It wasn’t exactly the longest flight, nor was it quite the supersonic highglamour, super-priced adventure to the ends of the earth that would make her famous.
But from the moment Concorde’s famous drooped nose rose gracefully from the runway at Toulouse in the south of France and the first prototype took off for a 27-minute flight, aviation merged with national pride, technology with style and an icon was born.
Today aviation fans are expected to gather at locations round the country – including Scotland’s National Museum of Flight at East Fortune in East Lothian, where G-BOAA’s once roaring engines rest in eternal peace – to celebrate 50 years since Concorde took to the skies.
“It is our main attraction, and what brings people here,” says Ian Brown, assistant curator of aviation at the East Lothian museum.
“Visitors come through the hangar doors and see her nose just ‘hanging’ in the air. I’ve watched their jaws drop as they walk in.”
Born out of a joint Anglo-French project, Concorde’s maiden flight success was savoured as a moment of intense national pride.
Most impressive of all was its speed. A cruising velocity of twice the speed of sound, or 1350mph, allowed it to cover a mile in just 2.75 seconds.
The epitome of cutting-edge technology of its time, Scots aviation fans can at least claim Concorde’s distinctive swept-back super-slim delta wings as their own.
Designed under the leadership of Penicuik-born Sir James Hamilton, they were highly complex with a twist and drop design designed to cope with extreme speed.
Hamilton left the Concorde project in 1971, by which time the brave test pilots like fellow Scot, Ayr-born John Cochrane had pushed the craft to her limits.
He was at the controls when Concorde blasted through the sound barrier for the first time in 1970, and was on the operational flight when the it reached its highest speed of Mach 2.23 and an altitude of 68,000ft, and achieved the Atlantic speed record from take-off to touchdown in 1975.
Cochrane was handed overall responsibility for the engine intake systems – a task that involved highpressure flying in which he pushed the aircraft to its technical extremes.
Many of what must have been adrenalin-fuelled, near deathdefying test flights took place over the west coast of Scotland.
“A lot of these flights were out of Prestwick, which was used as a training base and where pilots would take off and fly for a bit before landing,” explains Brown.
“Because of the sonic boom, there were lots of trials and flights, many up and down the west coast of the UK, before she received her certificates.”
Fifty sonic boom test flights took place over three years from 1970.
People living along the coast and even in Dublin and Glasgow, were warned to be prepared for the sudden ‘bang’ as the aircraft sped by.
Incredible as it may seem today, Concorde’s development began just 14 years after the Second World War had ended, and when Glasgow Corporation trams still rattled through the city’s streets.
Throughout her lifetime, British Airways Concorde fleet would go on to make just under 50,000 flights and carry more than 2.5m passengers on the supersonic flight of their lives.
Exclusive, fast and unique, it attracted a well-heeled fan base, with regular passengers including Joan Collins, Sir Paul McCartney and Diana, Princess of Wales.
Travelling on Concorde became an experience in itself, with its up to 128 passengers speaking of the “kick in the back” as the aircraft took off and the rising heat as it powered across the Atlantic.
Jock Lowe, the longest serving Concorde pilot, said flying the aircraft was “like driving a sports car compared with a normal car”.
While BA’s Concorde fleet regularly ploughed a route 60,000ft above the ground between London and New York, short day trips from Edinburgh around the Bay of Biscay and back gave ‘ordinary’ passengers the supersonic experience without the eye-watering £6,500 cost of a transatlantic ticket.
“Travel agents like Bennett’s in Musselburgh sold tickets, and included with the flight details was a car sticker to put in the window because there would be so many people at the airport just to see Concorde that passengers would be at risk of missing the flight.”
Concorde was retired from service in October 2003, with British Airways and Air France blaming a downturn in passenger numbers and rising maintenance costs.
It also came after an Air France Concorde crashed minutes following take-off from Paris in July 2000, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground.
Aviation analyst John Strickland does not believe another large-scale version will be developed while passengers prioritise low fares above speed.
“If you cut the time it takes to fly to Australia in half, there would be a level of interest,” he said.
“But what would people be willing to pay, relative to the price of such an aircraft and the investment required to make it?”
Meanwhile, for museum visitors there is likely to be a touch of sadness at her early demise.
“9/11 was a big issue: no-one wanted to fly to America, and Air France’s Paris to New York route was losing money,” says Brown.
“Yet she could have flown for another ten years.”
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