Concorde to fly again ?

[V8 Fettler]

Concorde could fly again, just needs money throwing at it, albeit in another country, on another continent.

[mph1977]

Le Mans Visitor said:

IIRC when Richard Branson was sniffing around getting it airborne BA scrapped the airworthy certs (to stop a rival company taking the glory) and once they have been lost there is no way it can be reissued

urban myth

BA wanted to carry on but AF and Airbus wanted rid, RR were happy to throw the cards in as well as Aero olympus by then was a very niche product and the differences between the 201/ 301 and the 593 are significant

[silverfoxcc]

One of the more plausable rumours going around was that Air France wanted a deal with Airbus over a shedload of aircraft, big discount etc etc. airbus said OK if you dump Concorde. They did PDQ leaving BA to soldier on alone until the deal was signed and then Airbus told BA to dump it asap.

[anonymous-user]

I thought it was due to Air France having very few passengers post 9/11, and having a very close call with another Concorde, which suffered a fuel leak which the crew did not respond to correctly, that they then wanted out.

Wasn't Air France in the throws of privatisation at the time, so getting rid of Concorde would remove that millstone from around their neck. Airbus were also happy to throw in the cards, as previously said, Concorde was old technology which did not fit in with their current business.

It therefore would fall to BA to pay in full for all support costs, which was uneconomic. It was previously split between AF and BA. Rumour at the time was there were also some at BA were happy to see Concorde go as well.

[SlipStream77]

Sarah Billington said:

... the safety standards of today wouldn't allow it as it was always fairly ropey safety wise.

No it wasn't, it had an exceptional safety record until the incident in France. That wasn't even a fault with the a/c per se, it was due to FOD.

[MitchT]

Branson wanted to buy it but wasn't allowed to, so it was far more than mere economics. I'd like to know the real story.

[Foliage]

MitchT said:

Branson wanted to buy it but wasn't allowed to, so it was far more than mere economics. I'd like to know the real story.

Too fast to be intercepted by any current active military aircraft

[eccles]

SlipStream77 said:

Sarah Billington said:

... the safety standards of today wouldn't allow it as it was always fairly ropey safety wise.

No it wasn't, it had an exceptional safety record until the incident in France. That wasn't even a fault with the a/c per se, it was due to FOD.

So all those delaminated rudder incident were perfectly safe then! Just because an aircraft doesn't crash a lot, doesn't mean it has a good safety record.

[SlipStream77]

eccles said:

SlipStream77 said:

Sarah Billington said:

... the safety standards of today wouldn't allow it as it was always fairly ropey safety wise.

No it wasn't, it had an exceptional safety record until the incident in France. That wasn't even a fault with the a/c per se, it was due to FOD.

So all those delaminated rudder incident were perfectly safe then! Just because an aircraft doesn't crash a lot, doesn't mean it has a good safety record.

It had two rudders specifically to mitigate potential failures. In all the rudder delamination events the aircraft landed safely.

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

Foliage said:

Too fast to be intercepted by any current active military aircraft

Sorry but that is just not true, with a supersonic target it all depends upon the intercept geometry. No Fighter Controller worth their salt would set up a long stern chase against such a target.

While difficult, it always was/is perfectly possible to roll an Interceptor out within missile kill perameters.

[Zad]

As I understand it, and aside from the Airbus authority issues (which I think are a secondary effect rather than a direct cause): Because of the extra weight and reduction in fuel space due to the reinforced tank liners, the AF aircraft had to run below capacity in order to safely make JFK, making it unprofitable. Meanwhile, BA were running the service at a nice little profit thankyouverymuch, but while ever Concorde existed as the flagship aircraft, they couldn't charge quite so much on the other premium revenue generating routes.

I could see the French aircraft restored to a condition where it was allowed to run up and taxi. Maybe. With a lot of goodwill from RR and brave insurers, but I think to get it to fly would take billions rather than millions. Most of which would go in "inducements" to AF, BA and Airbus. They are all PLCs with an eye on generating shareholder value, and money is money. On the other hand, if something political happened and the UK and French governments suddenly decided that, for whatever reason, it should happen, then yes. I just can't imagine those circumstances happening.

