew we were going to need fewer pilots as the decision had already been made to reduce the charter programme, so we weren't all coming back. There were no other FE positions in BA so that was a further issue.

At least one Captain retired during the grounding, which was a sad way to finish. Others who had been on the fleet for less than 5 years went back to their previous fleet (old rating only needing revalidation). Others had the opportunity to bid for positions elsewhere in the normal annual conversion process; some used the tactical skills required to fly Concorde to great effect, and evaded capture for a long time....

For SFOs one was allowed to bid in the normal process or be directed to another fleet. The rules didn't allow direction to the Left Seat, so most bid off to various command positions - the most senior (who would have the seniority to return) and the most junior (who were pretty much doomed to leave the fleet as it shrank). Those in the middle (2 of us!)stuck it out and were directed to the RHS of other fleets, but at least with the knowledge that if the bird flew again we were guaranteed to get back (Quite a gamble at this stage).

I'm ashamed to say I can't remember where all the SFEs went, but they were spread in a diaspora through various departments.

Most unfortunate of all crews were those on the very last Concorde conversion course (No. 30, I think) who finished after the grounding and never got to fly the thing. All that work..................:(

YOU are the best!
 

YOU have been and will ALWAYS remain the history, a mile stone in the aviation world!

Thank you, mercí, danke, grazie, gracias for sharing with us your experiences on this beauty! I have never read a more interersting thread since when i read pprune!

I wish it would be possible to live again those days, in which aviation was a REAL special issue sorrounded by magic!

Without being too much nostalgic again i want to deeply thank all of you sharing with us the magic of the supersonic lady! :ok:

Just one qst. Thanks to her extremely high speed Concorde was able to fly to JFK from LHR in just 3hrs and 30mins. Usually this is a normal flight from LIRF to UUDD where the flight crew, offcourse, flies as well the way back. The flight crew of concorde used to fly from LHR to JFK and then back as well or they were finishing their duty period in JFK and another crew was taking over them?

Thanks again guys! :ok:

Brit312

You mentioned the T-storms in the Straits of Malacca, at FL 600, you still could not top them? How was deviating around at M 2.0? Any problems with turbulence at those levels?

GF

Interesting, thank you very much!! :D



Did that happen in any of the commercial routes or the charter ones? Is is true that due to the many changes in supersonic overflight permissions on the Middle East, a double acceleration was used during a period of time to/from Bahrain?

Regarding the quote box: add a [xxxxQUOTE] at the beginning and [xxxx/QUOTE] at the end of the section you want to be quoted, without the xxxx after the "[".

Ladyland, very nice! felt myself being served while reading. :)

How was this around-the-world trip? Did the crew have time to enjoy the so different locations visited?

Galaxy flyer

Absolutely correct the T-heads often went up past us at 60000ft, which is quite scarey when you think of the energy required to do that. Makes you as part of mankind seem somewhat insignificant.

Avoiding them as another problemas the Malacca Straits is quite narrow, well it is for Concorde trying hard not to boom the land on either side, but as I remember it there were two good points

The T-storms seemed to be normally over the land either side, but more important we would start to slow down shortly after entering the Malacca Straits and once subsonic we were in the same ball park as other aircraft , avoid them at all cost, and we could then fly over land without upsetting people

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bio161

No the crews flew just the one trans Atlantic sector and then got off for a rest. Well you could not have us boys working too hard now .

In fact it was just possible for the crews to do a return trip and indeed when there were crew problems this was indeed done.

Morning flight
The Concorde report time was 1.5 before departure and a turn around at JFK would have been about 1.5 hours so when all added up it could have just been done. However any delay to either service could result in the home bound flight being late or indeed cancelled due to flight time limitations. This the company deemed to be unacceptable risk on an aircraft which was sold as saving time.
In fact as the morning flight was on approach to JFK,the morning flight back to LHR was already taking off. For the crew to now wait for the late departure back to London would put them way over FTLimitations

That did not mean the crews only did one sector a day

LHR-IAD-MIA was a days work as was the return.
On some of the charter flights it was often a multi sector day such as

Sydney--Brisbane --Guam --Beijing

I was only doing the PR on that trip so I have not got the times but it did seem a long day's work

Also, regarding the practicalities of flying LHR-JFK-LHR, one has to remember that there were two airframes involved - the first return flight having nightstopped JFK. So the early JFK-LHR service was just taxying out as the morning LHR-JFK landed.

It was possible to operate the early JFK-LHR (BA002) and then turn round at LHR to operate the late LHR-JFK (BA003) and this was done occasionally, generally at short notice to cover illness or crew shortages.

I only did it once and you certainly knew you'd done it afterwards....

Brit312
Speaking of the IAD-Miami sector, was there something 'different' about the subsonic cruise altitude out of Washington? I only ever flew on this sector once,(down the back) but I remember that we did a very rapid transonic acceleration after we crossed the North Carolina coast at Wilmington, from something like FL400, which was only a little above VLA. The air noise over the upper fuselage increased much more rapidely than usual, even charters.
It was an awful long time ago, and if I've screwed up here (again) I heartily apologies .
Regards and salutations..
Dude :O

M2dude
It was now quite a long time ago, but looking at my log book I see that the flight was about 1hour 35mins chock to chock, so the fuel load would have been quite light. At subsonic speed the cruise height was determined like all other aircarft, in that the lighter you were the higher you could fly, and at those sort of light weights it was possible for Concorde to fly up to a subsonic cruise height of 39,000ft. From there at light weights the supersonic accel could be much quicker than what would be experienced on an Atlantic crossing at heavy weights.

In fact the aircraft would probably be lighter than a round the bay trip where we always had a 100 passengers. One problem with accel just off North Carolina's coast was that there was a north south airway right in our path and there always seemed to be a B757 at 41000ft which delayed our accel until he had passed. A cunning plot I think:)

Now you might ask if we did not have 100 passengers, then how many did we have between IAD and MIA well it is a secret, but I have to say we were normally lighty loaded. However the trip was very popular with the crews as it gave us a feel of the sun's warmth, which is hard to come by in New York in the winter