The American Spectator : What Price Supersonic Grandeur?

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Letter From Paris

What Price Supersonic Grandeur?

By Joseph A. Harriss from the May 2010 issue

Concorde's end came not with a whimper but a tragic bang.

Tempus fugit, of course, but it's still hard for some of us to realize that the giddy age of supersonic air travel has already come and gone. And a damned good thing, too.

It was in fact just 41 years ago that André Turcat, a 47-year-old test pilot by trade, lined up a spindly, droop-nosed flying machine on the center line of runway 33 at France's Toulouse Blagnac airfield. He spooled up its four puissant Olympus engines to a cosmic roar, switched on after-burners, and released the brakes. As Concorde Prototype 001 took off in its patriotic blue, white, and red livery, excited onlookers were chanting Allez France! Allez France!

No matter that those engines were mostly British, as was roughly half the plane. When Turcat landed 35 minutes later on March 2, 1969, it was clear that France had a proud new symbol. As Le Monde has frankly noted, Concorde "was created largely to serve the prestige of France...[it was] the expression of political will, founded on a certain idea of national grandeur."

Now a months-long trial in Paris illustrates how specious the whole business was. Not to mention potentially more dangerous to your health than smoking. It shows, for those who hadn't already surmised as much, that Concorde was a preposterously expensive accident waiting to happen. The people responsible for perpetrating this sham are not in the courtroom, of course.

Concorde's end came not with a whimper but a tragic bang at 4:44 p.m. local time on July 25, 2000. Air France flight 4590, chartered by a group of 100 Germans heading for a rendezvous with a cruise ship in New York, blew a tire on its left landing gear as it accelerated down runway 26 at Charles de Gaulle airport. Debris slung from the tire and wheel hit the underside of the plane's left wing and penetrated a fuel tank.

President Jacques Chirac, just landed from Tokyo, watched aghast from his taxiing 747 as the Concorde's leaking jet fuel caught fire, trailing a long sheet of flame. The plane lost power in its two left engines. Past the point where takeoff could be aborted, it struggled barely 200 feet into the air as the cockpit crew tried desperately to turn toward nearby Le Bourget airport for an emergency landing. "Too late...no time," were Captain Christian Marty's last recorded words as the uncontrollable plane suddenly flipped over and pancaked onto a mostly empty building in the Paris suburb of Gonesse. All 100 passengers, three flight crew, six flight attendants, and four persons on the ground were killed.

France went into mourning. The crash was compared to the sinking of the Titanic, the Hindenburg bursting into flames, the Challenger space shuttle exploding. Tinkering was done afterward on several Concordes, reinforcing fuel tanks and strengthening tires, but the plane made its final commercial flight in October 2003. Even London's understated Times lamented, "Nothing will ever be quite the same again...This was the superplane, the symbol of progress, the icon of invention, a totem."

And yet. Despite the glamorous image, Concorde was a hard-luck, jinxed project from the beginning, a cautionary tale about doing something just because it was technically possible and politically attractive.

THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM was that Concorde was entirely a public-sector project and ipso facto out of touch with reality. In the 1960s the French and British governments spent $3 billion in public monies developing a supersonic transport (SST). (U.S. plane makers Boeing, Lockheed, and North American also caught the SST fever and did designs, but market realities made them abandon the idea in the early 1970s.) Besides the intense, politically popular satisfaction of beating the Americans at the game of air transport they had dominated for so long, this kept British and French state-owned aircraft manufacturers busy. And when it was built, the reasoning went, they could always sell it to their subsidized national airlines.

Their engineers used some 300 test models in wind tunnels and gave birth to a weird breed of bird. Lift was provided by a combination of wing, vortex, and thrust. Its all-important center of gravity was moved forward or aft by manually transferring fuel among its 14 tanks. At Mach 2, about 1,150 knots, and 60,000 feet, the air temperature is around minus 67 degrees F, but atmospheric friction heated the fuselage so much it expanded to make the plane about half a foot longer. "It's not an easy plane to fly, you have to be constantly alert," Peter Duffey, a retired British Airways Concorde pilot, once told me. "Takeoff time is only half that of a 747. At twice the speed of sound, you're always thinking about where you can land in the event of an emergency, and there are about 50 reasons besides engine failure why you would have to take it down to subsonic flight."

Sales estimates were for 240 Concordes by 1978; optimists hoped for up to 1,500 purchases eventually by the world's airlines. But then the same reality hit that had discouraged American designers: nobody wanted to buy what the French invariably called the beautiful white bird. Grandeur and prestige alone won't keep shareholders happy, and commercial airlines couldn't see how to make money with it.

