24 October 2003, ended the era of versalovic passenger aircraft — of the legendary Concorde took off for its last flight.
After 50 years appeared supersonic military aircraft, including bombers, several countries have begun work on breaking the sound barrier in commercial aviation. The roots of the “Concord” leave immediately in two independent research teams in the UK worked on the project company the Bristol Aeroplane Company and France’s supersonic aircraft designed in Sud Aviation. Although both firms received funding from the state budget, pretty soon it became clear that the goals they can achieve, only if we join forces. Finally, after government negotiations, 1962, a joint program is Concorde (“Agreement”). The British, by the way, a little offended because of the French spelling of the name, but had to deal with it.
“Concord”
The first prototype of the “Concord” was presented in 1969 at the Paris air show in Le Bourget, and commercial exploitation began only seven years later: flight British Airways flew from London to Bahrain.
The designers of the “Concorde” had to solve many complex problems. For example, due to the fact that the turbojet engine may not work with supersonic airflow, the air in the desired degree hindered him throughout the speed range. A huge problem was the heating of the fuselage to very high temperatures, and it has even become one of the main parameters of the flight, which was attended by the crew and the autopilot. And due to the thermal expansion of the materials the plane is “lengthened” by as much as 24 centimeters. And in particular deltoid (triangular, if simpler) form of the wing of any man in the street will know the “Concord” of the hundreds of other models.
Even at the start of the project the opinion of the airlines on the supersonic aircraft was changing rapidly. Boeing vivadelli when the market subsonic model of the Boeing 747, was afraid that it will have to transfer the cargo. However, after a couple of years, the company dramatically changed opinion on the Concorde for several reasons. First, long-range air travel became increasingly popular among the middle class, and hence the price has gained more weight than speed. Second, in those same years, oil crisis, made not cost-effective “the Concorde” even less attractive from an economic point of view. So 74 of the provisional application became only in 14 production aircraft, five of them had to sell 1 GBP / 1 French franc each.
However, the Concorde flew for almost three decades. The beginning of the end for him was the crash near Paris in 2000. A few minutes after takeoff Board Air France F-BTSC on fire and crashed on a hotel in the suburbs of the French capital. After that, the flight of the “Concord” has been suspended. Later the action of the flight certificate (essentially, permission to use the aircraft of this model) has resumed, but the fate of the vessel had been solved, and the airline one after the other refused it.