Concorde flight described

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32975, 22 July 1972, Page 11

Concorde flight described

(By

JOHN SPEDDING)

Now I have an idea how Sir Edmund Hillary felt when he got back from conquering Everest. Only a slight idea, of course, for Sir Edmund Hillary was first on the peak with just Sherpa Tensing to share in the glory. And he did it the hard way.

But being one of only five New Zealanders who have flown in a Concorde aircraft makes you a somewhat similar focus of public curiosity. Happily, it demands none of the physical slogging of an Everest climber. Even the most geriatric of aviation buffs would leap up the steep gangway steps with the agility of a supercharged Sherpa given the opportunity to fly in the world’s most advanced and most controversial commercial aircraft.

Flying in a Concorde at this stage of its development is the passport to instant vicarious fame—and the opening gambit to a continuing conversation which invariably starts: “What is it like. . . T “Superior class” It is infinitely gratifying to become what the British Aircraft Corporation calls a "superior class passenger.” It may be an unfortunate phrase, but is a reflection of their selling story. The Concorde will fit into the major airlines' fleets—probably at a premium fare—as the vehicle for tycoons to whom speed means time and time means money. So it starts before one goes aboard, being ushered to the tarmac in a small select group with all “the deference due to men of pedigree”—a State Governor, a Lord Mayor, Government Ministers, knighted industrialists. And me. But entering a prototype is an experience quite unlike boarding any other aircraft. The Concorde 002 prototype is slightly shorter than the production models will be and minus the wing tip refinements and the more powerful, quieter and smokefree engines which have come from the experience gained with the prototypes. Flying test bed It is a flying test bed —a pencil-slim fuselage crammed full of highly specialised research equipment manned at all times by a full flight test crew. Huge banks of sophisticated gear and computers fill the aircraft, recording some 3000 different parameters simultaneously and continuously through every moment of flight.

Some of the gear has been removed so that 14 seats could be ngged in two small passenger compartments for the guests carried on the demonstration flights during the Concorde’s tour.

Presiding over this tiny enclave of superior class passengers is a distinctly superior class purser, Mr Fred Clawson. He is on loan from B.O.A.C.—and came to New Zealand some years ago in a similar role on the demonstration visit of the B.A.C. 1-11. Fred dispenses champagne and canapes from a mini bar with the aplomb one would expect in the spacious first-class lounge of a jumbo jet. There is a curious camaraderie of privilege among the passengers. One feels it would be letting down the team to betray any excitement. As the first 140,0001 b of thrust from the four great Olympus engines snugged in under the sweep of the delta wing nudged the Concorde towards the runway, my seat neighbour the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Mr Alwyne Rowllands, made polite introductory small talk. Fast climb Thirty seconds after the brakes were released, the chimneys of the airport incinerator, belching far more smoke than Concorde, slid under the wing. The Lord Mayor surveyed his distant city with approval and, like polite new acquaintances at the start of a party, we discovered that we had a mutual friend. About 4000 feet a minute, it doesn’t take long to reach 40,000 feet—just long enough to accept a second glass of champagne, decide that it was difficult to tell where Australia left off and the Tasman began, and start on a playback of the Battle of Cape Mata pan, at which the Lord Mayor served as a navel surgeon. The barrier The pilot’s voice came from away up front, on the crowded flight deck with its droop-nosed visor safely tucked back into place for supersonic cruise. We paused politely as his message filtered through the cabin speakers and then we expectantly awaited the sign of passing through the sound barrier. There it was —a gentle nudge, like the automatic transmission of a car changing through gears. The afternoon sky was a darker blue through the small windows. We were above the weather. Whatever sonic boom might be crackling across the ocean over seven miles below us, we were

talking over a noise level no greater than in any normal airliner.

We moved about the aircraft, trying hard to make sense of the patient explanation our hosts were giving of the masses of complex test gear. Only a mach counter and an altimeter confirmed that we were indeed at 51,000 feet and flying at about twice the speed of sound.

We mingled and chatted —the small talk of a cocktail party. The Governor of Victoria, Sir Rowan Delacombe, debonaire with his trimmed while cavalry moustache and the appropriately Victorian rosebud in his lapel, gazed thoughtfully out the window. “I remember the first person I ever saw fly,” he said. “It was a balloon ascent. Don’t know what they used for gas—probably just household gas. Must have been very dangerous. Now here I am flying in this remarkable aircraft.” Sir Reginald smiled Sir Reginald Ansett prowled the cabin with a secret smile, saying little. He had probably just thought of his line of post-flight comment—that he would buy Concordes if granted a route to New Zealand. Sir Reginald has never missed an opportunity to publicise his desire for an international air route. Fred Clawson continued to materialise like Jeeves at one’s elbow, always with a full magnum of champagne. “It helps to pass the time,” he explained, as though flying in Concorde was a humdrum event. Sir Geoffrey Tuttle, vicechairman of the British Aircraft Corporation, mentioned casually that the “boffins” were already considering aircraft which could travel beyond 4000 m.p.h. and up to 8000 m.pJi., gathering impetus from the earth’s spin, cruising at 100,000 feet and carrying hundreds of passengers. When? “I think it could be done by the year 2000.” A depressing thought. There wouldn’t even be time for a convivial glass of champagne. The admirable Fred Clawson, or his successor, would be out of a job. High-pressure team

Sir Geoffrey was only one of the 122 members of the high-pressure Concorde demonstration team, led by Earl Jellicoe of Scapa, and the chairman of 8.A.C., Sir George Edwards. How did Lord Jellicoe, Britain’s Lord Privy Seal, come to be flying round the world on this mission?

Asked the question at a press conference, he replied disarmingly that he happened to have a bit of time on his hands, and that Ted Heath had asked him to do the job. Considering that he is chairman of the British Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea and a former Governor of the Centre for Environmental Studies, it seemed to be more than a coincidence that he was on a tour in which protests from ecologists and environmentalists could be expected. We were halfway across the Tasman and swinging gently around for the run back. The crew, who could have been mistaken for any businessmen in their lounge suits at the airport in the morning, now stood out as special beings in their vivid orange flying suits and baseball caps, the pilots’ cap peaks splashed with a scrambled egg of gold braiding. They went about their business in the needle-nose of the flight deck or at the consoles of the recording equipment, paying no attention to the parade of curious over-the-shoulder spectators. Not much different We were back in our seats and the endless twisted eucalypts of Australia were showing clearly instead of merging into the bluish haze. On approach now and the pilot was obviously jockeying the throttles, holding the slim aircraft in its dramatic landing pose until the wheels touched with the protesting squeak and puff of blue smoke common to all large aircraft.

Then it was all over and we were sauntering selfconsciously down the gangway under the gaze of hundreds of lesser mortals, cut off from the Concorde behind a high wire-mesh barrier. A Tiger Moth in mint condition had been wheeled round and tucked under the Concorde’s nose for publicity photographs. The pilots, and the sales manager of 8.A.C., Mr Derek Johns, were much more interested in it than in the great silver airliner looking down its drooped nose at the tiny interloper. And what is it like to fly in the Concorde?

Apart from the mental thrill, it is pretty much like any other aircraft. Speed and height are simply comparative. Certainly, it will fly high above the weather and faster than any of today’s jets, but it has been shown that the Concorde handles easily and can fit into the traffic patterns of today’s air lanes and airports.

And that, really, is what it is all about.