“People always ask me what it was like to fly Concorde, and I’ve always equated it to being a bus driver given a Ferrari to go and play with,” says Richard Westray, a Concorde pilot from 1999 until its retirement in 2003. Four Rolls Royce engines equipped with afterburners on each aircraft propelled it through liftoff and the sound barrier, or Mach 1, a speed of 662 nautical miles per hour at sea level, to a maximum cruising speed of 1,354 miles per hour, at altitudes up to 60,000 feet, right at the edge of space. British and French engineers designed features for the unique challenges of traveling at supersonic speeds: the aircraft’s adjustable droop nose, revamped brake systems, delta-shaped wing and expandable fuselage. Indeed, Concorde’s technological innovations still awe aviation experts today.
The British compromised and said we’ll put an ‘e’ on it, and we’ll have the ‘e’ stand for excellence.” Of course, “Concord” in English doesn’t have an ‘e’ on it, and it does in French. “They literally did 50 percent each,” van der Linden says. aerospace industry shifted into overdrive as the space race was heating up, the French and British focused on the supersonic sector, joining forces to share the multi-billion-dollar costs of developing a first-of-its-kind commercial aircraft from scratch.
The moniker, which is the French word for harmony or union, reflects the collaboration between France and Great Britain to develop the world’s first commercial supersonic aircraft, explains Bob van der Linden, the National Air and Space Museum’s curator of air transportation and special purpose aircraft. There’s no preliminary “the” required it’s simply Concorde. A first-of-its-kind jetįirst things first: Not unlike those A-list celebrities who only go by one name, Concorde, too, stands alone. Here’s what it was like to fly on the iconic aircraft during its heyday-and why it continues to inspire such wonder more than two decades after its retirement. “It was such an incredibly unique experience, and you were going faster than rifle bullets, twice the speed of sound. “The atmosphere in the cabin was one of an exclusive club, and it was because these were the people who controlled the world, controlled the world’s finance and the world’s trade,” says Joe Cuddy, who worked for nine years on the Concorde fleet as a flight attendant and senior fleet trainer. With the tagline “Arrive Before You Leave” for its ability to fly passengers westward across the Atlantic Ocean in about three hours, Concorde still holds the prestige of being the only commercial supersonic aircraft (though that status could soon be disrupted by several emerging players reviving the sector).Įven so, those lucky enough to have traveled on Concorde say the aircraft will always retain a rarified air not just for its engineering feats-flying more than twice the speed of sound and on the fringes of space, at 11 miles above the ground-but also for an unmatchable aura of thrill and luxury. Nearly 20 years after its final flight, Concorde continues to capture the imagination of many aviation enthusiasts as the most remarkable airplane in history: a brilliant, beautiful marvel of innovation and ingenuity that became the darling of the world’s jet-setting elite.
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