Vintage Champagne on the Edge of Space E-Book

Sally Armstrong

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 220

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to work 11 miles above the Earth and on the edge of space, travelling at twice the speed of sound, serving champagne and caviar to passengers as they enjoyed their supersonic experience? Concorde was the aviation icon of our age and the ultimate in luxury air travel. Even the most frequent flyer felt the sense of occasion flying aboard Concorde and joining what became a very elite club. Sally Armstrong recounts her experiences of meeting the rich and famous, the royals and superstars, and flying private charters to exotic places. Her account documents a unique era of flight with all the adventure, glitz and glamour that it entailed. Reflecting on Concorde's heady beginnings during its first operations all the way through to the tragic Air France crash in 2001, the author tells the story of Concorde through the eyes of the cabin crew. Not just an aircraft, Concorde was a way of life now sadly consigned to the history books.

Leseprobe

Dedicated to JD for his inspirationand to Rob, my son, to give him inspiration.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to give my thanks to all the crew who willingly volunteered their stories about their careers on Concorde. Certain episodes will always remain strongly etched on the mind and it is those episodes of an extraordinary life that I have happily recalled.

In particular, I would like to thank cabin service manager Dick Bell, Scarlett Geen, Louise Brown, Dee Bull, Jill Channon, Annie Carter, Carol Cornwell, Steve Brennan, Sue Drayton, Bernadette Forrest, Jeannette Hartley, Robert Bailey, Maggie Sinclair, Maggie Coles, Captain John Hutchinson, Captain Jock Lowe, Chief Pilot Mike Bannister and, last but not least, Purser Julia van den Bosch, who has flown more supersonic miles than anyone on this planet!

I would also like to thank all the crews who flew with me for all the special memories we shared. Thanks to Amy Rigg and all at The History Press for their help and support. To special friends Jilly Cooper and Fred Finn and to Richard Noble for their kind contributions to the book.

Finally, this book is not intended in any way as a technical narrative on Concorde so any omissions on its performance, handling and statistics will, I hope, be forgiven by the readers of this book.

Front cover photos – thanks to Mike Bannister and Frederic Carmel.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Richard Noble

Foreword by Fred Finn

Introduction

The End of an Era – Tears and Cheers: London Heathrow Airport

Concorde Beginnings and Design Issues

Now, What shall We Call it? Naming Issues

The Stage is Set and a New Icon is Born

The American Response

The Air Stewardess: How it all Began

A Flying Start: the 747 Fleet

Subsonic to Supersonic

The Supersonic Experience – ‘Flying Hotel’ to ‘Pocket Rocket’

The Working Day: Behind the Scenes

The Flying Wardrobe

Flight 001 is Now Ready for Boarding

Life at the Sharp End

Into the Stratosphere, the Curvature of the Earth and to New York

A Well-stocked Wine Cellar and Food Fit for a Prince

The New York Stopover and Dinner with a Singing Legend

Concorde Charters and a Good Excuse to Display Concorde’s Flying Abilities

The Vienna Ball

Round-the-World Charters and One for Opera Lovers

Promoting Concorde: Unique Times and a Trip to Detroit

Barbados Bound

Life with the Superstars, Rock Stars and Mega Stars

Stars of Stage and Screen

Rock Stars on Board

The Supersonic Commuters

The 11-Mile-High Club – the Shortest Chapter

Breaking Records: Washington to Nice, 11 September 1984, and a Kind-hearted Bellboy

Life Doesn’t Always Go According to Plan

Do

Not

Upset the Captain!

All in a Day’s Work

The Royals and Other Famous Flights

Crew Shenanigans: You Would Expect it, Wouldn’t You?

The Concorde Crash

The Aftermath

And Finally …

The Future of Supersonic Flying

Postscript: Crossing the Atlantic – 3 Hours and 30 Minutes to Seventeen Days

Life after Concorde

Concorde Timeline

Concorde’s Vital Statistics

Plates

Copyright

FOREWORD

BY RICHARD NOBLE

It’s June 2009 and I am standing under the wings of Concorde Delta Golf at Brooklands. There are crowds of people around and we are here to launch the cockpit simulator which had been rescued from Filton, where it had been irreverently trashed when Concorde flying ceased. There are quite a few children present and it suddenly occurs to me that they will never see or experience Concorde fly. They must be wondering what all this is about and why they have been let down by technology and our current less-than-amazing culture.

I’m a lucky one. I was asked by British Airways (BA) to set a record for the fastest ever triple crossing of the Atlantic to celebrate ten years of Concorde transatlantic flying. We were taking G-BOAA to Kennedy (John F. Kennedy Airport, New York), and it was the same aircraft and crew who made the inaugural flight on 22 November 1977.

We are BA 001 and we leave at 10.30 a.m. to the second. I change Concordes at Kennedy, running across the tarmac to G-BOAG which is waiting for me, and by 1830 hours I am in the cockpit and on finals to Heathrow, Runway 27, when a message comes through for me, ‘Richard please pick up the BA chairman’s baggage on your return flight – it got left behind!’

