- [Sam Chui] Today, March 2, 2019, is Concorde's 50th
anniversary since her first flight.
Concorde was absolutely the gold standard of aviation.
She was a masterpiece of engineering
and one of the world's most beautiful creations.
Let's celebrate the Concorde, in this video.
Concorde was an icon of beauty, style,
and in her own way, a brand.
Every aspect of the aircraft was designed
for aerodynamic efficiency and yet the
outcome became something truly elegant.
Instantly recognisable all over the world.
Concorde was a (mumbles) flying on the edge of space
faster than a rifle bullet and from her windows
you can see the curvature of the Earth.
Concorde was able to overtake the sun and in some months,
you can arrive before you set off.
You can literally buy back time.
(Aeroplane engine roaring)
My ultimate flight was on board
the supersonic Concorde 2003.
(dramatic orchestral music)
I flew on the Concorde flight on April 17, 2003,
about six months before the final retirement.
I flew on British Airways BA002 from JFK to Heathrow
in just three hours and 18 minutes, crossing the Atlantic
at 58,000 feet and twice the speed of sound.
Coming on to Concorde makes me remember a lot of memories - at
the time I couldn't have made a video - I didn't have a video
camera - but I took a lot of good pictures to share with you.
The first thing I noticed about the Concorde is the ceiling - it is a
little bit lower than the normal one.
You notice how little the windows are to look out from.
On my Concorde flight we had about 54 passengers.
Concorde takes 100 passengers, there's 40 in the forward
cabin like this and there's 60 in the aft cabin.
I was sitting in the 12 delta, aft cabin window seat - so just
one row directly behind the first row like this.
We took off on runway "one three right" which is not the
usual runway for the Concorde to take off on and I remember
the takeoff speed was much faster than a subsonic aeroplane.
We took up about three quarters of the runway.
The runway was really long - 14,000 feet -
and we took about 9,000 feet to get airborne.
Once we were airborne, we took a steep right turn to
avoid the land and fly towards Long Island and it
was a bit of a cloudy day so within a few minutes after take off we
lost complete sight of the land
and we were already over the ocean.
The plane was very narrow and the seat was not a lay flat seat or a full
sleeper seat because you don't need it; it's only three
hours transatlantic across the pond. There were businessmen
coming on board who fly and return back home the same day
and this was possible because of supersonic Concorde.
So I remember after takeoff we reached the speed of sound, which is
mach one, at 28,500 feet.
Continuing to increase in speed we
reached mach two at 48,000 feet and we continued in mach two
for over two hours across the Atlantic. Our final
cruising altitude was 58,000 feet.
Mach two caused the Concorde to
stretch 10 feet during the flight.
The outside body gets extremely hot
and you can feel the heat a little bit.
You also might ask: Sam have you heard of sonic boom on the
Concorde? Because there is a popular belief that
when a Concorde breaks through the sound barrier, travelling
over mach one, you might hear a sonic boom. My answer is: Not
really. I didn't remember much honestly. There are ships over
the Atlantic that can constantly hear the Concorde travelling
over the speed of sound and hear the sonic boom throughout
the sky but I couldn't hear it inside the cabin myself.
The service on the Concorde was better
than most first class services.
We had a three hour flight - we had a brunch served with
caviar, lobster cake and very nice cheese and red wine. It was
the best dining British Airways had at the time.
Stewards and stewardesses were specially selected just to
serve on board the Concorde flight. They were
very polite and very efficient.
During my flight I made a few friends on board - there were
people travelling from all over the world; from Australia, from
South Africa and there were people bringing their kids to enjoy the
Concorde and about 30 minutes before coming to land captain
Mike Bannister came on the PA and said that the weather was
unusually warm for the season in London; 26 degrees. We had
easterly winds so we flew over Windsor castle
while we were coming to land at Heathrow.
There was a tremendous pride and proud feeling
inside me while we were landing at Heathrow.
The landing speed was much faster
on the Concorde than other planes.
It almost felt like we had priority on the landing sequence
and after landing I got to go to the cockpit to meet the
captain Mike Bannister who was the chief Concorde pilot at
the time and he was such a gentleman. He signed my logbook
and my certificate and to this day
I have kept them intact in my treasure case.
The ticket price I paid at the time was about 3,000 US dollars. So, thinking
about it, it burns your money at about 1,000 dollars per hour - is it worth it?
Totally, because there's nothing like it - there's no other
aeroplane really like the Concorde
where you can fly this fast or this high
and have the ultimate flight of your life.
- Welcome to Brooklyns museum, the home of Concorde, the
world's premier supersonic passenger jet.
Here behind me is Concorde golf bravo bravo delta golf.
Delta golf was the 3rd Concorde build in the UK.
