Concorde
It’s been almost 50 years since the first flight of the Concorde Supersonic Transport, developed jointly by the British and French. It was a fluke that I had an opportunity to fly on the Concorde back in the mid-70’s. The chance came about because I screwed up by taking my expired passport to the airport one Sunday evening for a conventional 7 hour overnight flight from Detroit to London with my boss at Ford where we worked. The Custom's agent quickly spied my expired passport and obviously would not let me board. But my boss’s last words to me as he headed through security was for me to find a way to get to London in time for an important meeting early Tuesday morning as I had prepared all the pre-work materials for the meeting.
Apparently, I had accidentally grabbed my expired passport from our safety deposit box rather than my active one. So after my boss took off, I went to the airline reservation desk at the airport to figure out how best to get to London in time. The agent indicated the only option was flying to New York’s JFK Airport Monday morning and take the Concorde for a three hour flight leaving at noon. Coupled with the 6 hour time change, I’d arrive at 9:00pm London time, which would allow me to get a good night’s sleep and attend the meeting the next morning. The cost was triple the price of the original flight, but my boss said get there, so I directed the agent to book the flights.
Now the problem was getting my passport! I called my wife and she fortunately was able to track down someone who knew an official from the bank where the safe deposit box was located. She called that official at home and asked if there might be a way to gain access to my passport early the next morning. He fortunately agreed, but said the vault could only be opened after 8:00am and so I met him at the bank at that time to pick up the correct passport before rushing to the Detroit airport for the flight to JFK.
Once arriving at JFK, I had to clear customs which went seamlessly this time thanks to having the correct passport, and finally boarded the Concorde for London’s Heathrow airport.
I was amazed at how small the plane was internally; literally almost hitting my head on the ceiling walking down the aisle. And my assigned window seat was very cramped with my head and shoulders hitting the curved side of the plane. The window was a tiny porthole that I had to bend down in order to view outside.
When the plane took off, it ascended dramatically upward and swerved over the Atlantic in order to diminish the noise over the city as the powerful supersonic jet engines were rather loud even inside the plane. Plus, when the plane exceeded the speed of sound (741 mph), there would be a sonic boom that could be heard if it were flying low enough over land. There was a display mounted on the pilot's cabin as shown below that indicated the speed and altitude. The speed of the Concorde at Mach 2 was almost three times faster than a conventional passenger jet.
At that high speed, the interior wall of the plane was warm to the touch due to the friction caused by the thin air over the fuselage. And at altitude, one could observe the curvature of the earth.
During takeoff and landing, the nose of the Concorde had to be tilted downward as shown in the photo below so the pilots could see the runway. The plane’s designers may have been inspired by a swan trying to land and take off as also pictured below.
As an engineer, I was obviously very intrigued by the Concorde (refer to the inner workings of the plane on the diagram below) and really appreciated the once in a lifetime experience to have flown on such an ingenious flying machine.
Unfortunately, I had to return to the US the old fashioned way, and once back, had quite a time getting my travel expense approved through the bean counters in the company. But with my boss’s backing, especially given the success of the meeting we attended, finally got it approved and paid. Worth every penny in my view!
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