49 Fun Facts About Concorde

Which aerobatic team flew alongside Concorde in the 2002 flypast for the Queen's Golden Jubilee?

The Red Arrows flanked a British Airways Concorde in the flypast that closed the jubilee weekend, seven months after the airliner returned to service from its long grounding.

Concorde's maiden flight in March 1969 took off from which French city, now home to Airbus?

Toulouse was where the French-built prototype was assembled, and bad weather forced a postponement before test pilot André Turcat finally took it up on 2 March.

Which French president flew a Concorde prototype to the Azores in December 1971 to meet Richard Nixon?

Georges Pompidou arrived for the summit on prototype 001, more than four years before Concorde entered airline service, and his successors kept using the jet for state visits.

Which test pilot flew the first British-built Concorde from Filton to RAF Fairford on 9 April 1969?

Brian Trubshaw stepped out saying 'It was wizard – a cool, calm and collected operation', five weeks after watching the French prototype's first flight from the press stand.

How many Concordes were ever built, prototypes and test aircraft included?

20 were built and only 14 of them ever flew for an airline; when the prototype first flew, 16 airlines held options on 74, and nearly all of those were later cancelled.

Which airline boss offered £1 each for British Airways' Concordes when their retirement was announced in 2003?

Richard Branson said £1 was what British Airways had paid for them and wanted Virgin Atlantic to keep them flying; BA refused, saying its seven Concordes were not for sale.

With America still closed to it, British Airways' first Concorde service in 1976 flew from London to where?

Bahrain was meant as the first leg of a route the airline hoped to extend to Australia, flown while its main target, the United States, had yet to grant landing rights.

Why did Concorde wait until it was out over the sea before flying faster than sound?

Its sonic boom disturbed people below, so Concorde crossed land at subsonic speed and opened up to Mach 2 only once it was clear of the coast, which kept it largely to ocean routes.

Who built Concorde's engines with France's Snecma?

Rolls-Royce developed the engines while Snecma built the exhaust system, and the noise they made on take-off helped keep New York closed to the airliner until late 1977.

Concorde's Olympus engines were based on those used in which RAF bomber?

Avro Vulcan bombers had flown on earlier Olympus engines, and one Vulcan became the flying test bed, carrying a Concorde engine aloft slung beneath its bomb bay.

Concorde was the first production airliner to be fitted with which of these systems?

Fly-by-wire sends the pilots' commands to the control surfaces as electrical signals; the idea was so new that Concorde kept a mechanical backup, and Airbus later made it standard.

What shape of wing did Concorde use?

Ogival delta wings form strong vortices over their upper surface at low speed, which add the extra lift needed for take-off and landing, so Concorde needed none of the flaps and slats other airliners carry.

Why did Concorde have a nose that drooped for take-off and landing?

So pilots could see the runway: Concorde took off and landed with its long nose pitched steeply upward, blocking the view ahead, and the nose was raised again in cruise to cut drag.

What slid up to cover Concorde's windscreen in supersonic flight?

A visor of heat-resistant glass streamlined the nose in cruise; the two prototypes had a metal one with only two small glass panels, which later aircraft replaced with a fully glazed design.

Why was Concorde designed for Mach 2 rather than Mach 3?

So the airframe could be built of aluminium, a light metal that factories already knew how to work; flown much faster, the heat of air friction would have ruled it out.

What happened to Concorde's fuselage on every supersonic flight?

It grew several inches longer, because friction with the air heated parts of the skin above the boiling point of water even though the air outside was far below freezing; it shrank back as it cooled.

In 1996 an Air France Concorde was painted blue to advertise which drinks brand?

Pepsi wanted its new blue look in the sky, but dark paint runs hotter than white, so the wings stayed white and the jet was limited to about 20 minutes at a time at Mach 2.

How did Concorde compensate for the rearward shift of its centre of lift at supersonic speed?

By pumping fuel between tanks at the front and rear, the crew moved the aircraft's balance point to follow the lift; tilting the control surfaces instead would have added drag.

Concorde's Dunlop brakes were the first on an airliner made from what material?

Carbon brakes weighed far less than steel ones and coped with the heat of stopping an airliner that landed at around 185 mph; they have since become standard on jets.

Because it flew so high, Concorde's flight deck carried an instrument to monitor what?

Radiation levels climb with altitude and can jump during a solar flare; if the meter gave a warning, the crew would descend to a lower altitude and carry on at subsonic speed.

Concorde's three-and-a-half-hour Atlantic crossing let which singer play both Live Aid concerts, in Britain and America, on one day?

Phil Collins sang at Wembley, took a helicopter to Heathrow and Concorde to New York, then another helicopter to Philadelphia, where he drummed for the reunited Led Zeppelin the same day.

The name Concorde comes from a word that, in both French and English, means what?

Agreement and harmony suited an airliner two countries built together; the name went public when President de Gaulle used it in a speech in January 1963.

Tony Benn said Concorde's final "e" stood for Excellence, England, Europe and what?

Entente, as in the entente cordiale between the two countries: Benn was restoring the French 'e' that an earlier British government had dropped, and announced it at the roll-out without warning anyone.

Which US airline flew Concordes at subsonic speed on domestic flights out of Dallas/Fort Worth in 1979-80?

Braniff International crews took over the jets for the American leg, with the European registration taped over, but the Dallas flights lost money and were dropped in May 1980.

Which Asian airline's livery was painted on one side of British Airways Concorde G-BOAD?

Singapore Airlines joined British Airways on a London service in December 1977, but it was suspended after only three return flights when Malaysia objected to the overflights, and resumed in 1979.

