Going Back In Time To A Machine You Could Go Back In Time On!

With my Grandfather on the flight deck of Concorde Alpha Charlie, G-BOAC
at Manchester Airport. This aircraft was the "Flagship of the Flagships".

LOOKING BACK AT WHAT SHOULD BE THE FUTURE

For 27 years you could take off from London at 11:00am local time and land in New York at 9:30am
local time. You could have breakfast in London, lunch in New York and (theoretically but hardly practically) be back in London for dinner. You could cross the Atlantic ocean in a little over 3 and a half hours while sipping champagne, eating caviar and mixing with people you had only ever seen photographs of in tabloid newspapers and magazines. As of October 2003 the same journey takes 7 or 8 hours depending on the Jetstream and you are eating standard airline food whilst mixing with 300 holidaymakers on your way across the pond. From 1976 until 2003 you had another option, although the possession of deep pockets or copious amounts of luck were required to do so, but you could have done something that no-one today can; flown supersonically on Concorde.

G-BBDG, or "Delta Golf", now the showpiece at
Brooklands Museum in Surrey. Shown here in 2012 with
an Emirates A380 flying overhead from Heathrow. 

In a world that focuses on profits, efficiency and capacity over technical achievement we have lost two vehicles whose contribution to the world can hardly be measured; Concorde and the Space Shuttle. 2021 is the 18th anniversary of Concorde's final year in service with British Airways and Air France, and 10 years since Space Shuttle Atlantis landed for the final time after several forays into Low Earth Orbit. How has it come to pass that we are so focused on money that we take steps backwards when it comes to technological achievement? Human endeavour had always advanced us technologically from the invention of the wheel through to landing on the moon, or flying at twice the speed of sound, whereas the second half of the 20th Century and the start of the 21st Century has seen our development stunted in at least two cases.

G-BOAA had her wings cut, travelled by boat and across fields
to her final destination here at East Fortune, near Edinburgh, Scotland.
This aircraft performed the very first scheduled Concorde passenger
flight from London to Bahrain on 21st January 1976.

I am not for a second suggesting we are totally going backwards. A computer the size of a small office would have been used in the 1960's to do what you can do in the palm of your hand today (I was referring to smart phones, but you can interpret that however you like!). Look at the advancement of cars, trains, television, radio, phones, computers and of course aircraft. The magnificent Boeing 787 and the gargantuan Airbus A380 are certainly huge achievements however they are in a different class to what used to be the pinnacles of flight, which now languidly lay as museum pieces across the globe. Even after 18 years we are left asking why it takes 7 or 8 hours to complete a journey that it used to only take 3 and a half hours? It is a fact that Airbus as we know it wouldn't exist if it was not for Concorde, and that of course includes the A380.

Yes, there were only ever 20 Concordes built; Yes, only 14 of these ever saw airline service; Yes,

This Air France Concorde is displayed on stilts at Paris
Charles De Gaulle airport, visible here from our Exeter-bound
Flybe Dash 8. It is almost criminal that these aircraft were grounded
when they were. Why are there no replacements? Why are we left
to bumble across the Atlantic in 7 or 8 hours?

only the British and French national airlines flew* Concorde whereas at the time of writing BA has 12 A380's and Air France 10 examples in a worldwide fleet of 229. So what? Mass transport is all well and good, and pioneering in its own way but why has there never been a successor to Concorde? When Concorde stopped flying in 2003 it was with a backdrop of a world recovering from a global downturn in air travel as a result of SARS, 9/11 and financial constraints. Whenever I am asked why Concorde stopped flying it is impossible to give a single reason, and most point to the crash of an Air France Concorde in 2000. Incidentally, the ONLY fatal accident involving Concorde in 27 years of service.

* One of the British Airways Concordes briefly had a stint with Singapore Airlines down one side, and briefly they were utilised by Braniff in the USA, but for the vast majority of their airline service they were exclusive to BA and AF.

12 years after this aircraft last flew, she sat forlornly in a corner
of Heathrow Airport in 2012. G-BOAB was never modified after the
July 2000 accident in Paris involving an Air France Concorde

One reason that seems to surprise people the most is that more than half of the regular Concorde passengers between New York and Europe were killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. People forget Concorde was a business tool. In Britain and France she (he, if you're French) was not just a machine but a part of your national conscience, like she had a soul. The mere fact we refer to Concorde as "he/she" and not "it" is testament to that. You would say "I flew on Concorde" as opposed to "I flew on an A380". You just couldn't view Concorde in the same way you view an A320 or 747 which flies around today.

The nation of Britain collectively shed a tear when the very last Concorde flights took place in October and November 2003, akin to mourning a relative who had passed away. Whether your outlook was that Concorde was retired far too early or that it was only brought forward by a few

The original British prototype Concorde first flew in 1969,
and embarked on a stringent test programme. This aircraft was
used for a sales tour of the Far East and Australia in 1972. G-BSST
or 002 now resides at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset at the
Fleet Air Arm Museum.

years it doesn't change the fact that we sit here in 2018 with no way to transport multiple people at supersonic speeds. A few proposals have been made and allegedly there are supersonic business jets in the pipeline, however never in the history of aviation has the development stalled for so long. From the first powered flight in 1903 to the first scheduled airline service in 1914, to the first fighter plane in 1915. The jet engine was invented in the 30's and by the 1940's the first Jet Airliner had been built, and entered service in the 1950's. The first supersonic airliners to take to the sky were the Tupolev Tu144 in 1968 and then Concorde in 1969. The Tu144 was to have a vastly more problematic life than Concorde, whose arrival into passenger service in 1976 heralded a new era for aviation. Yet for 27 years Concorde remained the only supersonic airliner in service until one day there were none.

The production lines closed up as the 1970's "oil crisis" led to all airlines but BA and AF cancelling

The rear of F-BTSD's engines at Paris Le Bourget
in 2010. Concorde's Olympus 593 engines were the most
efficient in the world while flying at twice the
speed of sound.

their orders. Somewhat ironically, the next Concorde to be built would have been a B-Spec model with more efficient engines, variable geometry components on the wings and tweaks made to the shape. The next stage in Supersonic Airliner development has been shelved for over 40 years.

The economic reasons that no-one wanted to take a punt on more Concordes are well documented and frankly I believe the world is sick of money being the deciding factor in everything. The Apollo programme was stopped due to money, Concorde was stopped due to money, the Space Shuttle was stopped due to money; But it won't end there! The world is trillions and trillions of dollars in debt. TO WHOM?! And if the world is in debt and continues to revolve, why doesn't someone take the initiative and use the money they have today to advance mankind for the future? Why doesn't a Donald Trump or Bill Gates finance the next generation Supersonic Airliner to advance human and technological achievement and really put their mark on the history books? Sir Richard Branson is doing just that with Virgin Galactic, however his "attempts" to obtain Concorde and keep them flying were propaganda to put it politely. I have severe criticisms about how he went about things with Concorde towards the end however you cannot deny that he is a visionary, an entrepreneur, and putting his money where his mouth is with Virgin Galactic.

I, for one, would love to experience leaving Sydney, Australia and arrive in Los Angeles, California 6 hours later in a state of confusion about why it is the day before I left. I would love to be sat in Devon again as I used to more than 18 years ago, watching at 5pm as another supersonic journey from New York descended towards London. As it is, I am left to wistfully watch as QF11, a Qantas A380 that wouldn't exist if it were not for Concorde, climbs out over the East coast of Australia to embark on its 13 hour journey. Progression is a little more than a dream, for now at least.