First there was the oil shock of the 1970s, driving fuel prices up -- and Concorde consumed four times as much fuel to carry one-quarter as many passengers as a 747. Besides that, engineers and marketers greatly underestimated the problem of the sonic boom. Resembling the dis-concerting crack of a high-velocity rifle shot, it would be heard by millions on the ground as the plane passed overhead. That ruled out lucrative American routes like New York to Los Angeles. And Concorde's thunderous engines made so much noise on takeoff that some major cities were unwilling to accept it.

Finally all prospective buyers canceled their options except the captive Air France and British Airways, which got the plane at bargain prices from their governments. Only 14 Concordes entered service. To be sure, it became an instant hit with the fashionably hurried, who lined up to pay about $10,000 for a round-trip transatlantic ticket to race the sun, leaving London or Paris for New York and arriving about three and a half hours later -- a few minutes before they left. But personally, I found the one trip I made an unpleasant experience: sealed in a narrow tube with windows about the size of a man's hand, passengers could barely converse with their seatmates for the deafening engine noise. Compared with the quiet, palatial luxury of first class in a 747, it was a chore to gain a few hours.

"The economics of Concorde never made sense and there was never a market for it," Ronald Davies, curator of air transport at Washington's National Air and Space Museum, once told me. "For every hour in the air, it spent 14 on the ground. And for every seat transported across the Atlantic, it had to carry one ton of fuel. It was so inefficient it's unbelievable." And all that money spent on the development of this prestige project? "Taxpayer-funded executive air transport. It's one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated."

BUT THE PERPETRATORS aren't on trial in Paris. Instead, it's Continental Airlines and two of its maintenance men, accused of manslaughter along with two hapless retired French former employees of the company that originally built Concorde and a former member of the French civil aviation authority.

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About the Author

Joseph A. Harriss is The American Spectator's Paris correspondent. His latest book is About France.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (34) | Leave a comment

Jack| 5.18.10 @ 9:02AM

Relying on the French is always a mistake. Relying on government engineers, French and UK ones, is a fatal mistake.

William Parker| 5.18.10 @ 9:47AM

Too bad that Ben Stein (see Stein's May 17th piece on flying American First Class) could not have been a passenger on that ill-fated July 25th 2000 Concorde flight.

If he had been, we would have been spared his constant bragging of how successful he is, how much money he has, and how he enjoys his luxurious life in his "many houses and apartments," and how he enjoys the fabulous perks of American First Class, and how the flight attendants adore him, ad nauseum, world without end, Amen.

Stan Redmond| 5.18.10 @ 10:00AM

Spoken like a true populist Obama (pbuh) supporter. Rather then take a tongue in cheek view of a great modern satirist, you wish him dead. I don't remember who said [paraphrasing] "A liberal sees a rich person and thinks how can I take their stuff away and a conservative thinks, how can I earn for myself what they have." You go a step further and just hope they die.

The best part is you can't help but read Ben Stein's blog posts you proclaim you hate. You can't even control yourself.

William Parker| 5.18.10 @ 10:46AM

No, Mr. Redomond, I am not a liberal Obama supporter.

I am, in fact, a traditional fiscal conservative--not a hell-bent, right-wing neoconservative, but a traditional conservative.

And I am sick of Mr. Stein's ilk. He is a status-seeking, showoff materialist.

By the way, Mr. Redmond, do you think there is a confederacy of conservatives? Do you think we should never criticize each other?

I will take on any conservative that I think is way out of line with traditional conservatism--and there are lots of them, including you, it seems.

PolishKnight| 5.18.10 @ 3:07PM

William, I spot an impostor! The terms "right wing neoconservative" are used by leftists to discredit conservatives. It would be like a dixiecrat saying they're not a socialist liberal.

Anyways, Ben Stein is at least honest about his enjoyment of life unlike limo liberals who proclaim the wonders of diversity while living in all white gated communities and preach the wonders of public transportation while driving everywhere...

Alan Brooks| 5.18.10 @ 6:01PM

"And I am sick of Mr. Stein's ilk. He is a status-seeking, showoff materialist."

But that is what will bring the GOP down. Let them destroy themselves.

JimE| 5.18.10 @ 10:10PM

Troll Parker,
You are a moron, liberal trolls always preface their message with how conservative they are before they launch their leftist tirades. Go back to play with your feces.

Miss Alabama| 5.18.10 @ 10:49AM

Ben Stein "a great modern satirist"?

Obviously, you have little knowledge of literature, and you certainly are not familiar with great satire.

KyMouse| 5.18.10 @ 12:06PM

Mr. Parker, why are you incapable of disagreeing with Mr. Stein without wishing that he were dead? Shame on you.

