The Failure Of The Concorde

So technology has always been a wonderful thing and has brought us so many new and amazing things. Technology once brought us the Concorde was one of the most advanced planes in the world that could fly at up to Mach 2. This is twice the speed of sound!

Concorde was originally a collaborative effort between Great Britain, France and West Germany. Because of the problems in developing a conventional supersonic aircraft with acceptable economics, the three nations preferred to pool their resources and share the development costs rather than compete. They envisioned an airliner that could fly from London to New York in three hours instead of six. Flights began on 21st January 1976, but it was not long before this dream became a nightmare. The noise pollution from its sonic booms was an environmental concern for many regions where it was scheduled to fly over land. It was also expensive to operate, costing more than double that of had it been bought by a sole nation.

The design was extremely complex. It had three engines on each wing and two small turbo fan engines in the rear fuselage. The large engine intakes were in the center section of the aircraft with a large flutter damper mounted behind them. The tail fins were mounted over the top wing, but did not extend to the tips of the wings because it would have increased drag significantly. The Concorde performed very well in tests but one problem was that the new technology it used did not exist at that stage in aircraft production and manufacturing process. The design was such that manufactured components had to be supplied from various suppliers, sometimes from the United States and occasionally from other European countries.

The surface of the aircraft was made of an alloys similar to chrome-molybdenum steel which had a high strength-to-weight ratio and also low weight. The central fuselage and wings were fitted with leading edge device wingtips to reduce aerodynamic drag; this reduced fuel consumption. The aircraft was built to be as quiet as possible in flight, with supersonic shock waves being generated by the wingtips rather than by the engine exhausts. After a brief few months of Concorde service, the reality became apparent – it didn’t fly very well.

It was extremely loud in both the cabin and engine compartments, and had a tendency to disintegrate into pieces. Some airlines refused to use it, others tried modifying its performance but nothing worked and it became more of a source of political embarrassment than practical achievement.

Concorde had a maximum range of 6,250 miles. Cruising at Mach 2, it could cover almost 2,500 miles in one hour. It flew nearly 100 flights in a typical year and carried passengers over 7 million flying miles. The build quality of Concorde was so poor that it was withdrawn from service many times for repair and modification. In October 2003 it was announced that Concorde would fly until November 24th 2003 and only then did the British Airways Concorde fleet complete its last flight from JFK Airport to London Heathrow Airport. After this date, no more flights were made due to the increased risk of pressurization failure with age.

Because of lack of demand for such a plane, production was halted in November 2003. It is thought that Concorde will never be replaced although some aviation companies are developing similar aircraft. Some industry experts say a supersonic replacement would probably not be developed because it would require significant investment, and there is no way the airlines would pay for it.

It is sometimes said that a supersonic replacement to Concorde has been approved by the European Union but this is not true. The E.U. has no direct financial power over the European airlines and have no idea of any such development or even where it would be built. The only supersonic aircraft in development are a Russian military plane, a French and German space plane and a British military aircraft. Aviation experts say any future supersonic transport (SST) will be built to service military purposes rather than passenger flights.

We hope that the great aerospace minds of today can potentially come together to build a new breed of supersonic jets that don’t have a sonic boom as loud as the Concorde and it safer to fly than it too. After all – it’s been decades since the Concorde was built and flight technology has come leaps and bounds since then.