[eccles]

SlipStream77 said:

eccles said:

SlipStream77 said:

Sarah Billington said:

... the safety standards of today wouldn't allow it as it was always fairly ropey safety wise.

No it wasn't, it had an exceptional safety record until the incident in France. That wasn't even a fault with the a/c per se, it was due to FOD.

So all those delaminated rudder incident were perfectly safe then! Just because an aircraft doesn't crash a lot, doesn't mean it has a good safety record.

It had two rudders specifically to mitigate potential failures. In all the rudder delamination events the aircraft landed safely.

Ah, so you equate parts of your primary flying controls falling off and being perfectly safe?
I'll just repeat my point, just because it doesn't crash, doesn't mean it's safe.

[WinstonWolf]

eccles said:

SlipStream77 said:

eccles said:

SlipStream77 said:

Sarah Billington said:

... the safety standards of today wouldn't allow it as it was always fairly ropey safety wise.

No it wasn't, it had an exceptional safety record until the incident in France. That wasn't even a fault with the a/c per se, it was due to FOD.

So all those delaminated rudder incident were perfectly safe then! Just because an aircraft doesn't crash a lot, doesn't mean it has a good safety record.

It had two rudders specifically to mitigate potential failures. In all the rudder delamination events the aircraft landed safely.

Ah, so you equate parts of your primary flying controls falling off and being perfectly safe?
I'll just repeat my point, just because it doesn't crash, doesn't mean it's safe.

Getting out of bed is unsafe.

[Mave]

WinstonWolf said:

Getting out of bed is unsafe.

Safety, from an aerospace point of view, is measured / predicted numerically. By aerospace standards, getting out of bed is safe, concorde was not. It just took a while to realise it with concorde because the flying hours were so low.

[WinstonWolf]

The modern obsession with safety is why we can no longer achieve what we could fifty years ago.

[Dr Jekyll]

SlipStream77 said:

No it wasn't, it had an exceptional safety record until the incident in France. That wasn't even a fault with the a/c per se, it was due to FOD.

Plus some typical French cock ups.

Air France didn't make money full stop, and Concorde was especially tricky for them because they couldn't carry as much load CDG to NY as BA could on the slightly shorter LHR to JFK run.

The main trigger for the withdrawal was Air France coming close to losing another Concorde after more mistakes.

[Mave]

WinstonWolf said:

The modern obsession with safety is why we can no longer achieve what we could fifty years ago.

I think that's a fairly simplistic view of the situation.

[anonymous-user]

A couple of links to the AF incident in 2003.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/fuel-le...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2781275.st...

There was a comment at the time, that there wasn't enough fuel left for a go-around!

[aeropilot]

Dr Jekyll said:

SlipStream77 said:

No it wasn't, it had an exceptional safety record until the incident in France. That wasn't even a fault with the a/c per se, it was due to FOD.

Plus some typical French cock ups.

Air France didn't make money full stop, and Concorde was especially tricky for them because they couldn't carry as much load CDG to NY as BA could on the slightly shorter LHR to JFK run.

The main trigger for the withdrawal was Air France coming close to losing another Concorde after more mistakes.

There was a BA Concorde tech in my local MSA club back in the late 80's when I was rallying etc. and he always used to say that BA had severe reservations over AF's attitude to Concorde ops (everything to with it always seemed to be answered with a Gallic shrug of indifference is how he described it) and it was only a matter of time before there would a massive negative publicity incident with a AF Concorde that would impact BA's ops.

[Jim Campbell]

aeropilot said:

There was a BA Concorde tech in my local MSA club back in the late 80's when I was rallying etc. and he always used to say that BA had severe reservations over AF's attitude to Concorde ops (everything to with it always seemed to be answered with a Gallic shrug of indifference is how he described it) and it was only a matter of time before there would a massive negative publicity incident with a AF Concorde that would impact BA's ops.

That attitude to AF seems fairly prevalent on the big "concorde questions" thread on pprune.

From all i have read on the subject it seems there is no chance of one flying again. If they did get one flying though i would pay an arm and a leg for a ticket though.