Ten Years Ago Today

Teller1900

Teller1900

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I am a dad!
25 July 2000. 90 seconds that marked the beginning of the end of an era.
 
I flew on one of the last BA Concorde flights. Sweet ride, great food and booze, didn't last nearly long enough. It seemed like we had just taken off when we were told to prepare to land.
 
wabower said:
Vasectomy?
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:rofl: Considering I was 16 at the time...no.

TMetzinger said:
At first I thought maybe that was Teller's first solo.
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90 seconds?? I did a little better than that! And that was in '03. :wink2:

Greg Bockelman said:
Wow. Has it been that long already?
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Scott nailed it. I was surprised, too, Greg. I still remember the news coverage, though I don't think I had as great an appreciation, then as I do now, for how historically significant that accident would be.

Supposedly the French court is supposed to hand down their judgment on the involuntary manslaughter charges sometime this fall.
 
flyersfan31 said:
I flew on one of the last BA Concorde flights. Sweet ride, great food and booze, didn't last nearly long enough. It seemed like we had just taken off when we were told to prepare to land.
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That's awesome, Andrew! Take any pictures? I remember seeing it taxi once at Dulles and once in Paris, but I never actually saw the thing fly. That's something I really would have liked to have witnessed.
 
They were flying the first one in 1969 when we happened to be in Paris. It was parked at the airport, painted in UK colors on one side and French colors on the other.

Teller1900 said:
That's awesome, Andrew! Take any pictures? I remember seeing it taxi once at Dulles and once in Paris, but I never actually saw the thing fly. That's something I really would have liked to have witnessed.
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We hated that airplane at my shop. We were under the departure path from JFK, and the Concorde would fly overhead a few miles after takeoff. Afterburners blaring, so loud that you couldn't hear yourself think if you were inside the shop, on the ground.

Noise abatement procedures bother me for small aircraft, but calling this thing loud was an understatement. Deaf people could hear it several states away.
 
It might be back according to this June 10 story.

"When the Concorde luxury jet was retired seven years ago, after 27 years of dutiful service to the world’s elite, it seemed like the end of an era. Now, however, efforts are underway to get the supersonic craft back in the air — in time for the 2012 Olympic Games."

http://www.extravaganzi.com/supersonic-passenger-jet-concorde-back-in-the-air/
 
Teller1900 said:
That's awesome, Andrew! Take any pictures? I remember seeing it taxi once at Dulles and once in Paris, but I never actually saw the thing fly. That's something I really would have liked to have witnessed.
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I'll have to dig around, but I think the only camera I had was one of those disposables and I blew the last shot in the departure lounge.

I will say this -- not nearly as cramped as people made it out to be. It was no 747, but it was normal, narrow-body sized.

Feeling burner kick in was pretty cool.
 
flyersfan31 said:
I'll have to dig around, but I think the only camera I had was one of those disposables and I blew the last shot in the departure lounge.

I will say this -- not nearly as cramped as people made it out to be. It was no 747, but it was normal, narrow-body sized.

Feeling burner kick in was pretty cool.
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Note the date. I hate you even more now.

Lucky... :incazzato:

:D
 
flyersfan31 said:
I flew on one of the last BA Concorde flights. Sweet ride, great food and booze, didn't last nearly long enough. It seemed like we had just taken off when we were told to prepare to land.
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That is pretty cool. I tried to get on it once. I had a ticket on a BA London to Chicago flight that already cost $5500 for biz class on a 747. I figured if the upgrade to first on the concord was only a thousand I would pay for it out of pocket. I inquired and BA had a seat, the delta on my ticket would be an additional $5000. Too rich for my blood. But in retrospect it would have been a blast!!
 
A collegue of mine had an employer who wanted him in Europe NOW. They bought him a ticket on the Concorde. He has his ATP and this was a long time before 9/11. A long time. He flashed his ATP cert when he boarded and wound up crossing the Atlantic in the cockpit. I am sooooo jealous!
 
Ted DuPuis said:
We hated that airplane at my shop. We were under the departure path from JFK, and the Concorde would fly overhead a few miles after takeoff. Afterburners blaring, so loud that you couldn't hear yourself think if you were inside the shop, on the ground.