Reinhard| 5.18.10 @ 1:11PM

Parker,

What the hell does this article have to do with Ben Stein? Jealous idiot.

NavyBrat| 5.18.10 @ 1:30PM

Geez. Jealous much? For someone who says they're an old school conservative, you sound curiously like one of those social & economic justice malcontents on the left. And, bro, you wished death on someone. That doesn't do good things for your argument. As for your attemtps to purge all of us who don't toe YOUR line, again, you sound like a commie. But hey, why agree on the 98% of things that we would under normal circumstances? Let's just go YOUR route & wish death on people who aren't up to YOUR par. Cause THAT'LL get a lot done. In the words of Keyshawn Johnson, "COME ON, MAN!"

Gr0w1er| 5.18.10 @ 2:10PM

Jealous? Too much class envy. Careful- your slip is showing...

Jay Washburne| 5.20.10 @ 6:44AM

Mr. Parker: If Mr. Stein offends you so much, stick with Keith Olberman. I believe he's more your style.

Ace| 5.20.10 @ 6:53AM

Mr. Parker
U could always refrain from reading Ben if he annoys U so much.
I had other rather more permanent and painful suggestions, but, Ben's good example led me from them.

dittoheadadt| 5.18.10 @ 10:39AM

I'm reminded of reading WFB Jr.'s account of his round-the-world trip on the Concorde and the in-flight loss of part of the tail of the plane. Happened in 1989.

"After the Concorde left Christchurch
a section of rudder was lost. There was a "thud" and resultant vibration as the aircraft was climbing through 43,000 feet and accelerating to Mach 2. Repairs were carried out in Sydney so that the round-the-world charter could continue to London."

D.A. Darrough| 5.18.10 @ 10:53AM

Its sad that American, European and Russian aircraft manufacturers have not been able to develop a much more sophisticated and safer version of the Concorde after all these years. Say what you want about its safety record, but it did have tremendous impact on commercial aviation in its day. However, instead of learning and growing from that aircraft, the big aircraft companies continue to develop "boondoggles" like the A-380 and the 787!! What will they say when the wings fall off one of these turkeys??

Ned| 5.18.10 @ 2:17PM

To build "their" SST the Soviets did what they usually did/do and stole the French designs... unfortunately they didn't understand the metalurgy (either) and they built a dangerous aircraft that only made a few flights - crashing spectacularly at the '73 Paris Air Show

ACynic| 12.6.10 @ 10:46AM

Actually, they will not have to say anything because the wings will never fall off these planes.
In fact, wings never fall off planes, in case you have not noticied. As for boondoggles, the planes you cited have orders years into the future.
Boeing, and even Airbus, must produce products that customers will actually buy and this is the only way they can survive. Only governments can produce things that nobody wants and still survive.
Oh, that's right !! The Concorde WAS produced by governments and in fact, nobody WANTED to buy this plane; Air France and British Air (BOAC at the time) were FORCED to buy these disasters.
I suggest you look up the definition of "boondoggle" and "turkey."

Tony in Central PA| 5.18.10 @ 11:51AM

Supersonic is a completely different kind of flying, altogether. I'm amazed that this plane continued to operate as long as it did. I'm sure it cost billions of European tax dollars to keep it flying.

John Jarrell| 5.18.10 @ 12:11PM

I agree with Mr. Harriss in the case of the Concorde, though I believe he gave short shrift to operational restrictions imposed on it by the Eco-mafia and the fact that the Boeing design, to my recollection, was far superior to the Concorde . It had about twice the passenger capacity and was faster. It may have had a shot at being profitable. But remember that complaints about the possible effect of sonic booms was only one Eco-mafia complaint. The contrails (condensation trails) were going to generate a high-altitude cloud covers that would have a catastrophic effect on the environment.

Agreed, Concorde, by virtue of its Frankenstein-like orgins, was doomed from the start. But the SST concept was killed by pseudo-science and eco-hysteria.

Dustoff| 5.18.10 @ 4:50PM

DA
boondoggles" like the A-380 and the 787!!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
787 boondoggle? Granted most new aircraft have their teething problems as the 787 has.

But I think you know little about the 787.

Pete| 5.18.10 @ 7:09PM

Hilarious stuff...who knew? I had never, ever heard a whisper of this before...wonder why? Shocking that Osama hasn't commissioned one to be built to speed up his "date nights" around the country.

Christopher Holland| 5.18.10 @ 10:00PM

The French and British governments spent billions building a plane that used a ton of fuel for every passenger carried, each passenger paid $10k to sit in a seat with as much room as as in a DC3 from the 1930s, the plane was noisy and it was so tempermental a burst tyre caused the engines to catch fire and the plane to crash. And they wonder what the program failed!!