Concorde's only fatal crash, Air France 4590 in July 2000, came shortly after take-off from which airport?

Paris Charles de Gaulle was two minutes behind the jet when it came down on a hotel in Gonesse: a tyre had burst on the runway, and its fragments ruptured a fuel tank and started a fire.

The runway debris that burst Flight 4590's tyre fell from which airline's DC-10?

Continental Airlines was convicted of involuntary manslaughter by a French court in 2010 over the titanium strip its DC-10 had dropped, but an appeal court quashed the verdict two years later.

Most passengers on Concorde Flight 4590 were German tourists flying to New York to catch what?

A cruise ship was waiting for them in New York; the loss of their chartered flight led regulators to withdraw Concorde's certificate, grounding the whole fleet for more than a year.

Which material was used to line Concorde's fuel tanks as a safety modification after the 2000 crash?

Kevlar-and-rubber liners inside the tanks were designed to stem any leak if debris struck the wing again, and with new burst-resistant tyres they let Concorde return to service in November 2001.

How did Concorde's last day of passenger service end in 2003?

Three landed minutes apart at Heathrow, from New York, Edinburgh and a loop over the Bay of Biscay, as thousands watched; British Airways had retired the fleet because it no longer made money.

The Concorde that set a 2-hour-52-minute Atlantic record in 1996 is now displayed in New York beside what?

The USS Intrepid, a retired aircraft carrier, is the heart of the museum that took G-BOAD in 2003; the fastest airliner ever to cross the Atlantic finished its last journey up the Hudson on a barge.

A 1992 Concorde flight round the world from Lisbon in under 33 hours marked the 500th anniversary of what?

F-BTSD made six refuelling stops and later set the eastbound record too, in 31 hours 27 minutes.

Concorde's Soviet rival, so similar in looks it was nicknamed 'Concordski', was which aircraft?

The Tupolev Tu-144 flew two months before Concorde, but one broke up at the 1973 Paris Air Show and its passenger service was withdrawn within months of starting.

Concorde's would-be American competitor, cancelled in 1971 before any prototype flew, was which project?

The Boeing 2707 was meant to be bigger and faster than Concorde, but in March 1971 Congress refused it any more money, with environmental campaigners claiming much of the credit.

Which pope once flew on a chartered Air France Concorde?

John Paul II was visiting the French island of Réunion in May 1989 when the jet was chartered to carry him across to Lusaka in Zambia for the next stage of his tour.

Flying west from London, when did Concorde passengers land in New York by the local clock?

Earlier than they took off: the crossing took under three and a half hours and New York is five hours behind London, so one evening flight landed 90 minutes before its departure time.

Air France gave one of its retired Concordes to which American museum institution in 2003?

The Smithsonian had been promised a Concorde by Air France since 1989, and in June 2003 the airline delivered F-BVFA, the jet that had flown its first supersonic service, straight from its last flight.

Which fuel-hungry engine feature did Concorde use for take-off and again to push through the sound barrier?

Afterburners, called reheat in Britain, sprayed extra fuel into the exhaust for a burst of thrust; once well past the speed of sound they were switched off, and Concorde cruised at Mach 2 without them.

Why did Concorde carry a small retractable wheel under its tail?

To stop the rear scraping on take-off: Concorde left the ground steeply nose-up, so a bumper wheel shielded the fuselage and engines if the pilot pulled up too far, and it rarely touched.

Concorde's ballooning budget gave economists the 'Concorde fallacy', another name for which error?

The sunk cost fallacy is throwing good money after bad: the two governments kept paying because they had already spent so much, while a budget set at £70 million passed £1 billion.

Which American airline took out the first foreign options on Concorde in 1963, then cancelled them a decade later?

Pan Am signed for six in June 1963 and pulled out on 31 January 1973; TWA soon followed, and most other airlines dropped their options over the next few months.

New York held out until late 1977, so which American city received Concorde's first scheduled flights in May 1976?

Washington opened first because the US Transportation Secretary approved a 16-month trial at both cities, and only New York's airport authority refused to honour it, holding out for another 18 months.

Concorde's British final assembly line was at Filton, near which city?

Bristol's Filton airfield is where the last Concorde ever to fly came home in November 2003, landing back at the place where it had been built.

On its 2003 delivery flight to Seattle, Concorde G-BOAG flew supersonically over parts of which country?

Canada gave the retiring jet special permission to fly supersonic across its north, something not allowed over the United States, and that let it set a New York–Seattle record of under four hours.

In June 1973 a Concorde prototype carried scientists across Africa for a record-long view of which event?

A total solar eclipse lasts only minutes on the ground, but Concorde 001 raced the Moon's shadow at twice the speed of sound and kept its scientists in darkness for 74 minutes.

A British Airways Concorde reached Sydney safely in 1989 after losing part of which control surface at supersonic speed?

Its rudder shed part of its upper section in flight, and the crew noticed only a thud and some vibration; after similar failures British Airways replaced the rudders on all seven of its Concordes.

In 1993 Barbara Harmer became the first woman to do what on Concorde?

Fly it as an airline pilot: Harmer had left school at 15 to become a hairdresser, then retrained and rose to the right-hand seat of a British Airways Concorde.

For her Silver Jubilee tour in 1977, Queen Elizabeth II flew home on Concorde from which Caribbean island?

Barbados was the last stop of the tour, and the flight home was the Queen's first at supersonic speed; British Airways later made the island a regular winter destination.

Which West African city was a stop on Air France's Concorde route from Paris to Rio de Janeiro?

Dakar was the technical stop on Air France's very first Concorde service, which left Paris for Rio at the same moment British Airways' first flight left London in January 1976.