THE CONCORDE
Have you ever heard of this plane ? The concorde . Like this
plane .. It was the only super sonic commercial plane that existed in the whole
aviation world till now apart from soviet built TUPOLOV TU-144. Here we will
see some of the amazing facts and many more things about this iconic plane.
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| CONCORDE |
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| TUPOLOV TU-144 |
Concorde is a British-French turbojet -powered supersonic passenger airliner that was operated from 1976 until 2003. It had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound at Mach 2.04 (1,354 mph or 2,180 km/h at cruise altitude), with seating for 92 to 128 passengers. First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued flying for the next 27 years
Concorde was jointly developed and
manufactured by Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft
Corporation (BAC) under an Anglo-French treaty. The name CONCORDE came from this as concorde means agreement , harmony
and union.
In 1965, Aerospatiale started
building concorde 001 and 002 simultaneously and after 4 years of hard work 001
made it’s first flight from Toulouse in march 1969 and most importantly they
were presented in the PARIS AIR SHOW 1969 . After the world tour of CONCORDE
many airline signed to buy this plane .
But the tragedy happened in Paris
airshow 1973. The TU-144, the eminent rivalry of concorde ,crashed during it’s
presentation flight and all the airlines withdraw all their orders. That is the
main reason why only 20 aircrafts were built in total.
From 20 aircrafts built , 14 get
into the service by AIR FRANCE and BRITISH AIRWAYS as the concorde was Anglo-French
treaty.
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| TOUCHING DOWN OF AIR FRANCE CONCORDE |
Let’s talk about some key elements
of this plane and how it was different from the normal jetliners.
-The first thing to notice in the
plane was it’s iconic nose. It can move in 4 different positions. The nose can
be down by 5 degree, 12.5 degree for landing. As the nose is very straight and
the pilots faced difficulty seeing the runway and the touch down point ,
the nose have to be down by 12.5 degree.
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| NOSE DOWN POSITION |
- The landing gear is relatively
tall from all other planes .also it was fitted with tail strike bumper at the
far rear of the tail. Also the landing gear was fitted with carbon disk brakes
which is very efficient and to prevent the brakes from over heating , it was fitted with brake fans and it
was one of the first planes to have brake fans . Also the cockpit was 35
feet away from the front landing gear . so the pilots have to very cautious
while performing taxi or while lining up with the runway.
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| TAIL BUMP GEAR |
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| MASSIVE TALL LANDING GEARS |
- The plane which was supersonic ,
it must have some powerful engines . so it had 4 very powerful Rolls-Royce
Olympus 593 Turbojet engine.Each engine has it’s own intake. But these 4
engines create incredible noise during take off or landing and while take off
they generate 122000 pound of thrust and by adding the reheaters the pilots can
add more 30000 pound of thrust, making a 152 thousand pound of thrust during
take off.
-there was a rumor created that
concorde was not profitable for BRITISH AIRWAYS as it was not true at all. As
BA got these 7 planes without any capital cost , so it was profitable from
day-1. It made 20% of profit for BA in the first year as BA only have 7 of them.
Just imagine how high the ticket prices would be? The aircraft was used
mainly by wealthy passengers who could afford to pay a high price in exchange
for Concorde's speed and luxury service. For example, in 1997, the round-trip
ticket price from New York to London was $7,995, more than 30 times the cost of
the cheapest option to fly this route.
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| BOOM |
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