John Erb| 5.19.10 @ 2:21AM

The government could not save the mustang ranch by making a profit selling whiskey and women how can we expect government to make a profitable airplane, air line, car company,health insurance or anything else?

Richard Baker| 5.19.10 @ 7:54AM

Dustoff:
Agree with you. Most of these correspondents have little knowledge regarding aircraft subjects. However, that doesn't seem to stop them from spouting their inanities. Some of these clowns would have complained that the DC-3 was too leading edge, which it was, in the '30s. Why build beyond the Ford Tri-Motor?

Francis W. Porretto| 5.19.10 @ 1:40PM

The Concorde has always reminded me of USAF's RB-70 project. That plane was based on a "lifting body" conception that allowed it to achieve very high speeds. Theoretically, it was an impressive achievement...but the Air Force canceled the program after only two planes were built. One of those planes is in the museum at Dayton; the other died a fiery death.

More than coincidence?

Ret AF| 5.22.10 @ 8:15PM

I think the XB-70 crash was due to a midair collision during a photo-op. One of the chase planes simply got too close. Human carelessness, yes, but of a differeent kind...

Richard Baker| 5.19.10 @ 8:28PM

No, Robert Strange McNamara (that truly was his name) canceled the XB-70 program. The Air Force wanted it as a high- speed deep penetrator into Soviet airspace. Mach 3+ for a bomber was a remarkable achievement. It was canceled by the man who, as President of Ford Motor Company, gave us the 1960 Falcon and tried to make the F-111 a carrier based fighter, among other brilliant decisions. The prototype which crashed did so because Joe Walker, in his F-104, got too close and was literally pulled into the wake of the B-70 on a photo pass with the resulting catastrophe.

RetAF| 5.22.10 @ 8:16PM

Oops, should have read Richards response.

ACynic| 12.6.10 @ 10:54AM

McNamara also gave us the concept of "body counts" in Vietnam to provide a "quantitative" value on the success or failure of that war. McNamara' policies, subsequent to his Ford Motor days, proved disasterous in everything he touched. He is your archetype bureaucrat; conceited, arrogant, vain, egomaniacal, know-it-all. Govt. is full of his type. This is why this country is in such a mess.

Mark Anderson| 5.20.10 @ 1:24AM

You neglect to say that the U.S. doomed the Concorde by not allowing it at most airports, and it had nothing to do with noise. Just the facts please.

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Ken (Old Texican)| 12.6.10 @ 9:41AM

Mark,
I've been a pilot for forty years.

All airplanes break.

Super-sonic speeds generate super-critical operating envelopes.

Supersonic military aircraft have sophisticated "punch-out" capability primarily because airplanes break, (not in case they are shot down).
Concordes were stupid.

Brian Richard Allen| 1.6.11 @ 1:30AM

That overlooks a few awkward things like the total absence of anything approaching an acceptable level of cockpit management/chain of command, like the aircraft being more than six tons overloaded with taxiing fuel and late-loaded baggage, like the person in the pilot costume in the command seat electing to take off downwind on a runway having a third-world-like substandard surface for almost half its length and then, the combination of bad command decisions, bad maintenance and a dragging undercarriage assembly combining having required urgent evasive action to avoid imminent collision with a taxiing Air France B-747, dragging the aircraft airborne at 20 knots under its minimum speed for safe flight. Then like the person in the "flight engineer's" (airborne airplane plumber's) costume in the second officer's seat arbitrarily shutting down a perfectly fine and functioning engine, like the wheel spacer that, due to typical Air France maintenance was missing from the left main gear, leaving it skewed and dragging itself and its tires to pieces.

(Air France itself, whose lackadaisical "maintenance" was noted by even French "investigators," is contemptuously suing Continental in the trial. Truth seekers are aghast Air France is not a murder defendant.)

Like testimony by a number of reliable eyewitnesses, including the on-duty air traffic controller, several airport firemen, a half dozen or so Air France and British Airways Concorde captains and the veteran captain of Jacques Chirac's taxiing B-747, that the Concorde caught fire several hundred yards before it could have struck Continental Airlines tiny metal part.

And then there is the damning argument against the Air France's Concorde disaster contained in Air France's record of near disasters. French civil aviation authorities should have stopped Air France's Concorde service years ago." If the Paris disaster was Concorde's only fatal crash, facts have long made it clear that every surviving Air France Concorde passenger is lucky to be alive.

Concorde did not fail on July 25 2000. Air France failed.

The arrogance that builds the mountain of conceit from which flies Air France's chickens came home to roost!