Today I Learned

My boss at the time, took one of the last flights on the Concord. I asked him if it was expensive, and he said he had to get back from Europe, and he figured he would never get another chance, so he wanted the adventure - and he could afford to pay for that sort of adventure.

British Airways used to sell these really nice double-sided leather bomber jackets at events that were imprinted with the British Airways logo on the black leather side and the Concorde sown into the quilted side. The reason I know this is because somebody found one in a thrift store and gave it to me as a gift, and I did a lot of digging to find out where it came from as they never sold them in stores or anything, only at events. The leather was worn thin and torn even when I got it like 20 years ago, but the Concorde looks just as good as it ever did:

The crash was caused by part of the engine cowl from the previous flight (continental DC10) falling off and remaining on the runway

wiki

Whilst taking off from Charles de Gaulle Airport, Air France Flight 4590 ran over debris on the runway dropped by an aircraft during the preceding departure, causing a tyre to explode and disintegrate... five minutes before the Concorde departed, Continental Airlines Flight 55, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30, took off from the same runway for Newark International Airport and lost a titanium alloy strip that was part of the engine cowl...Concorde ran over this piece of debris during its take-off...cutting the right-front tyre of its left main wheel bogie and sending a large chunk of tyre debris into the underside of the left wing... It did not directly puncture any of the fuel tanks, but it sent out a pressure shockwave that ruptured the number 5 fuel tank at its weakest point, just ahead of the left landing gear well.

To expensive to operate, you needed a lot of fuel to flew few passengers faster, they decided regular airliners were fast enough.

One of today's lucky 10000.

No post on here has ever made me feel older. Just the thought that somebody might not know about Concorde because it's so far in the past makes me want to hide in a closet.

Too old, too expensive.

Aw the Concord is a TIL now. They were really cool looking.

early 2000s air crashes were so hot. everyone had one, some had two.

And dumbass musk and his followers said we'll use rockets for intercontinental flights.

A fun fact about Concorde: there is one aerial photo of one of them flying at supersonic speeds, and the fighter jet that the photo was taken from could barely keep up long enough to take it. Here's the pic.

The image was taken by Adrian Meredith who was flying a Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado jet during a rendezvous with the Concorde over the Irish Sea in April 1985. Although the Tornado could match Concorde’s cruising speed it could only do so for a matter of minutes due to the enormous rate of fuel consumption. Several attempts were made to take the photo, and eventually the Concorde had to slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5-1.6 so that the Tornado crew could get the shot. The Tornado was stripped of everything to get it up to that speed as long as possible.

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-the-only-picture-of-concorde-flying-at-supersonic-speed/

When flying supersonic the entire plane would expand and get longer to the point where flight engineer could put his hat between his console and bulkhead.

However, when it slowed down and cooled the engineer had to remember to get his hat or it would be stuck in the shrunken space.

The Concorde on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center had this happen, and it has a hat permanently stuck in the cockpit.

(At least according to the tour guide.)

Thanks to Concorde, Phil Collins was able to play at both the London and Philadelphia Live Aid concerts. He Played in London, got a helicopter to Heathrow, Concorde to NY and then another helicopter to Philadelphia.