I grew up in West London, within spitting distance of Heathrow Airport, and for 18 years the noise of aircraft taking off and landing was part of the soundtrack of my daily existence. In order to protect our sanity, we all trained ourselves to tune it out. In this way we could reduce the relentless roar of aircraft coming and going to mere muzak, simultaneously there and yet not there. But where Concorde was concerned, such mental gymnastics simply didn’t work. Concorde was SERIOUSLY LOUD.
Compare, if you will, the noise of a tabby cat miaowing and a lion roaring. You can experience only one of those sounds viscerally, as a physical sensation pulsing throughout your whole body. And it ain’t the tabby cat! It was just like that with Concorde, the undisputed roaring lion of the skies round my way, back in the day.
Concorde was, of course, the world’s first supersonic passenger-carrying aircraft, the product of a ground-breaking joint initiative between Great Britain and France. The name “Concorde” means “agreement,” and was an ironic reminder that the partners were in unfamiliar territory – over the centuries, the two nations had agreed on almost nothing, and had spent more time fighting than co-operating.
It all began in 1962 when the Brits and the French signed a treaty to share costs and risks in producing a supersonic passenger plane. Then the hard work started in earnest. Concorde made its maiden flight seven years later, but it was not until 1973 that the first transatlantic journey took place. The world’s first scheduled supersonic passenger services were launched three years later, in 1976.
Once development of Concorde was underway in the mid 1960s, some bright spark decided it would be a good idea to prepare the public for what might be in store for them. I distinctly remember, when I was ten or eleven years old, our teacher taking us out into the school playground one day so we could all experience our first sonic boom, courtesy of an air force jet the authorities brought in for that very purpose.
We all waited, hushed and expectant, for the miracle to happen. The appointed hour duly arrived, and so too did the RAF jet.
BOOM-BOOM went the soundwaves, echoing noisily around the neighbourhood.
“Oooh, aaah” squealed my schoolmates, frolicking excitedly around the playground.
“Enough of this rubbish, go back indoors and get on with some proper work” growled our teacher, trudging grumpily towards the classroom.
And, of course, it was rubbish. Concorde was never going to be breaking the sound barrier anywhere near us. It would be landing and taking off from an airport that was only a few minutes walk away from the school gates, and so would be many, many miles away before supersonic speeds could possibly be reached. It was therefore obvious to anyone with more than a couple of brain cells in working order that the sonic boom demo was totally pointless, but who cared, it got us out of lessons for a few minutes.
These memories of my own brief encounters with Concorde came flooding back last year, when Mrs P and I visited the Brooklands Museum of Motorsport and Aviation in Surrey. Amongst the museum’s collection is a Concorde, grounded of course, but perfect for an up close and personal inspection.
The plane on display still belongs to British Airways, but has been on loan to the museum since 2003. This particular aircraft never flew commercially, but was used in early testing and for certification. Later, from 1974-81, it was flown around the world to test new routes and to drum up sales to international airlines.
It was fascinating to finally get up close and personal with a Concorde. Its sleek, streamlined fuselage, the iconic delta-wing design and a nose that drooped during take-off and landing rendered the aircraft unmistakeable. And beautiful too. From outside you could gaze in wonder at a Concorde and think to yourself wow, if that’s the future of commercial air travel, bring it on NOW!
Cramped!
Inside however, as we discovered when we walked through the narrow cabin, things were rather different. With only around 100 seats – four per row, separated by a central aisle – and a low slung roof, it seems cramped, uncomfortable even. No amount of “free” champagne could disguise the fact that it feels like cattle class. But only the wealthiest of cattle ever got to fly in it.
Concorde’s advertised selling point was its unimaginably quick passage through the air, with a cruising speed that was over twice the speed of sound. A crossing from London or Paris to New York lasted approximately three and a half hours, less than half the time taken by subsonic aircraft. Famously, in summer 1985, Phil Collins was able to perform at Live Aid concerts in both London and Philadelphia on the same day by hopping onto a Concorde after his set at Wembley for a transatlantic flight to the US!
Cockpit confusion!
But the other attraction of Concorde was its exclusivity. Tickets were prohibitively expensive, meaning that you could only afford to take a scheduled flight on this iconic aircraft if you were stinking rich. To have flown on Concorde became a badge of honour, an indicator that you’d inherited or otherwise made a fortune.
