Comments on: Supersonic biz jet patent by Gulfstream revealed

By: bill mecorney

bill mecorney — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 15:27:54 +0000

It is a little known fact that to obtain a US Patent, no proof of functionality is necessary. It need not work. The drawings are a tickle, an F-111 with a Trident tail? Mounting the engines outdoors? The needle nose is 60′s Edwards Air Force Base. Fifties?

I like noise. And I loved Concorde. I saw her take off out of RENO one day. Lord, what a glorious racket.

In the age of Billionaires who argue with the waitress over the cost of a soda, anything is possible.
I fix the cost of Supersonic travel for four swells at 65,000USD/hour. After development, and the politics is amortized.

By: TheFamousEccles

TheFamousEccles — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 01:10:29 +0000

Interesting article, thanks for the link – I hope that Gulfstream get it happening.

By: dunph

dunph — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 01:59:44 +0000

The most memorable flight of my life – Concorde from LHR to JFK – the bulkhead dial told you what speed you were travelling at – and it was more effective than counting sheep for the jet-lagged traveller: I watched it get to Mach 1.1 then the next thing remembered was being woken up by an unappreciative Chairman who remarked that he hoped I had enjoyed the unique experience

By: ltfisher

ltfisher — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 10:18:56 +0000

Agreed fractious. A classic example was in its early pre scheduled days Concorde flew in to make an appearance at Farnborough. I was there. The weather that Sunday was atrocious with the cloud base almost on the grass. After landing Concorde backtracked and immediately took off again. Later that afternoon there were numerous complaints lodged by Bristol residents upset by the noise made by Concorde. Typically of course it was just part of a campaign designed to give Concorde a bad [environmental] name as unknown to the complainants Concorde didn’t land at its Bristol base that afternoon preferring, because of the minimal weather, to go just up the road and land, without a complaint, at LHR.

By: fractious

fractious — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 07:50:18 +0000

I lived in various places more-or-less directly west of LHR for quite a few years in the 80s. While I get that I wasn’t right underneath the thing in Hounslow or Staines or Maidenhead and therefore didn’t have the ceiling in my lap in every time it took off, a lot of the hoo-haa about its sonic boom was bollox. By the time it was far enough from LHR to open the taps it was over Devon or Cornwall, most of which was open game for the RAF and its EE Lightnings and F4K Phantoms using television masts as target practice. Me and especially my Dad loved the sound of the thing doing its party trick. What with decomissioning Concorde and later the GR9 Harriers (which it sold to the US for an absolute pittance) some of us Poms still cannot fathom how and why British engineering excellence got sold out so cheaply and so quickly.

Apologies Ben for using your blog as a footstool for my rant.

By: Aidan Stanger

Aidan Stanger — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 11:16:38 +0000

johnb78, BA’s reluctance to withdraw the Concordes was fake – they enthusiastically withdrew them as they were by far the noisiest aircraft in the fleet, and they wanted to reduce the Heathrow noise contours in the hope of getting another runway approved. Airbus support wasn’t needed as Ttupolev had offered to take over. And if BA couldn’t keep operating them profitably, Virgin Atlantic wanted to try.

By: Ben Sandilands

Ben Sandilands — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 01:46:37 +0000

I interviewed Colin Marshall and Mike Bannister less than a week before the last scheduled flight in 2003 and both said that the cost of meeting new regulatory requirements for its aged electrical system was excessive.

There were references to support for the jet which had been taken over by Airbus (which didn’t exist when it was built of course) but if I recollect correctly, Airbus wasn’t interested in putting any money into something which had nothing to do with its core preoccupations and that had possibly sealed its in-service fate as you indicate.

Air France was in a hurry to quit operations but BA held out until later. It had customers in a volume AF never saw for its Concorde operations.

At the time in the early naughties I wasn’t the only semi-regular visitor to Toulouse to notice that Airbus wasn’t even spending money to keep what I believe to be Concorde 201 clean of bird sh*t at its resting place near the final assembly line.

However more recently that particular relic of the first SST age has been cleaned, and possibly repainted even, and looks like it could fly tomorrow from where it now stands near the Airbus delivery centre. I understand but can’t confirm that a second Concorde from the Air France fleet has also been parked at Toulouse.

By: johnb78

johnb78 — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 01:29:16 +0000

BA’s services were profitable, although perhaps only marginally so, until shutdown. AF’s were lossmaking before AF4590 and massively lossmaking afterwards.

BA only withdrew its Concordes from service reluctantly, after Airbus refused to continue providing technical support in the wake of AF’s decision to withdraw its fleet.