I had a quick getaway in London this past weekend. During departure, I happened to be staring out the window of my taxiing jet, and I was stunned to see the unmistakable shape of a Concorde, with its pointed nose and broad delta wings, in British Airlines livery, sitting alongside our route.
I immediately assumed it couldn’t really be a Concorde, as they’ve been out of service for decades. There are a few still around, but they’re in museums or stashed in out-of-the-way hangars. No way a busy airport like Heathrow would have essentially a dead craft sitting out taking up valuable space. So this had to be a different but superficially similar aircraft in BA’s fleet, right? I couldn’t think what else might have that distinctive form, but I made a note to look it up later.
To my surprise, I found that, yes, that was indeed a Concorde we taxied past.
The second link above has a lot of details on the history of this jet after its retirement — sometimes out on display, sometimes moved to a different location, occasionally cleaned, occasionally used for training purposes (?), but doesn’t really go into the why of it all. It seems like it would be expensive and awkward to have this decommissioned craft sitting around at such a busy facility, though by keeping it (externally) presentable they’re trying to put a good face on it in the name of tradition.
Is it simply a matter of there being no good way to relocate it elsewhere? It can’t be airworthy, so it would need to be dismantled and moved on the ground. That has to be expensive, and lacking a prospective new location (and more importantly a sponsor for the effort), does the jet just sit there forever, occasionally towed from one parking space to another but otherwise suffering the abuse of British weather, year after year? How long until it simply rots and falls apart? Is it just that nobody’s willing to bite the bullet and saw this piece of history into scrap?
Is it not clear that I am simply speculating and hoping for confirmation from better informed individuals? And is it also not clear that there are follow up questions at the end which I did not speculate about and would appreciate responses to?
Apparently, it’s been on display there for almost a quarter-century, but there’s a group of airplane enthusiasts who are trying to get it moved closer to Central London:
They even have a GoFundMe (link broken. Is that good enough to make it kosher to post that link here??):
<Link deleted - Chronos>
ETA: the GFM link has a fair amount of info about their proposed plan. As of today … £8,674 raised (against a goal of £500,000
There could certainly be interesting details to add to this story. Your speculation is on the mark in this matter though. Perhaps you didn’t realize how proud the Brits were of their participation in the development of the first supersonic airliner and they certainly want to put a good face on it instead of considering it a failure.
I saw Concordes take off and land here in the US, they are a unique and eye-catching aircraft. @DavidNRockies’ cite talks about moving it elsewhere but I doubt it will get seen by as many people anywhere but a major airport like Heathrow.
For years, even while Concorde was still in service, there was one in Air France livery sitting around JFK. It moved from time to time, generally near the shared terminal used by almost all the non-US airlines who each had a small presence but who collectively had a large one.
The reason it was there was rather more ignominious. It had been damaged in a real bad hard landing and was unflyable and practically irreparable. So there it sat, a monument to one guy’s few seconds of incapacity, carelessness, or neglect. Oops.
Compared to the 707 & DC-8 that were current long range jet tech when Concorde was designed, it was taller, longer, and much faster. But with less wingspan and some fewer seats.
Just a couple years later the 747, then later the DC-10, L-1011, and eventually 767 arrived on the scene. Dwarfing everything that had come before in both overall size & in seat count.
Which utterly crushed Concorde’s already marginal at best per-seat cost competitiveness.
And did make it look sort of bizjet-like when parked alongside a pair of e.g. 747s.
I’m reading the Wikipedia article on the Concorde. I vaguely remember hearing of its earliest scheduled flights in the late 1970s (starting in 1976) but didn’t know that it had been under development since the 1960s.
I walked through the one parked on a barge beside the Intrepid on the Hudson. IIRC there was also a Concorde-on-a-stick outside Charles de Gaulle airport. They are very tiny and cramped to minimize cross-section for wind resistance. But wasn’t the typical airliner, when the concorde was designed and before the 747 came along, 4 or 6 across anyway?
I guess the question is - if it’s not on a river or adjacent to an airport, how would something like that be transported? Do they take the wings off? Do they even come off easily?
But all these other airplanes were vastly slower than the Concorde. The Concorde was designed for rich people who don’t care what the ticket cost was if they could save some time.
The one at Duxford air museum can never leave. It flew in and then they shortened the runway just after it landed in order to build the M11 motorway. Almost literally just after as they’d delayed the construction for a few weeks already.
It’s the difference between “narrow body” and “wide body” jetliners.
Narrow bodies usually have one central aisle through the passenger cabin, and somewhere between 1 and 3 seats on either side of the aisle. Concorde was, as I understand it, a 2+2 in the main cabin, which is narrower still than many of its contemporary narrow bodies (737 typically 3+3, DC-9/MD-80 typically 2+3, etc.) So, even by narrow-body standards, the Concorde was quite narrow (its seating layout is the kind of thing we now see today in regional jets).
Wide body jetliners, like the 747 (as well as the 767, 777, and 787, the DC-10, the L-1011, and the Airbus A300, A310, A330, etc.) usually have two aisles through the passenger cabin, and something like a 2-4-2 seating or 3-4-3 arrangement in the main cabin. Several of those widebodies (the 747, DC-10, L-1011, and A300) were all contemporaries of the Concorde, going into service in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Not easily, but anything that can be assembled can be disassembled. It’s mostly a cost/time thing (removing all the other stuff in the way) and the economic viability of that changes depending on the purpose of disassembly.
Putting it back together may require adjustments, a few repairs, alternate fasteners and whatnot; the nature of which would depend on whether there’s an intent to permit future airworthiness or not. If you don’t care if it never flies, you can put it back together with wood supports and zip ties. If you do want it to fly again, you follow more conventional industry practice!
On a related note, here’s a short video showing how the space shuttle Endeavor was transported from LAX to its new home at the science museum in central Los Angeles. Quite an operation!
At least in the later stages of its operational life, Concorde was mostly (although admittedly not continuously) profitable for the airlines that operated it; it targeted a market segment of wealthy customers and in particular business travellers, for whom the cost relative to other planes was not a decisive factor. In fact, market research that BA did in the 1980s showed that Concorde fares were lower than what most passengers (who had tickets booked for them by agencies or company staff) thought they were (BA took advantage of this by raising fares to the level expected by the passengers).
Yes, but even though marginal flying costs may have been less than revenue, it never recouped the massive investment required to develop it. It basically just saved Boeing from losing its shirt developing its own SST.
Had the Concordes been allowed to fly across the US they might have done somewhat better. Rising fuel prices would have made it impractical eventually anyway I think.