Ultimately, however, the Concorde project was doomed. Although aesthetically pleasing and technologically ground-breaking, operating costs and serious environmental concerns were its undoing. Astonishingly, given its iconic reputation, only 20 Concordes were ever built, and just 14 of these flew commercially.
This photo shows the iconic “droop nose” on a plane landing at Farnborough in 1974. IMAGE CREDIT: Steve Fitzgerald (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2), via Wikimedia Commons
The final nail was driven into Concorde’s coffin on 24 July, 2000, when Air France Flight 4590 crashed shortly after take-off from Paris. All 109 people on board and four others on the ground were killed. As a result, commercial Concorde services were suspended everywhere until November 2001. Less than two years later the plane was officially retired, 41 years after the Anglo-French treaty was signed and 27 years after commercial operations had begun.
Visiting Concorde at the Brooklands Museum was a fascinating experience. It was also rather nostalgic, oddly so given that although I’ve seen – and heard – it from afar on countless occasions, I’ve never actually flown on this aircraft. Indeed I’m neither that rich nor so environmentally naïve as to have ever contemplated such a thing. And I’ve absolutely no regrets on that score.
I’d like to believe that all thought of commercial supersonic air traffic has been abandoned forever. However in doing research for this post I’ve have read that greener options are currently being explored, including hydrogen-powered planes that could offer the prospect of “near-zero emissions.”
If this is really true I have to ask, why are we bothering? In my humble opinion, commercial supersonic air travel is folly at best, criminal at worst. The world is in big trouble right now. Surely there are better uses of our time, wealth and ingenuity than seeking to shave a few hours off the length of a transatlantic flight, a flight that is probably unnecessary anyway in the modern, digitally-enabled age? Sometimes I despair!
Our “Boarding Passes” for the Concorde at Brooklands Museum!
Now I'm 64 
One of my aunts won a competition to fly Concorde to Iceland and I remember her saying how small it was inside. Fun to see it!
Re flying – by current aircraft – some of us have no choice if we want to see our families. And if you live in NZ there are no intercity trains, so if I want to go to Auckland I have to fly (driving takes 8 hours).
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Totally agree that our world in general, and in particular our family ties, would suffer enormously without the opportunity to fly. Supersonic flight, however, seems to me to be an unnecessary and environmentally disastrous luxury, one that we simply shouldn’t countenance.
And regarding NZ, I’ve experienced the challenges of its road and rail networks (not least the impact of earthquake damage!), and can see air travel is and will remain vitally important.
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We visited another Concorde at Scotland’s National Museum of Flight near Edinburgh. I too found it very tight and claustrophobic but then I feel a bit like that on every aircraft, and champagne, or any alcohol really, is required to get me on – slightly inappropriate when it’s an early morning flight!
Although I understand all the environmental and economic issues, I still felt a keen sense of loss when such an icon of the skies stopped flying.
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I think I agree. When Concorde was withdrawn from service I too regarded it as a loss, but with the benefit of hindsight and the wisdom of old age(!) I now see things a bit differently. But at the time, in the context of the world in the 1960s/70s, what an achievement.
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Wow, great opportunity to look around something so iconic and nostalgic. A real museum piece now.
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How time flies…I well remember the hype that surrounded Concorde half a century ago. It seemed like a vision of the future, but now it’s confined to a museum, the haunt of selfie-hunters and bloggers!
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Excellent post! Like the Concorde, this piece certainly covers a lot of territory—personal history woven in with the history of the Concorde, your trip to the museum, and finally your ending thoughts about the environment. While I agree with your conclusion, I have to admit that a three-and-half-hour transatlantic trip sounds impressive. In a car, it takes us three hours to get to Boston from Maine.
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Thank you, Laurie. I will confess that when I started writing this post I didn’t know where it was going, but it got there in the end! I like your final observation, which puts Concorde’s speed into context! I wonder if the Wright brothers, on that famous day at Kitty Hawk in 1903, could ever have imagined how their breakthrough would end up?
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Right? I bet not. And, yes, your post certainly got there in the end. After writing for many years, I have learned to trust the process even if the way is unclear.
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Yes, odd isn’t it how writing “works” if you stick with it. Sometimes I think the trick is not to try too hard, and suddenly everything falls into place.