She was a demonstration aircraft and she was used in the summer
of 1975 for training the first generation of British Airways
Concorde pilots and she did most of the test flying to
obtain the certificate of airworthiness - in other words its licence to
carry passengers. And it's during that phase that delta golf
became truly immortal because she was the first Concorde
and therefore the first aircraft in history to carry 100
passengers at twice the speed of sound.
Okay folks so this is the forward door. Passengers would
enter the aircraft from the terminal, through an air bridge
and into this forward door and inside we're going
to turn left into the flight deck.
- Well you know guys the Concorde door is a bit low so you
have to duck when you come in.
Oh this is it, we're inside a Concorde.
- Okay so welcome to the flight deck everyone. As you can see
this is slightly different to a modern flight deck - all of
the instruments are analogue instruments - this is more akin to
a fighter jet than a modern airliner.
Modern airliners of course are all glass cockpits. The central
panel here that you see are all engine instruments.
Engines one, two, thee and four and on the left hand side and
the right hand side in front of the captain and the first
officer we have a traditional, conventional flight deck
arrangement with our navigational instruments - altitude
indicator, air speed indicator, and
compasses, and navigational equipment.
Up on the top here we've got the autopilot panel with speed
hold, altitude hold, and all the other controls that are
designed to make pilots's lives a little bit easier.
As everyone knows, Concorde flew at twice the speed of sound
so it has a very special instrument that you will not find
on a normal commercial airliner which is a mach meter.
Concorde flew at mach two which is twice the speed of sound
and this instrument here measures the aircraft
speed against the speed of sound.
Now at the front of the aircraft we have one of Concorde's
defining features which, as you can see, is a visor with
very sloped back panels and the nose cone and in order for
the pilots so see where they're going at low speeds, because
the aircraft is rotated at a very high angle, both the visor
and the nose would droop down so that when the aircraft is
at a steep angle to fly slowly for take off and landing, the
pilots had a good chance of seeing where they were going.
That's a unique feature on Concorde which of course you
won't find on any other aircraft.
Unique Concorde feature which is the visor retractor
so at the moment it is in the fully upright position, the next
notch is for the visor to be retracted into the nose cone
then we have the five degrees down where the whole nose
assembly droops down 5 degrees and finally we have the fully
down position where the nose is
drooped 12 and a half degrees.
- This yoke here is like specially designed
for the Concorde, it's like a fighter jet yoke.
- It is almost yes it's a different shape to the yoke that
you'd find on most commercial airliners so yes it is a
slightly different shape and very unique.
This is the landing gear here. The reason the knob here is
shaped like a wheel and if you were on a conventional
airliner you'd have a flat lever
and that flat lever is shaped like a flap
so it's a little bit of intuition if you like.
Okay so here we have the thrust lever assembly so the handle
on the top here after the thrust levers and the throttles move
forward like this and on the front of the thrust levers we
have the reverse thrusters so when the aircraft has landed
on the ground the nose wheel is back
onto the runway the captain raises the
reverse thruster levers to slow the aircraft down.
Now on the reverse of the thrust levers we have thrust
levers that operate the same as these and these ones are operated
by the flight engineer as are the reheat
switches here which switch on the
reheats to give the Concorde that extra 20%
of power for takeoff and also to
pass through the speed of sound.
- The takeoff I have on the Concorde was a bit different to
other aeroplanes because after about a minute and 40 seconds, I
remember I felt a deceleration. It's because the captains, they
turned off the reheat, because we were still over land since
we had just taken off from New York. So this was to try to create
less noise and also less power. When it started crossing
ocean and when it started to increase in speed, they turned
back on the reheats to accelerate
the aircraft to supersonic level.
- Okay so this is the front cabin ladies and gentlemen. This
is the forward cabin of the aircraft. There were 40 seats in here and this
is exactly as it was when the aircraft was in service.
Okay so here's the rear of the forward cabin
We're now going to go through the mid-ship toilet area
and into this area here where we have a pair of seats from
each of the decades that Concorde was in service. Down to your
left there is the seats that were in use when the aircraft
first went into service in the 1970s, then on the right
there's a pair of seats from the 1980s,
in the middle here is a pair of seats from the 1990s,
which are the ones that you saw
in the forward cabin, and finally a pair of these beautiful
blue leather seats which were installed in the aircraft
following the terrible accident in Paris designed to save
weight to make up for the fact that the fuel tanks had to be
lined with Kevlar in order to protect against another
accident of the type that happened in Paris.
