I remember a retired fireman living in Rockaway Beach on Long Island in quite some medical condition…. for many years he reported every day when Concorde passed and posted many pictures… We feared for his live when the AA306 came down very close to where he lived, in fact his old engine responded to that crash… Never heard back from him after Concorde was grounded…. probably faded away poor guy.
We lived in the south east of England for a while and I’d see Concorde coming over twice a day. I’d always look up and watch.
We also lived close to the Bell Inn in Aldworth (a pub that had been in the same family for 5 generations, probably 6 now). Brian Calvert (Concorde captain, I think) used to drink there. The pub ended up chartering Concorde for a trip around the Bay of Biscay and was (probably still is) festooned with Concorde memorabilia. The BA cricket team would have a match against the village team every year too (the cricket club adjoined the pub).
Airports are for everybody in the US, and are public transport infrastructure. My two planes cost less than my cars, which were cheap because I don’t waste money on cars 
I lived for a while about 50 miles West of Paris. Twice a day the Concorde thundered overhead, already much higher than the rest of the traffic but still way noisier. Much as I liked hearing it, it was clear that a sky full of them would have started to get annoying.
I can’t see that the Anglo-French Concorde was a produce of the European class system. You could equally argue that the USA subsidises airfields for rich people but has crappy public transport for the less well off. If fuel hadn’t gotten so expensive, and if it hadn’t been as noisy, then it would have been a much more viable proposition.
denopa wrote:
I can attest the (sub sonic) noise was horrendous, miles from the flight path. You had to pause phone calls. Inside houses. I mean, afterburners, right?
Exactly – and I loved every second of it! The roar of those engines always brought a smile to my face.
Here’s a little anecdote about Concorde’s noise:
Towards the end of Concorde’s flying career, I was walking down a street around Covent Garden in London. About 50 meters ahead of me was a visibly very, very angry motorbike courier. You know the type – Mad Max and all. Screaming into his radio or cell phone, anger all over him. Then came the roar….. faintly at first, then building to a beautiful crescendo: Concorde on approach to LHR. All of a sudden, our man stopped his conversation, looked up – and smiled. As I walked past him, I saw him looking up into the now empty sky, still smiling, a happy man for the moment.
Silvaire wrote:
Here are three more photos of older European manufactured airliners in service with US majors
Whlie the US airlines will operate anything they think will be profitable, the US government on the other hand has at times tried to impede this. There’s many documented cases of the US government impeding US airlines from buying foreign made aircraft. I’m sure the same thing has happened in European countries too going the other way.
Silvaire,
I am surprised to see a Caravelle in AA colours! Yes, there were some imports mainly from the UK and France at the time, but I understand from people in the Industry in the UK at the time that it was darn difficult to get past the FAA as well as there always was a kind of reluctance to do this in the cold war period. Obviously that is past and today I reckon if they delivered a good enough product, even Russian planes could fly for AA…
IIRR both TWA and AA were initially very interested in Concorde. Braniff actually flew it (subsonic) in cooperation with BA. I think the only time Concorde actually flew supersonic over the American continent was on the delivery flight to the Museum of Flight over Canada.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I think Boeing would have been capable but it was one of those projects which never took off.
Fairly obviously by spending enough money Boeing, Douglas, Lockheed etc could have built whatever technology allowed, however they’d have needed to sell the things to somebody! The military never had a need for a large supersonic transport that would anyway have faced the same noise issues for domestic operation, and the US has never had a nationalized international airline with non-economic motivations. Maximizing income over expenditures is the US airlines objective. “Pride” is probably about number 4025 on their priority list, for example virtually all them have found bankruptcy is a handy tool to reduce expenses… and then continue making money.
Here are three more photos of older European manufactured airliners in service with US majors, there are probably more but I can remember four types. The airlines made then and continue to make their decisions based on the business case, and the Concorde didn’t have one. When the Airbus came along they bought those too, without regard to its obvious derivative design – that’s not their concern as aircraft customers.
Peter wrote:
What seems to be real is that there is definitely a market for some hundreds of supersonic bizjets, at something like $100M-200M each, and several design bureaus around the world are working on that.
BTW commenting on this earlier post by Peter, in around 1999 or so I had the opportunity to have dinner with Allen Paulson through a personal contact who thought it would be fun. That day he had just returned from talking with Lockheed about his ongoing dream to design and built a supersonic business jet. He had (as he described it to me) by that time given up on Suhkoi, but I got the sense Lockheed would talk to him and act interested. A few years later he passed on but I believe his son continued to carry the torch for a while. Nothing ever came of it.
I wonder about that, I think Boeing would have been capable but it was one of those projects which never took off. Actually, dumping it in favour of the 747 proved right even though nowadays we see a change back to smaller airliners rather than big ones. Both the 747 and the A380 are under threat of shut down of production where as the 787 and 350 sized planes florish.
But for petty nationalism you donˆt need this kind of thing. It’s enough if one is envious and doesnˆt want the other to succed. Same happened again in the end of Concorde when the French would not stand BA to be the only ones to operate this flagship.
