Concorde Hits 30 With No Heirs

PARIS —  Children picking apples stare into the sky when the sleek, steel bird thunders overhead. “Look everybody,” they shout, dropping baskets of fruit. “It’s the Concorde!”

The scene is repeated daily in towns around Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris.

Thirty years after its maiden flight above the southwestern city of Toulouse, the Concorde still turns heads--a stirring technological achievement encased in a futuristic design. Yet, as the 13 Concordes flown by Air France and British Airways age, many worry about the future of supersonic air travel.

“There’s no second-generation Concorde on the drawing board anywhere in Europe,” said Henri Perrier, who was chief engineer on the aircraft’s first flight on March 2, 1969. “It’s an expensive project requiring at least 15 years of work.”

Last fall, Boeing Co. withdrew from a research group studying a new, supersonic passenger jet, because of the daunting cost of developing a replacement.

Because of the Concorde’s own development costs, some people question whether the jet that shuttles the rich and famous from London and Paris to New York at twice the speed of sound really has been a success.

Its operators insist it has. The Concorde operates at a profit even though passengers usually only fill from 40 to 70 of the aircraft’s 100 seats, said Frank Debouck, Air France’s deputy vice president responsible for the Concorde’s North American route.

Those passengers pay a hefty fare. A round-trip Paris-New York ticket costs $9,000, roughly 25% more than regular first class. A London-New York round-trip runs $9,850.

The two airlines also use their Concordes for special luxury flights. Air France puts on about 50 each year--20 “flights to nowhere,” 30 to specific destinations, and five or six round-the-world trips, which can last up to two months due to stopovers.

But regular service once envisioned for other routes never panned out. Air France had to cancel flights between Paris and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, because of a lack of business.

Air France officials say their current fleet is fit to fly safely until 2007. Each plane will undergo a yearlong mechanical overhaul expected to extend its flying life to 2015.

“A second overhaul could keep the planes airborne until 2030, but after that, civil supersonic air travel remains a question mark,” Debouck said.

For now, the Concorde is among the world’s safest planes. Its only major scare came in 1979 when a bad landing blew out a plane’s tires. The incident led to a design modification.

The Concorde brought France and Britain recognition as serious technological players. For three decades, it has symbolized state-of-the-art air travel.

Concorde’s designers boasted many technological breakthroughs, including the heat-resistant graphite brakes found today on the Airbus and Boeing 777.

While some military aircraft fly faster, none can sustain Mach 2 speed for as long as the Concorde, which crosses the Atlantic at 1,350 mph.

The plane is popular with celebrities, world-class athletes and the rich. It flies above turbulence at nearly 60,000 feet, crossing the Atlantic in about 3 1/2 hours, less than half that of regular jetliners.

Air France flight manager Edgar Chillaud recalls one passenger who flew the Concorde back to Paris just to retrieve a dress she wanted to wear to a New York party.

Passengers travel in noiseless luxury. They sip champagne, dine on gourmet food and enjoy every imaginable convenience--except movies. When the plane was conceived, a video system would have made the plane too heavy, Debouck said.

There were no passenger seats on the 110-ton prototype of the Concorde that lifted off 30 years ago. Just a cockpit, a windowless cabin filled with controls and a four-man team making aviation history.

“There wasn’t any anxiety,” Perrier, the flight engineer, recalls. “We’d been practicing on flight simulators for months.”

Except for a faulty air conditioning system that saw cabin temperatures hit 85 degrees, the flight--at 9,000 feet and 300 mph--went smoothly.

But it was seven years before the first commercial flight, on Jan. 21, 1976. For many, though, the touchdown at New York’s Kennedy airport on Oct. 10, 1977, was the sweetest victory of all.

Wary of the Concorde’s engine noise, residents in the area around the airport and environmental groups had successfully lobbied to ban the plane from New York.

“U.S. authorities finally said we could land if we didn’t trigger noise sensors placed in certain spots around the airport,” Debouck noted. “Ever wonder why the Concorde veers so sharply on takeoff and landing at Kennedy? Because our pilots figured out how to avoid the sensors.”