Okay folks so this is the rear cabin of delta golf and what
we have in here, in place of the 60 seats that would have
been in here when the aircraft was in service, is lots of
information about Concorde as she was being designed, as she
was being built, when she went into service and then the
retirement programme after that terrible accident in Paris and
here this is a window from Concorde. You'll see they're very
small - the reason the Concorde windows were made very small
is in order to reduce the rate of decompression in the event
of a window breakage which could have been catastrophic
given the pressure differential inside
the aircraft compared to outside at 60,000 feet.
You'll see how small the windows are compared to a modern
aircraft and you'll also see some little brown pipes here
which circulate cool dry air in between the two panes of
glass to reduce condensation and to keep the inside panes of
glass cooler because the aircraft heated up to quite high
temperatures at supersonic flight.
Nineteen miles of wiring that every Concorde contained - those
wiring looms were actually constructed here at Brooklyn's along with
one third of the airframe of all of the 20 Concordes.
Okay so here we are at the rear of the rear cabin in the aircraft
and this area to the rear contains the galley which obviously
is not here anymore and then beyond the galley beyond the
bulkhead is the baggage hold. The door that you see on the
left there is not a passenger entrance, it's where the
baggage handlers loaded the baggage
and beyond that we have the rear fuel tank.
Okay folks, so welcome to the Concorde simulator.
This building was the original acoustics building in
Brooklyn's museum where materials were tested for
soundproofing. The Concorde simulator was originally at
Filton in Bristol at the British Airways engineering base.
It was moved here after being taken out of service in 2003.
So here we have a real Concorde check-in desk, so when you
flew Concorde, this is where you would come and check in.
So this is the only one ever used in the UK. All 134 pilots
and 57 flight engineers were trained in this very simulator.
(alarm sounding)
- [Computer Programme] Pull up!
Pull up!
- So guys now I am taking the Concorde for a takeoff run out
of runway two seven London Heathrow. Let's go guys.
I felt the speed was much faster than a normal plane.
Positive incline.
Coming to land at Heathrow 27 left.
- Today is the 50th anniversary of the very first flight of
the first Concorde. It took off from Toulouse 50 years
ago and made a short flight prior to landing and it is
amazing to think that aeroplane still looks futuristic today.
- To go to work as a Concorde pilot of course was just the
most privileged best job in the world.
The aeroplane had to be flown very precisely, very accurately.
It was a day out with your mates every time you went to work
because we were such a small group
of people we all knew one another very well.
So now I'm still very proud, I still thoroughly enjoy my work
even though I am approaching retirement.
So when I go to work and find a Boeing 777, it's a modern
fly by wire aeroplane using a lot of the technology that was
developed in Concorde. Apart from stating the obvious it
takes such a bloody long time to
get anywhere compared to Concorde.
- I was extremely fortunate to become a crew member on board
and I worked under the guidance of a crew
numbering in their 40s - senior crew would be BOAC crew.
They taught me an awful lot. I learned a lot about etiquette on
board fine Wines, don't bring your (foreign language)
about passengers, VIP passengers, royalty.
It was incredible.
- Here's Captain Mike Bannister. He actually flew me in 2003
on my only supersonic flight from JFK to Heathrow.
I'm really really happy to see you Captain today.
- Here we are at Brooklands on the 50th anniversary
of the first ever Concorde flight, 50 years ago today,
the 2nd Of March 1969 and we've reached the point where
we're about to lower the nose and visor of our Concorde
golf bravo bravo delta golf and we're going to do it
at exactly the same time as the first Concorde
ever lifted off 50 years ago to the moment.
So that's going be a real celebration.
- Amazing, thank you sir.
- [Audience] Eight, seven, six,
five, four, three,
two, one,
zero.
(applause)
(dramatic orchestral music)
- I flew on Concorde on the 15th of October 2003.
It was such a momentous event in my life that the
date has become like a second birthday.
I remember we took off at 6pm in darkness.
And with a three and a half hour flight minus five hours
time difference, it meant that we actually caught up with the
sun and landed in daylight at 4:30pm. Off the ground at
Heathrow at six, on the deck in New York at 4:30.
So actual time travel and flying high enough that
the night was a shadow through the sky
which we flew out of and for that to not
only be possible but to be accessible to the general public
is absolutely unbelievable and shows how
far ahead of the time the aircraft was.
- Yeah many years ago I used to go across Heathrow
and stop for lunch breaks and I was looking
up at the time they used to take off.
So all the traffic stopped everywhere.
Just to stand and watch it go
It was brilliant - absolutely fantastic.
Like I say, the ground shook and everybody just looked at it.
You could not stop looking at it until it disappeared.
- A Flight on board a Concorde is like no other flight.
I think you will agree with me.
What a beautiful, glorious looking aircraft she is
and Concorde undeniably is a beautiful part of aviation
history and I hope that supersonic travel
returns to the sky one day in the future.
(dramatic orchestral music)