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Donald Baiata
Mrs. DeBock
English IIII
5 November 2014
The Concorde program
The Concorde is just about the most famous and marveled aircraft in aviation history. It
was the 1st successful super-sonic transporter (SST) and was and still is the fastest jetliner that
was ever on the face of the planet. Concorde was also for a short period the only aircraft in the
world to be powered by afterburner engines and was not used for military purposes but
eventually Russias engineers made their own SST called the TU-144. Unfortunately Concorde
even though it was an engineering masterpiece had a sad ending to its life. In the summer of
2000 Concorde was taking off when suddenly the wing of the aircraft burst into flames. Shortly
after Concorde eventually stalled in the air and plummeted to the ground killing all on board.
This crash was one of the main reasons for Concordes cancellation. The main reason why
Concorde was cancelled was because of safety and financial issues.
Concorde as an aircraft has actually had a pretty significant history. In 1968 French
scientists built the first prototypes of Concorde, in the end there were three prototypes of the
aircraft ready for flight. In March 1969 Concorde finally took to the skies for the first time ever
on a flight from Toulouse, France, to Bristol England. The flight was a complete success and
with some design changes in the aircraft we had the Concorde aircraft that we know today.
According to Baird, this new and improved Concorde had the speed to travel from London to
New York in 3 hours and 50 minutes, its shortest flight ever across the Atlantic was 3 hours and
32 minutes. Of course the other countries saw this and they wanted their own SST so America
and Russia started funding their own SST programs. America commissioned Boeing

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to build an SST better than Concorde one that flew almost 500 mph faster and could carry 200
more passengers than Concorde. According to Baird Boeing had the capability of creating an
SST capable of cruising at 1,800 mph while carrying 300 passengers but the program lost its
funding by congress. Russia on the other hand commissioned Tupolev to build an SST and they
were successful in creating the TU-144 which cruised at the same speed as Concorde but carried
44 more people than the aircraft said Baird.
Now going into what the Concorde aircraft looked like, Concorde was a very sleek and
aerodynamic aircraft. According to Concorde, Concorde had a length of 204 feet with a
fuselage that was only 9 feet wide. When the aircraft was traveling at super-sonic speeds due
to the heating of the titanium the aircraft was made of by the power of fiction, the aircraft
stretched in length somewhere between 6 to 10 inches while in flight. The Concorde had a
unique wing design called the delta v design which is that both wings together make the shape
of a v or more so a triangle, with these wings the aircraft has a wingspan of 84 feet. Concorde
had an extremely long nose to help with the aerodynamic design and because of this the pilots
flying the aircraft had a small dilemma.they could not see where they were going during takeoffs and landings. Funk and Wagnalls NWE stated that the solution engineers used to solve this
problem is that they created what they called a swoop nose pilots can press a button in the
cockpit during take-offs and landings to lower the nose enough to where they can see perfectly
fine in the direction that theyre going. Funk and Wagnalls states that out of the entire program
only 14 Concordes were built for commercial flight with the last one being assembled in 1979.
Concordes main source of power were four turbine powered afterburner engines which together
produced an amazing 152,200 pounds of thrust, this allowed the aircraft to have a maximum
speed of 1,354 miles per hour. For the record that is faster than then the maximum speed of an

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F-16 Fighting Falcon!

Unfortunately this

aircraft , this wonderful creation from some of the greatest engineering minds on the planet, the
aircraft along with the entire program was cancelled due to a horrific crash. Investigators were
able to figure out what happened and pinpoint the cause of the crash so here is an explanation of
what happened. On a sunny July day in the year 2000 Concorde flight 4590 was taxing to a
runway for take-off, in front of it was a DC-10 according to Pierre Sparaco. Because of the
negligence of an aviation mechanic when the DC-10 was rolling down the runway for take-off
one of the O-rings on one of the wheels of the landing gear feel off and was unnoticed by
anybody. Sparaco states that after the DC-10 took-off the Concorde taxied into take-off position
and then with full afterburners started rolling down the runway with the pilots unaware if the
debris on the runway. During take-off one of Concordes landing gear ran over the O-ring, the
wheels kicked the ring into the wing of the aircraft which created a huge hole in it. This huge
whole immediately started leaking aviation fuel and started trailing behind the aircraft, because
of this Concordes afterburners ignited the fuel Sparaco said, which then created a gigantic
fireball underneath the wing of the aircraft. This lead to the aircraft not having enough speed to
fly which lead to the aircraft eventually stalling and because of this plummeted like a rock all the
way back down to the surface of the Earth. In this crash all 109 people onboard the aircraft died
along with 4 people on the ground making a total of 113 fatalities. Because of this crash and the
fact that the cost to maintain a Concorde was three times more than that to maintain a 747 led to
the grounding and cancellation of the Concorde program. Concordes last landing took place on
a British Airways flight from New York to London in 2003. Today there is a program called
save the Concorde which consists of people that want to get at least 1 Concorde air worthy
again for demonstration purposes to show future generations this wonderful piece of engineering

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which should never of been cancelled because it was not the aircrafts fault it was the negligence
of 1 mechanic that caused that crash.
In conclusion the Concorde was one of the most advanced and sophisticated aircrafts ever
made by the hands of man even on some documentaries people watched about Concorde the only
things that can be compared to it are the SR-71 blackbird and the Saturn V rocket which was
used in the Apollo missions which took mankind to the moon. Concorde is nothing short of
amazing and I firmly believe and side with the people in the Save the Concorde program that 1
just 1 out of the 14 Concordes that used to fly through the air should be made air by far.

Works Cited
Concorde. Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia (2014): 1p. 1. Funk & Wagnalls
New World Encyclopedia. Web. 7 Oct 2014
Shuman, R. Baird. Concorde. Salem Press Encyclopedia (2013): Research Starters. Web 7
Oct. 2014
Sparaco, Pierre. Concordes Final Scene. Aviation Week & Space Technology 174.44 (2012):
18. Business source Premier. Web. 7 Oct. 2014