The Concorde Took Its First Flight to Failure 35 Years Ago [Techversaries]

The Concorde was birthed as a logo. It was a logo of diplomacy (the end result of a treaty between France and England) and a logo of progress (the first commercial supersonic airliner). However it died a logo of failure.

The project started off on the incorrect foot. As the outcome of a political obligation (said treaty), each side were compelled to proceed despite hindrances and setbacks. Hindrances like the gargantuan cost of each aircraft-which cost French and British taxpayers billions of greenbacks, between research, testing, and manufacturing.

And despite its record-setting performance (2 hours, 52 minutes, 59 seconds between NY and London, the fastest of all time), it simply wasn’t terribly well liked. It was a source of nationalist pride for the English and French, but for plenty others, it was considered a bit of obnoxious. A toy of the rich. A luxury of the jet setter.

And extremely loud. It was supersonic in spite of everything, and those sonic booms were never appreciated by anyone within earshot-noise from the jet during takeoff exceeded 110 decibels (about what you’d hear at the front row of a rock concert), and was described as ” intolerable” in archival reports.

It also was not exactly eco-friendly, using thrice the fuel of an ordinary transatlantic passenger plane, and dumping an inordinate amount of exhaust into the sky.

So it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise that only 14 Concorde were sold, compared to an anticipated 200. Think about it as style of the Laserdisc of aircraft.

But as much as it was ultimately a bust-retired in 2003 after the project was embroiled in a legal conflagration surrounding a terrible runway crash -the craft was still a spectacular achievement in many senses. When the first routes began-thirty five years ago today-between London and Bahrain and Paris and Rio, they were the first flights of their kind. The flights were loud, polluting, and costly, yes-but they were fast as hell, and for the first time in history, supersonic travel was available to anyone with the scratch for a ticket. Not exactly a democratic moment, but still-it was in the market, and it’ll always be history. And for that, we recognize you, brilliant, booming failure. Happy birthday, Concorde.

Photo by teclasorg

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This post is tagged: british taxpayers, passenger plane, political obligation, spectacular achievement, supersonic airliner, transatlantic passenger