As the last Concorde is retiring, I can't help but being somewhat sad.
I have this romantic feeling that in a time dominated by two superpowers bent on building the biggest missiles and ugliest spacecrafts, the Concorde stood for beauty, elegance, luxury, in short: European finesse and "bon goût".

I even dreamed about this plane last night. It's a little stupid.

This adventure is over, but I hope a new Concorde will be constructed, hopefully solving the economical and environmental setbacks and keeping the prestige.

Goodbye, a beautiful plane you were.

Twas a good plane it was. I would have much rather flown Concorde than Air France, but that was impossible given that situation...

Stupid residents complaining over a little sonic boom, I mean really, it wasn't *that* loud.

That and the damage to the ozone layer. I don't mind if elitists get some type of exclusive travel that they're willing to pay for (one of the Concorde big shots said: "We think the new Concorde is a balanced mixture between the newest Aston Martin car and the Ivy restaurant - and you are likely to see the same faces in all three.') but it's not just their ozone layer.

And the sonic booms did violate pre-existing noise pollution laws.

It's hard for me to romanticize the Concorde. As I read elsewhere:

Before being engulfed in a wave of 'end-of-an-era' sentimentality about this aircraft it is worth revisiting some hard facts. Firstly, the problems Concorde was going to cause were realised while she was still on the drawing board, but the project still went ahead. It was already being called 'the most expensive marketing experiment in history', and gave rise to the phrase "Concorde fallacy", the belief that it is a waste of money to end a project once considerable sums have been invested in it. Keeping Concorde going was a sop to the aviation industry after the scrapping of the TSR2 (a supersonic bomber) by Harold Wilson's Labour Government of the 1960s - in the era of 'white hot technology' at least one high prestige project had to be kept on the cards, and Concorde was chosen largely because it was a joint project. If Britain had tried to pull out and the French had continued, Britain would have paid half the costs to design a French aircraft. "Faced with this situation," Harold Wilson wrote in his memoirs, "we had little choice but to go on." The end result is that at current prices each Concorde cost the British taxpayer £1bn, the price of 10 Jumbos. Or, to put it another way, every Concorde passenger has been subsidised by the tax-payer to the tune of approximately £3,300 for the privilege of consuming (and then expelling the by-products of) 250 gallons of kerosene each on every transatlantic flight.

I don't really see the Concorde as standing for nobility. It stands for trying to make a buck and impracticality. Nothing wrong with the former in my opinion but it is what it is an not some shining symbol of nobility.

The space shuttles, for all their ties to a space race and the mistaken belief that they were steps toward important missle technology, are a lot more beautiful in the 'human nobility' department in my book even if they are "ugly." And that goes for US, Soviet, and now China for me - grasping for the stars is beautiful. Trying to come up with an elite for of travel for high rollers was just an economic venture.

Sorry to rain on the parade.

The same concerns for the ozone layer and the effects of the supersonic boom as a noise pollutor killed Boeings counterpart to the Concorde, the SST (http://www.vectorsite.net/avsst.html) or Being 2707.

And besides, as for all the critique for the Concorde, IMO it is pretty fair to guess that military high alitude flight, conducted by a couple of thousand aircraft, flying a couple hundred times more often than Concordes contributed more to the destruction of the ozone layer than the Concorde. The same applies to supersonic booms and take-off and landing noise and it's respective effects. Anyone ever lived near an airbase? And deep in my heart I still believe America still is only jealous about the Concorde because they didn't have anything comparable ... ;)

My romanticism comes mainly from my love for aircraft, and the Concorde was indeed a beautiful, gracious aircraft. It brought european technology a huge leap further in aircraft construction and manufacturing, highly stressed materials especially. Insofar, the concorde, from an aesthetic and technological point of view set new standards. Of course, economically it didn't make sense, but that was the spirit of the time when it was conceived: That technology is a solution for everything.

I'd have loved to fly with it, though it was utterly unafordable for me.

[ October 27, 2003, 13:17: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

Great article on the Concorde in the last "Vanity Fair". Seems the bird was still profitable, and any noise or pollution complaints had mostly wilted away. The real death knell came when the manufacturing company (don't remember the name) stated that they would no longer support the aircraft with parts and maintenance. The cost for British Airways and Air France to have continued to keep up the relatively small fleet would have been astronomical. There is currently an English businesman trying to buy the craft from BA to start his own airline...maybe they'll fly again someday.

@Ragusa: you are probably right in your statement about American envy. I can picture Boeing or McDonnel Douglas watching a Concorde flash through the sky and saying..."well, you know it's not how fast your plane is...it's what you DO with it" ;)

[ October 30, 2003, 23:02: Message edited by: Hacken Slash ]