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Aviation History
1975
1975 - 1246.PDF
72 AIR TRANSPORT RIGHT International, 17 July I97S Concorde's airline style On July 7 Concorde 204 inaugurated the British part of the endurance-flying programme with a round trip to Bahrain. BILL SWEETMAN reports "^ONCORDE is the aeroplane of the future for the man ^^who's got to get there on time." Mr Henry Marking, managing director of British Airways, was reflecting a highly optimistic mood among airline and Department of Industry officials aboard the first of a 440hr series of flights. The departure of 204 from London Heathrow was nearly prevented for the most simple of low-technology reasons. A pin attaching the towbar to the nosewheel leg stoutly resisted the efforts of British Airways maintenance staff to evict it from its location and there was a 35min delay before a component was removed from the leg itself. With engines still idling the fuel reserves could well have been eroded to the point where the take-off would have been cancelled. (Concorde is not certificated to take off trailing a tractor from the nosewheel leg.) There could have been no better demonstration of the lack of special treatment afforded by ATC to Concorde on these flights; the delay with the towbar cost us our place in the queue for take-off until we slotted in front of a British Airways VC10, roughly an hour behind schedule. This meant the cancellation of a reception planned at Bahrain, as Concorde could not be exempted from the Heathrow noise curfew at 2230hr. As well as being the first endurance flight this was also the first time that the take-off technique evolved to meet noise restrictions at New York Kennedy was demonstrated to journalists on board. Capt E. C. Miles, flight manager (technical) Concorde, warned his passengers: "After take off we shall be making a turn to the right at about 100ft. Please do not be alarmed." In fact the take-off was anything but alarming, perhaps because Concorde departure is so Concorde 204 near its Fairford base, shortly before the first endurance flight fast and positive, without the unnerving drop in g which accompanies a subsonic-type noise-abatement climb. How ever, it seemed to me that the turn was initiated rather above 100ft, judged by eye through the small but clear cabin windows. From London to Trieste we maintained Mach 0-93 at 25,000ft, but the flightpath was routed over the Adriatic to give maximum supersonic time. Width of the "boom carpet" is 15-18 miles, generally meaning a 25-mile corridor. Over the continent an impromptu press conference revealed something of British Airways' marketing policy for Concorde. "Speed, speed and more speed is the order of the day," said Mr Marking, who went on to outline some of the ways in which his airline will ensure that the passenger gets good value for his premium fare. There will be a special Concorde service all the way, from check-in to baggage reclaim. British Airways will arrange its European schedules for fast connections with transatlantic Concorde flights. "The most important route is London-New York," says Marking, "because that is where the Concorde passengers will be." It would, he said, "be a great pity" if the US Federal Aviation Administration or the New York authori ties yielded to environmentalist pressure and denied Concorde landing rights, "but not a disaster." Other super sonic routes in the later 1970s could include a London- Tokyo service over the Soviet Union, shared with Aeroflot's Tu-144s. "It's not in the 1976 timetable," was the only information available on the starting date of such a service. Another hurdle on the long Concorde steeplechase is the negotiation of fares acceptable to subsonic airlines, whose first-class traffic British Airways and Air France will undoubtedly divert. The prospective supersonic airlines want first-class plus 18 per cent on the North Atlantic and first-class plus 15 per cent on routes where the Concorde market is not so strong. The question of super sonic fares is outside the jurisdiction of any one traffic conference and can be expected to be a subject for haggling at the International Air Transport Association AGM in Oslo at the end of September. British Airways will not overbook on Concorde. Com bined with a first-class no-show rate which the airline claims is 20 per cent this may well put an 80 per cent ceiling on load factors, but British Airways clearly con siders that it will be in a seller's market and expects "fairly healthy" loads. British Airways' Concorde capacity on London-New York, on the scale of operations applied for, will be equivalent to 80-90 per cent of its first-class sub sonic seats. Although it is expected that many supersonic seats will be filled by passengers won away from the other carriers on the route, British Airways is likely to alter the first/economy-class mix on its own subsonic flights. First-class-plus will have to be the watchword throughout if Concorde is to attract the demanding first-class-plus passenger. It is no use serving him (or her) a decidedly subsonic chicken or even a jet-lag-stricken salad. Certainly the cuisine and service (by a Gulf Air cabin crew, as British Airways had not yet reached agreement with its cabin crew on special payments for endurance flights) was to a very high standard, even though the narrow aisle con fined service to a first-pass-attack technique. Aerodynamic noise in the cabin was very noticeable at cruise Mach. I found that in the after part of the cabin normal conversation carried only 3ft or so and a raised voice only two or three times that. However, we were an unrepresentative load of passengers in that we wanted to talk business while airborne rather than confining ourselves to eating, drinking and sleeping. The noise only becomes
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