Gothamist: Concorde Needs a Nose Job

PBRK

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:41:04 -0500

Just drive it around Queens and someone will offer to fix it for $100.

JMH

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:01:43 -0500

As far as I can figure it, there are a couple of factors that motivate against a more-money-than-they-know-what-to-do-with type of a person buying a Concorde as a private jet. First, the Concorde required so much runway space (about 11,800 feet), the number of places you could take it is fairly limited. You could fly to Denver or Lyon but then you'd need to get the rest of the way to Aspen or Cannes another way. Additionally, if airlines stopped using it and the manufacturer stopped supporting it, the owner would be stuck with the task of dealing with any ongoing airworthiness issues with the FAA and foreign equivalents, which could be expensive and complicated and wind up requiring not just flight crew and mechanics, but engineers on retainer as well.

mocanlagunas

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:52:17 -0500

Richard Branson wanted to take them for Virgin, but the other airlines (and the governments?) wouldn't let him... longacre, I know it was also an economic issue (mainly). but when it crashed, before anybody knew why it had happened, they were all immediately grounded... this after so many years of safe flights. Anyway my point is that it's sad they're not up there anymore...

Spiritof76

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:55:25 -0500

[3] Couldn't have said it better myself. (Actually, mine probably would have been a bit worse.)

RevWaldo

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:18:30 -0500

I was always surprised that some richer-than-god types didn't just buy up the concordes for their own personal use (which would require hiring concorde mechanics, concorde pilots, custom milled spare parts, etc.) Talk about your bragging rights! Right now, somewhere, there's a guy - who's wife, it seems to him anyway, gripes to him at least twice a day about the concorde nose taking up space in the garage and why the hell he spent all that money on a useless hunk of aluminum in the first place - with the hugest s*** eating grin on his face.

longacre

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:59:16 -0500

Mocanlagunas: If not for a design flaw on the Concorde, the debris from the other aircraft would not have caused a crash. There were a number of other reasons for Concorde's retirement...it wasn't profitable anymore, for one, and airport-area NIMBYs who always hated it because it was noisy, had new "IT'S DANGEROUS" ammo thanks to the firey crash in Paris. If it would have been profitable to fix Concorde's flaws, somebody would have. With only 14 in service, compared to the thousands of 737s in service, there's a giant practical difference in grounding each type of aircraft.

longacre

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:51:03 -0500

The missing nose cone is only part of the problem. There are pigeons living in the tail and day campers are allowed to use the plane as a wall to peg with tennis balls. The disturbing photos and details mentioned in the Times article can be found over at NYCAviation.

mocanlagunas

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:17:22 -0500

It's sad that one concorde crashes (because of a piece from ANOTHER plane) and they take them all down... If a 737 crashes, do they take them all down? Well, not that I was going to fly on one anyway...