The Ungrounding Of The SS Concorde
by: Aria Mohebi 1/6/16 Digital Literacy Period 2
The Concorde
The Concorde is a very sophisticated aircraft that was introduced on January 1st, 1976. Today, these planes are grounded and are mostly in museums and possibly in airshows. Even though this jet is grounded, a group of Concorde pilots have come together and call themselves the Concorde group, are working as hard as they can to get this jet back into the air. They are gathering donations to pay for two Concorde's. They only need about E3 million more dollars and they will have enough to purchase one Concorde. What they will then do is to complete secret flights and then use the money to buy the second Concorde. But in the first place, was such an amazing supersonic jet (that can travel faster than twice the speed of sound) actually meant to be grounded? Can the Concorde be revived and flown again without committing any illegal actions? How can I create a presentation to inform people that the Concorde might be revived if enough money is donated to the Concorde Club? (The Concorde club is a group of pilots that are helping to get the Concorde back). Stay tuned to figure out.
Revival Plan
The Concorde group is actually doing much more than most would expect. So far they have convinced the British that the Concorde is worthy enough to be in service again and now are working hard to persuade the French. One reason the French are so hesitant to let the Concorde take the airs again is because where the Concorde crashed was actually in Paris, France. The Concorde group is still convincing them and their chances are going higher and higher to getting what they want the most, to revive the Concorde. Right now, some members of the Concorde group claim that they think the percentage of chance the group will get what they want is hanging somewhere around 66%. All the members agree that they would make sure that percentage was risen until 100%. The group has decided that this process will take about to the end of this decade or maybe less. Unfortunately, there is a chance that it takes longer than the group thought it would. Very unfortunately, there is a chance that France, mostly Paris, will disagree with the Concorde group and tell the group that they must stop and if they were to continue, it would be considered as illegal activity.
The Concorde Grounded
You might ask yourself, why is the Concorde grounded in the first place? Well, the answer is that the Concorde had a very fatal crash. This took the lives of over 100 people including the crew members. This is how a sequence of events eventually was to great for the Concorde and brought this marvel of engineering down. It went something like this: The Concorde was about to take off when an error popped up. Since safety comes first with the Concorde, its flight was delayed by around two hours. The plane then went to runway 16 right. Just before the Concorde, a DC10 had taken off on that exact runway and had dropped a 22 centimeter strip of metal lying on the runway. The Concorde took off at such a high speed that when it hit the metal strip, a little piece of rubber flew right from the tire to the left wing fuel tank. The rubber hit the tank so hard that it cracked. While the rubber piece was flying toward the fuel tank, it snapped a wire so the wire started sparking. The leaking fuel fell on the sparks and set the whole left wing on fire. The plane was flying low. The pilot tried to raise the nose and get some height to get out of the range where fire is active and save the Concorde. But at that point, the left wing was too burned and so the pilot could not raise the nose. The Concorde kept flying until it crashed into a hotel in Paris, France. After this incident, the Concorde was grounded forever, maybe. This is why the Concorde is grounded in the first place. An expert that has devoted his life to the Concorde says, " Concorde was a unique aircraft type that tailored parts, systems, maintenance techniques, and so on, and so few aircraft were built that there isn't a vast pool of spares and engines to raid." I believe that everyone should donate to the Concorde group because there is no other plane that will give people such a well flying experience. I believe the Concorde has enough potential to be put back to survive and use its glory again.
Flight Controls
The flight controls were so sophisticated, that two pilots had to fly the plane and the other had to monitor the instruments. Another person was stationed in the rear of the cockpit and was in charge of making sure that everyone did everything correctly. The pilot and copilot run the flight controls. The pilot is most of the time not allowed to switch with another one but sometimes may. The copilot on the other hand, is allowed to switch places with the first officer.
Right Side Panel
The engineer was in charge of watching all the instruments. There were two panels he was in charge of. It was such a tiring job, that there were two other people who sat in the rear of the aircraft and waited their turn to take this persons job.
Overhead Panel
The pilot and copilot/ 1st officer would decide who would be in charge of actually steering thee plane, and who would monitor the gadgets. Monitoring the gadgets was harder than steering the plane because the person steering the aircraft could turn on autopilot and sit back and relax.
Concorde Crash From Start To Finish Air France Flight 4590
Unfortunate Crash
This video is important to my topic because without the Concord crash of July 5, 2000, the Concorde Group pilots would be out flying right now. I learned that the Concorde crashed into a hotel, not the gas station right in front of it. Well actually, I learned that from the full documentary which I have made a video for below. This video explains what happened before the jet took off, and what happened weeks after the crash.
Concorde Crash - Air France Flight 4590 [Full Documentary]