Petition for keeping one Concorde flying

"Dave Stadt" wrote in message
...

It takes $$$$$$$ to keep airplanes flying not petitions.

Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines offered to keep them flying and was
turned down.
Even if he couldn't keep them in service, he was willing to keep one or two
flying with a £1 million trust fund... and was still turned down.
This was over 6 months ago.

Eric

The planes airworthiness certificate relies upon the manufacturer to support
it. They have stated their refusal to do that. The many spitfires etc,
flying around use very basic (1930's) technology and are no more difficult
to keep in the air logistically than a cessna or piper - more expensive
though!

Concorde is a huge leap in technology and the cost of maintaining just one
would far outweigh the income it could derive from shows. Without it's
certificate, it can never carry passengers. Besides, many of the museums are
building special halls to accomodate concorde, do you think they'll let it
go out for a run whenever it wants?

I would love to see one flying, but be realistic, it's not going to happen.
:-(

John

"Paul Sengupta" wrote in message
...
"David Wright" wrote in message
...
And, isn't it a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has
bolted?
All the Concorde's have gone, or are going, to their new static homes -
there isn't a Concorde left to fly is there??

Well, they've (mostly) flown there and been put in a hangar. They haven't
been taken apart or anything like that as far as I know. Ignoring the
legalities, I would guess you could, for example, bring AF out of the
hangar at Filton, fuel it up and fly it tomorrow. Or today even... :-)
Maybe they've drained the oil, don't know...

One of them (AB?) is still at Heathrow, standing out on the tarmac.
This one hasn't had the kevlar liners put in the fuel tanks.

By the way, we (at Brooklands museum) hope to get BBDG in March
or maybe April.

http://www.concordesst.com/

Paul

"John Bishop" wrote in message
...
The planes airworthiness certificate relies upon the manufacturer to
support
it. They have stated their refusal to do that. The many spitfires etc,
flying around use very basic (1930's) technology and are no more difficult
to keep in the air logistically than a cessna or piper - more expensive
though!

Concorde is a huge leap in technology and the cost of maintaining just one
would far outweigh the income it could derive from shows. Without it's
certificate, it can never carry passengers. Besides, many of the museums
are
building special halls to accomodate concorde, do you think they'll let it
go out for a run whenever it wants?

I would love to see one flying, but be realistic, it's not going to
happen.
:-(

John

I would rather see the money spent on the flyable restoration of a fleet of
historic planes than to keep one Concorde in the air. In the overall scheme
of things the Concorde does not hold a significant spot in aviation history.

On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 22:40:09 +0000, Eric Miller wrote:

"Dave Stadt" wrote in message
...

It takes $$$$$$$ to keep airplanes flying not petitions.

Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines offered to keep them flying and was
turned down.
Even if he couldn't keep them in service, he was willing to keep one or
two flying with a £1 million trust fund... and was still turned down.
This was over 6 months ago.

Eric

Not really. Richard Branson used the Concorde retirement for his own ends
in another one of his publicity seeking exercises and to score points over
his old enemy BA. He knew that it was not feasible to keep them flying and
he knew that hell would freeze over before BA handed over those planes to
him. But still he stole the opportunity to appear on TV and proclaim
himself as the savior of Concorde.

And anyway, £1M isn't a lot when it comes to keeping something as complex
as that in the air, even for a few airshow appearances.

K

Sla#s wrote:

I think when we are down to the last serviceable machine of historic type it
should be grounded!

Fine, then let's keep two of them flying.

George Patterson
Love, n.: A form of temporary insanity afflicting the young. It is curable
either by marriage or by removal of the afflicted from the circumstances
under which he incurred the condition. It is sometimes fatal, but more
often to the physician than to the patient.

I agree with your first point, but you couldn't be more wrong on the second.
concorde was a fantastic achievement, and if you compare the cost of modern
fighter jets, not that expensive.

It's like F1 racing cars, they might cost a fortune, but many new ideas are
developed on these cars that are later in everyday use by the rest of us.
Concorde was no different.

John

"Dave Stadt" wrote in message
. ..

"John Bishop" wrote in message
...
The planes airworthiness certificate relies upon the manufacturer to
support
it. They have stated their refusal to do that. The many spitfires etc,
flying around use very basic (1930's) technology and are no more
difficult
to keep in the air logistically than a cessna or piper - more expensive
though!

Concorde is a huge leap in technology and the cost of maintaining just
one
would far outweigh the income it could derive from shows. Without it's
certificate, it can never carry passengers. Besides, many of the museums
are
building special halls to accomodate concorde, do you think they'll let
it
go out for a run whenever it wants?

I would love to see one flying, but be realistic, it's not going to
happen.
:-(

John

I would rather see the money spent on the flyable restoration of a fleet
of
historic planes than to keep one Concorde in the air. In the overall
scheme
of things the Concorde does not hold a significant spot in aviation
history.

"Paul Sengupta" wrote in message
...
Don't know if you know about this, but the petition to keep Concorde
flying is going to change. The emphasis is now going to be on keeping
one airworthy to be used at airshows, etc.