Noise abatement procedures bother me for small aircraft, but calling this thing loud was an understatement. Deaf people could hear it several states away.
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There are very faint bells ringing from an aviation law class about a lawsuit over the Concorde and noise abatement. I want to say it was back in the 70's (maybe 80's? when did the Concorde enter service?), and involved JFK.

The inference being that, before this lawsuit, the noise was probably far worse than what you heard!
 
Obi Heed Kenobi said:
There are very faint bells ringing from an aviation law class about a lawsuit over the Concorde and noise abatement. I want to say it was back in the 70's (maybe 80's? when did the Concorde enter service?), and involved JFK.

The inference being that, before this lawsuit, the noise was probably far worse than what you heard!
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Possible, and if that's the case it scares me. The thing was louder than any of the fighter jets with afterburners that show off how much noise they can make at Osh. Maybe I'm more deaf now than I was then (probably am).

I know that my shop was in a combination commercial/industrial/low cost of living area. So, those are probably the people most likely to get the brunt of the Concorde's noise.
 
i never had a Concord fly over me. But as I was walking to work one morning the SR71 took off right over my head as I walk around the fence at the end of the runway. I almost fell to the ground from the noise.
 
Obi Heed Kenobi said:
There are very faint bells ringing from an aviation law class about a lawsuit over the Concorde and noise abatement. I want to say it was back in the 70's (maybe 80's? when did the Concorde enter service?), and involved JFK.

The inference being that, before this lawsuit, the noise was probably far worse than what you heard!
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When the Concorde first entered service, after much protest and a suit by the citizens of New York, it was barred from flying into NY airports. Without the London-New York/Paris-New York routes, BA/AF couldn't hope to make money with it. So a test was set up. Its first appearance at JFK was an empty flight. They had to prove that its noise levels would be tollerable. A series of decibel meters was set up around the airport boundary to measure the maximum sound level created by the plane. The BA chief pilot who was flying the flight figured out that if they turned away from the meters and throttled back almost as soon as they were airborne, they could drastically reduce the amount of noise the plane made.

It worked, and shortly thereafter the Concorde made its inaugural revenue flight to JFK.
 
So basically, they fooled the sensors, and then went back to my above described deafening screams. Testing is a funny thing. ;)
 
Teller1900 said:
When the Concorde first entered service, after much protest and a suit by the citizens of New York, it was barred from flying into NY airports. Without the London-New York/Paris-New York routes, BA/AF couldn't hope to make money with it. So a test was set up. Its first appearance at JFK was an empty flight. They had to prove that its noise levels would be tollerable. A series of decibel meters was set up around the airport boundary to measure the maximum sound level created by the plane. The BA chief pilot who was flying the flight figured out that if they turned away from the meters and throttled back almost as soon as they were airborne, they could drastically reduce the amount of noise the plane made.

It worked, and shortly thereafter the Concorde made its inaugural revenue flight to JFK.
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That's it exactly. IIRC, the legal issue was that the NY/NJ Port Authority had a blanket ban against the Concorde on the basis of noise; they did these noise "tests;" and I think the lawsuit was filed on the basis that the bar was arbitrary/capricious.

Or something like that. :)
 
Ted DuPuis said:
So basically, they fooled the sensors, and then went back to my above described deafening screams. Testing is a funny thing. ;)
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Hey, they passed the test, what are you complaining about :D. The thing I saw about it said they didn't even register on the meters, let alone come close to the threshold set for the test, so they think they might have actually been okay had they just flown the normal profile. I don't think they wanted to leave it to chance for the rights to NY, though.

Obi Heed Kenobi said:
That's it exactly. IIRC, the legal issue was that the NY/NJ Port Authority had a blanket ban against the Concorde on the basis of noise; they did these noise "tests;" and I think the lawsuit was filed on the basis that the bar was arbitrary/capricious.

Or something like that. :)
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Sure, sounds good to me! :thumbsup:
 
Clever people will always outwit govt regulators.
 
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