Fancy flights
A year has passed since the last Concorde flight. After 27 years of crossing the Atlantic at supersonic speeds, most of the sleek white jetliners were retired to museums.
Of the nine planes flying at the end of service, three are now on display in the United States: at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, the Intrepid Air-Sea-Space Museum in New York and the Uvdar-Hazy Center near Washington, D.C.
My interest in Concordes began long before they became museum pieces. When British Airways and Air France announced they were ending Concorde service last year, I was fortunate enough to purchase one of a thousand tickets offered by British Airways at half the usual $6,000 one-way fare. The flight from London to New York was one I had dreamed of ever since I stood at the edge of the runway to photograph a Concorde landing in Columbus, Ohio, in 1986.
The ride, food and service were exceptional, as expected – as was the view from 58,000 feet.
Soon after reaching cruising altitude, the fine dining began, with canapes, lobster, lamb and creme brulee among the offerings. I also opted for a glass of Chassagne-Montrachet wine, though most of the passengers went for the Pol Roger champagne, which started flowing generously in the Concorde Lounge even before we boarded.
Later, pressing my nose against the plane’s tiny window – which got quite warm due to the friction at speeds near 1,300 mph – it really was possible to see the curvature of the earth.
While I’d certainly like to zip across the Atlantic in three and a half hours again, fascination with their speed and cachet was not enough to keep the Concordes in business.
Their accident-free record ended July 25, 2000, when an Air France plane crashed after taking off from Paris, killing 113 people. The cost of retrofitting the planes to fix the cause of the crash, combined with the downturn in air travel after the Sept. 11 attacks, made it impractical to continue service.
Air France grounded its Concordes for a year, then resumed service until the end of May 2003. The final commercial flights on British Airways landed at Heathrow Airport on Oct. 24, 2003, while the last-ever flight was on Nov. 26, 2003, to Filton, England, where the plane was put on display at the factory where it was built.
To continue my connection with Concorde, I decided to visit and photograph all three of the aircraft in the States.
Every Concorde has a unique five-letter registration code; the one I flew, Concorde G-BOAG, is at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where it has been a star attraction ever since arriving on Nov. 5, 2003.
About 1,000 visitors take a look inside each day, more than twice as many people as flew on the four daily British Airways and Air France flights during the last months of operations. Timed boarding passes are issued on busy holidays and weekends; sometimes all the passes are given out before noon.
On the day I visited, a constant stream of people waited in the rain to walk through the forward section of the cabin. The leather seats have been fitted with protective Plexiglas covers. I got to see my seat, 5D, and also looked around the rest of the interior, which I hadn’t really checked out during the flight.
The museum, which opened at its present location in 1983, features about 60 modern and historical aircraft, plus exhibits on the U.S. space program and a restoration of the original Boeing factory. A new wing featuring 28 World War I and World War II aircraft opened in June.
In June, the Concorde was moved across the street from the main museum to join the first Boeing 747 prototype and the original Boeing 707 Air Force One at an outdoor air park. Eventually, Concorde and the other large jetliners in the collection will be housed in a commercial aircraft wing.
A few weeks after the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center opened at Dulles International Airport on Dec. 15, 2003, I took a one-day trip to visit the Concorde there. For a photographer, nothing quite matches the view from the walkways that stretch across and above the exhibition floor, as high as 44 feet above ground level.
Air France F-BVFA was the first Concorde acquired by a U.S. museum, thanks to an agreement with the Smithsonian dating back to 1989. The longest and heaviest airplane at the museum, it’s been angled into the huge main hangar at Udvar-Hazy, sharing the spotlight with the Enola Gay, Space Shuttle Enterprise and an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane.
Like almost every plane at the museum, the Concorde looks ready to roll out onto the runway for takeoff. A spiral walkway and staircase rises near its nose, so it’s easy to take pictures from ground level to nearly straight overhead, though an extreme wide-angle lens is necessary to include the entire plane in one picture. It isn’t possible to see the interior in person, but the museum’s Web site has a link to an interactive, 360-degree view of its cockpit.
The Udvar-Hazy Center is a companion to the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall, which is the most visited museum in the world. Since its opening, daily attendance at the Udvar-Hazy Center has averaged about 5,200. Eighty-two aircraft and spacecraft are currently on display at the center, parked on the floor and suspended in two levels from the ceiling arches, which are 103 feet in height.
The Intrepid Air-Sea-Space Museum in New York is a World War II aircraft carrier that was turned into a museum in 1982, featuring about 30 aircraft on its flight deck and displays of military aviation history and aerospace technology on its hangar deck.
British Airways Concorde G-BOAD, which holds the trans-Atlantic commercial speed record for a New York-London flight in two hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds, arrived at the Intrepid with much fanfare on Nov. 25, 2003. The plane traveled on a barge from Kennedy International Airport – where Concordes were once banned from landing, due to concerns about engine noise and sonic booms – up the Hudson River to Pier 86, pursued all the way by TV news helicopters.
Tours of the plane’s interior began in June after the construction of walkways and the installation of protective Plexiglas covers like the ones in Seattle. Only 1,500 boarding passes are issued each day, with a dozen people at a time permitted to walk through the narrow passenger cabin forward to the slightly claustrophobic cockpit. Waiting until the end of the time marked on the pass allowed a more leisurely look.
There’s plenty to see while gathering beneath the Concorde before boarding. Visitors enjoy a close-up view of the underside of the plane and the landing gear, and some access panels are open. Also, one of the Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus engines removed from G-BOAD has been placed near the plane.
Having seen all three of the Concordes in the States, I might have to chart a journey to see the others.
In Europe, several retired Concordes are on public display, including one positioned along the runway at Heathrow Airport in London and another at the airport in Manchester, England. At the Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim in Germany, Air France F-BVFB has been mounted on the roof of the museum alongside the Russian supersonic Tupolev Tu-144.
At Concorde’s British home of Filton, England, a museum and display for G-BOAF, which made the last-ever Concorde flight, opened on Aug. 18.
Concordes have also been preserved for display at Le Bourget French Air and Space Museum, between Paris and Charles de Gaulle Airport; at Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados; and at the Scottish Museum of Flight in Edinburgh.