It's a valiant attempt, and just in case a miracle should happen I've signed
the petition, but I fear that it's simply not realistic to try to keep a
Concorde flying.

In its favour, Concorde is a very low-hours aircraft. Although it's been
flying for 30-odd years, it's so fast that it never actually flew for very
long on any one trip, and so when compared to a B747 of similar age, the
fatigue hour count is low. It's also a collection of some of the most
inspired engineering to be found anywhere in the world, by which I mean
things like the engine technology and the aerodynamics. Oh, and it's the
most inspiring passenger airliner to watch - even experienced airline
captains admit to getting a thrill seeing it take off as they sit in the
queue for the runway at Heathrow, JFK, etc.

Unfortunately, this is about all that it has going for it. It's expensive to
run, it's as noisy as hell, and in the current climate of dwindling ticket
sales, I don't think BA really had a lot of choice but to withdraw it.

I was as cynical as the next person when the announcement to withdraw
Concorde was made - the machine is part of Britain's heritage and I agree
that's a crying shame that nobody will see one fly again. It would appear,
though, that the reasons were perfectly logical, it's just that none of the
mainstream media actually bothered to report the facts as they stood.

For instance, I wondered why Air France withdrew its aircraft last spring,
while BA hung on until the autumn. It would appear, in fact, that the
contract between Air France and BA by which each airline paid half of the
maintenance contract with the manufacturer expired at the end of the
autumn - so while Air France decided to stop immediately and save cash on a
money-losing enterprise, BA at least knew that AF would be contributing to
their maintenance costs. They also knew darned well that they could
capitalise on the "book now for the last few flights" market, and hence they
kept it going until the maintenance contract ran out.

I was also cynical about whether BA's reason for withdrawing really was
because they couldn't make money on it any more, but having seen people like
Mike Bannister (senior Concorde captain) state that this really was the
case, I'm willing to accept that this may be the case.

The Richard Branson thing was also a red herring, I reckon. I have a great
deal of respect for Sir Richard (he may act like a muppet, but he's happy,
he's loaded and he's a knight of the realm, so he must be doing something
right), but one of the ways he's made the Virgin name so widely known is his
innate ability to get into the public eye with schemes that aren't
necessarily realistic. I do wish he'd been able to put together a decent
case for taking over the Concorde fleet, but I really don't think that as a
hard-nosed businessman it would be possible to do so - remember, even if the
costs remained the same as they had within BA, the maintenance fees would
have doubled because he wouldn't have been sharing the bill with Air France.
To make a profitable Concorde operation would probably have taken tens
(maybe even hundreds) of millions of pounds, and no sensible finance
director would ever sign up to it.

All this said, though, there are two questions that do remain unanswered.

1. C of A
I read reports that the reason the aircraft was being withdrawn was because
the manufacturers were withdrawing its Certificate of Airworthiness. This
struck me as odd, (a) because it's the CAA/JAA that issues the C of A, not
the manufacturer, and (b) one would assume that even though it's an
expensive aircraft to maintain, the manufacturer would have been more than
happy to maintain it for any airline willing to pay the bills.

2. BA's right to decommission
Exactly what was the agreement between the British government and BA when
the latter was privatised? From what I understand, the aircraft were sold to
BA for a nominal sum (£1 each or thereabouts) - but what were the conditions
of this sale? Were BA obliged to keep flying the thing for a given time, for
instance, or could they have decommissioned them the day after privatisation
if they'd deemed them too expensive to fly? And was there any clause in
there that stated that if they stopped flying them, they were to revert to
public ownership? Because if not, there should have been.

D.

On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 11:31:23 +0000, Peter
wrote:


"David Cartwright" wrote:


1. C of A
I read reports that the reason the aircraft was being withdrawn was
because
the manufacturers were withdrawing its Certificate of Airworthiness.
This
struck me as odd, (a) because it's the CAA/JAA that issues the C of A,
not
the manufacturer, and (b) one would assume that even though it's an
expensive aircraft to maintain, the manufacturer would have been more
than
happy to maintain it for any airline willing to pay the bills.


Airbus wanted to withdraw the Type Certificate (in other words, their
support for the aircraft), without which the PTCoA could not be maintained.

One of the interesting facts is that the chief pilot for BA has more
supersonic stick time than all of the fighter pilots of all of the airforces
of the world added together... The speed birds are indeed a magnificant
technological triumph... Unfortunately, they are not economic to keep flying
and cash strapped socialist governments lack the will to build the next
generation of birds...
And it appears that the USA is not going to build an SST in the forseeable
future... So, like the moon program, we in the USA are back to pondering
past glory hum Springsteen's Glory Days as we slowly slide into the
socialist quagmire of ever increasing entitlement programs that suck the
country dry and leave no money, or will, to advance into the future... A
whimper not a bang...
denny

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message
...


Sla#s wrote:

I think when we are down to the last serviceable machine of historic
type it
should be grounded!

Fine, then let's keep two of them flying.


Cost of keeping two Concordes flying - millions per annum.

Or - OK and when one crashes ground the other!

Slatts