Well now I need a second correction of my increasingly bad memory. The Caravelle was a product of France’s Sud Aviation, not Dassault. I thought about providing a cite the first time, but did not. Lesson for my future. If I can remember it.
Anyhow, here’s your cite:
Which includes this relevant tidbit (wikilinks removed):
N901MW Caravelle VI-R (msn. 62) originally delivered to Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul. Later flew for Airborne Express. Currently preserved on the apron of John Glenn International Airport in Columbus, Ohio as a firefighting training aid.
Which does not mention United Airlines, but that was certainly the livery it was painted in when it was on display at the terminal. Although that does not guarantee UAL ever operated that specific aircraft. UAL only ever had 20 of them.
Current Google Maps overhead imagery shows the airplane intact alongside the fire station directly east of the main passenger terminal. Streetview from nearby Sawyer Road shows it painted in Airborne Express livery.
Yup. Before the French and British early efforts merged, the French started work on this as a follow-up to the Sud Caravelle – a very early jet airliner (developed in the 1950s not long after Britain’s pioneering Comet, and before the DC-8 and 707).
ETA: Darn it – I now see from more recent posts that this has already been addressed.
ETA again: No, you guys just mentioned the Caravelle for a different reason. Now you also see how it connects to the story of Concorde. Yay.
There used to be a small aviation museum across from the Post Office off of Sawyer Rd. at Port Columbus. The museum housed the Caravelle at a patch of grass right next to the main building. I’m not sure how the museum acquired the aircraft, but it had been there for as long as I can remember. The museum had been around since at least the mid-70s, but stopped giving tours of the Caravelle sometime in the late 80’s I believe. The museum wasn’t very popular, and in 1999 it was closed down and demolished. In it’s place now is a Hilton Garden Inn. All the inside displays were moved to the Ohio Historical Society’s museum close to downtown. Meanwhile, no one knows what to do with the Caravelle. At one time it was mention that it would be used for firefighter training, but that has not happened. For now, it sits just a bit north of the cargo ramp, just sitting there. It would be nice if the airport or a private philanthropist would renovate the aircraft and open it up again for public viewing, or at least sell it to a museum so it can have a good home.
Around 1970, it was obvious to everyone that supersonic passenger jets were going to be everywhere, really soon. The designers of the 747 were aware that their new passenger jet would eventually be converted to cargo use because people in 1980 wouldn’t want to fly in a subsonic plane; Boeing had its own supersonic plane in the works. Pan-Am had some Concordes on order. When the terminal at Mirabel airport was still open, it had an architect’s model of the airport under glass, and most of the planes in the model were Concordes (mainly in Air Canada livery). That was how the 1970 planners envisioned things.
Then the oil crisis hit, and NIMBYs restricted overland supersonic travel so much that it was no longer viable, so it never got beyond a dozen Concordes operating as a vanity project for 2 airlines. Plus a few TU-144s.
This little info sheet from NASA suggests that the Concorde was pretty noisy in supersonic flight. Right on 2 pounds over-pressure. Not quite enough to do any real damage, not exactly quiet either.
And people really got annoyed when booms were happening.
They were fairly noisy even in subsonic flight. Jets have been getting quieter thanks to high bypass fans. But even compared to the noisy jets of the 80’s, the concorde was ear splitting on take off.
During the SST early development era the belief of everyone: government, manufacturers, airlines, and the general public was that soon nearly every airliner would be supersonic, just as fast jets had comprehensively eclipsed slow prop-driven planes over just a few years. And not that long ago either.
By the time they’d gotten to the prototype stage, disillusionment had set in everywhere, a financial and oil crisis had occurred, and the wreckage of the grand idea was everywhere. With Concorde just barely surviving into extremely limited production as a government vanity project.
It was never intended as a rich person’s express. It was intended for the everyman. Or at least the everyman of air travelers. Which in the pre-deregulation era meant the upper-middle class and above; not the true bus- or train-riding everyman.
It just didn’t work out that way. Whether that intent was hubris or sound reasoning at the time is a question for the historians. From a technological / business perspective, the 1960s was a much more optimistic era than is e.g. the 2020s. The eyes we now use to view this history are not the eyes that made it.
I’ve always considered it to be beautiful and would love to take it for a spin! Of course, the fact that I don’t know how to fly would definitely be a problem. LOL
I recall one year at the Oshkosk fly-in in the late 80’s, they were offering rides in a Concorde for a mere $600 which was serious cash back then. A half hour round trip.
Yikes! From what I understand, it was pretty much a rich person’s option when it was flying commercial.
Google search yielded: “In 1976, a one-way ticket from London to Washington onboard Concorde cost £431, equivalent to £2,200 ($2,800) today.”
1976 pre-dated US deregulation by 2 years and was a lot of years pre- the Open Skies agreement/treaty over the Atlantic. IOW, the industry and fares then bear no resemblance to the industry and fares now, even corrected for ordinary consumer price inflation.
It’d be interesting to ask what the fare was on a BA conventional jet at the same time.
p.s. I’ve always thought that line was one of the best in all the Dirty Harry movies. And that’s a set of movies just dripping with great lines.