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Two memories of Concorde
2. Sat in a London Park having a picnic lunch we saw the Concorde with Phil Collins onboard fly overhead - of course we waved 🤣
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Phil Collins is a good lad – he must be, he was born and raised not far from me – so I’m sure he waved back! Good to know that you got to see Concorde up close, but without having to hear it as well…that’s the best of both worlds if you ask me!
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I don’t think I’ll ever cross the Atlantic but understand the sense of awe that rests with Concorde as I remember the days when the street game of football was stopped if somebody spotted a ‘plane flying overhead. We would all stop and stare and follow it track across the sky before going back to the football. Had we ever seen a Concorde, I wonder how we’d have reacted? Great blog post!
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Interesting how the place where we’re brought up can change our perspective – round my way, although Concorde caused a bit of a stir, planes in general were so common that as kids we just accepted them as part of the natural order of things, no more exotic than birds in the garden. Objectively, however, there’s nothing natural about them at all!
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Thank you for this interesting post. I have never seen or flown on a Concorde, but recently learned about the crash you mentioned that killed everyone on board. What a tragedy!
I don’t understand enough about airplane technology to have an educated opinion, but my gut feeling is that any air travel with “near-zero emissions” is preferable to the status quo. As someone dependent on flying in order to see family, I would feel much better if my air travel were more carbon neutral.
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I agree that “near-zero emissions” is a fine goal and should be something to aim for. I strongly suspect, however, that we’d get much nearer to zero by flying subsonic than supersonic. Passenger air travel must, and will, continue; the challenge is finding how to achieve this in an affordable and environmentally sustainable way. That should keep the scientists busy for a while!
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I hope some of the smart people will use their smarts toward that goal!
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They have a Concorde at the Smithsonian Aerospace Museum in Washington, D.C., and the first time I saw it I had the same thought you did: It’s incredibly cramped. You can’t walk through the DC Concorde though. Instead there’s a raised platform next to it that you can climb and get a close view. The damn thing is so huge you can’t actually fit the plane in a single shot from anywhere in the museum hangar, as large as the hangar is.
There’s also a display inside the jet that showed the current speed and arrival time to remind passengers how high tech the whole thing was.
They’ve also got a space shuttle, an SR-71 Blackbird and the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian. I remember just standing there staring at that thing and thinking about how much destruction that one machine unleashed.
I don’t mind efforts to improve the aerospace industry. R&D in aerospace is money well spent, it creates good, well-paying jobs, it’s the kind of thing we should invest in as first world information and technology economies, and advances in aerospace always have secondary and tertiary benefits for the civilian sectors even if they’re not apparent at first.
Those labs also do a lot more than just make better planes: Skunkworks has been working on a compact fusion reactor, for example, and there are major applications in things like materials sciences.
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Hi, many thanks for your thoughtful and informative response. We’ve never made it to the Smithsonian, and I’d no idea that they keep the Enola Gay there for posterity. Certainly makes you think, especially in these uncertain times.
We did, however, get to the space museum in Huntsville AL one year. The contrast between between the Saturn V Rocket (huge) and the Apollo 16 Command Module (sooo tiny) is amazing. I cannot begin to imagine how uncomfortable and scary it must have been making re-entry in that little thing.
I agree that R&D in the aerospace industry can bring lots benefits. My local city – Derby – is home to Rolls Royce, who manufacture aero engines. They are massive players in the local economy, and we need them to prosper. My real anxiety is around building a passenger aviation industry around SUPERSONIC travel, where I believe the environmental damage outweighs the advantages.
On the subject of the secondary and tertiary benefits of aerospace research, I clearly remember in the late 1960s one of my teachers standing in front of our class and telling us that the main advantage of space travel was that it had led to the development of non-stick frying pans! I don’t know if there’s any truth in it, but it’s a good story that’s remained with me for 50 years.
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Thanks for sharing this fascinating history, along with your personal experience with the Concorde, then and now. My husband is an aviation fan, so we’ve visited a handful of air museums over the years. All these years I imagined a luxury plane, not something cramped as you’ve shown in your photo. Not for the first time, I marvel at how our brains “fill in the blanks” absent real information, only to be surprised years later. Great post.
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Thank you for your kind feedback. The thing that struck me most about the whole experience was the starkness of the contrast between Concorde’s external appearance (sleek, futuristic, beautiful) and what lurks inside (grim!) Notwithstanding the environmental issues surrounding supersonic flight, I think I’d have been extremely disappointed to have paid for a seat on Concorde and been confronted by “essence of cattle class”.
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Agreed!
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