Armed with the chairman’s cases I am on my way back to Kennedy for the second time that day – and on arrival we all have a humongous party at Mortimer’s in New York. The next morning I am on a Concorde flight back to London and then I am immediately off to work in our office, selling our production light aircraft to Brazil. I have absolutely no jet lag. Including stops, the three trips took 11 hours and 22 minutes. The average speed, including stops, was 864mph.

‘Do anything special over the weekend?’ asks our chief designer, Bruce Giddings.

‘Well, yes, I can claim to be the only person ever to have crossed the Atlantic three times in 12 hours …’

Sally Armstrong’s book tells you all about the very special Concorde people who kept the service running to the very high standard that BA demands. It was a lifetime’s experience to fly with them.

But there is another, even more important story. Concorde was a dramatic symbol and a source of huge pride to the British. I remember standing outside our dentist’s surgery in Teddington, Middlesex, and seeing Concorde make its standard low level U-turn overhead to set off west for Kennedy. The whole street had stopped and everyone was looking up. Of course, this happened every day – and every day the Brits took enormous pride in their truly beautiful aircraft.

What Concorde did was inspire and encourage a vast number of people to become engineers, scientists and flight crew. It was a symbol of outstanding achievement by an extraordinary generation of very capable and focused people – and now their children will never see it fly. Even worse, the reality of Concorde has been replaced by singing, cooking and dancing on television and fakery in computer gaming. Concorde and its service was real. No wonder that today there is a critical shortage of engineers and scientists in our country. Could we ever do this again? I doubt it.

So, Concorde was a very special programme in a very special age. Just how special? Well, read Sally Armstrong’s book – and you’ll find out. I promise you won’t be disappointed!

Richard Noble

Kingston upon Thames

Land-speed record holder, 1983–97

FOREWORD

BY FRED FINN

Fred Finn, the world’s most travelled man.

When I was asked to write the foreword to this wonderful book, Vintage Champagne on the Edge of Space, I was thrilled to accept. I flew with Sally Armstrong on the ‘Queen of the Skies’ many times.

I was privileged to belong to the Concorde group of friends. With 718 flights in Concorde, I got to know the wonderful cabin crew very well during a thirty-year love affair with this extraordinary, beautiful and graceful lady of the skies. As a result we became good friends – there was always a chilled bottle of DP [Dom Perignon] shampoo under the seat in front when I boarded into my seat, 9a.

There were occasions when I was asked to give my seat to someone they didn’t want to leave behind. On those occasions I used to sit in the jump seat behind the captain, most of whom I got to know socially, having played cricket for the Concorde cricket team in the annual match in Allworth village at the local pub. It was the home of the first captain, Brian Calvert, who organised the very first Concorde charter with the gamekeeper and the poacher on board.

Concorde was the only aircraft that had this friendly, fun and yet extremely professional atmosphere, where it appeared that everyone knew the regulars and, in my case, I was known as Fred. I used to look forward to being on board and, of course, it was quicker than a rifle bullet. I got so used to the atmosphere on Concorde flights that I began to think the flights were too quick. I didn’t ever want this part of my life and world ever to stop.

Thank you to my many Concorde crew friends, some of whom I still see and continue to enjoy that special relationship that only Concorde could have created, and to Sally for this real account of life on Concorde.

Where else could you have John Denver playing ‘Country Road’, Paul McCartney drawing happy faces, and the ‘boss’ Bruce Springsteen asking ‘how many flights for Fred now?’ to the crew?

Concorde, and my friends on Concorde, I miss you – it was a disaster that it was pulled out of the skies so prematurely, nothing else comes close. It was so much, much more than just an aircraft. The aircraft lived and breathed – Concorde was alive.

The world has gone back to those ubiquitous bi-bodied impersonal sons of Boeing and Airbus, a retroactive step. Nothing will ever be the same again in the world of aviation.

Fred Finn

718 flights in Concorde, 16 million miles – Guinness World Records held since 1983

Director of Livingstone’s Travel World

Co-founder of ‘Quicket’, the mobile travel app

President of Save Concorde Group

Sally Armstrong.

INTRODUCTION

She’s fast, she’s slinky and the captain loves her.

So ran the headline in a newspaper. This was not some story about a captain’s love affair with a stewardess, this was not some insider’s ‘tell all’ story about a romance in the flying world – this was the description of a unique aircraft. This was about Concorde.

There are not many aircraft in aviation history that can match the description, or earn the love and devotion from the many hundreds who worked on her, both on the ground and in the air. Concorde, with her unique elegant silhouette, was impossible to ignore as she streamed across the skies. To compare her to a very beautiful woman is easy. She was the ultimate head turner. She had a beautifully designed body, she was elegant and, like a beautiful woman, never failed to cause a stir of attention.

For the captains and flight crew ‘going to work’ was always a joy. Flying your own ‘dream machine’ that had cost zillions was not a bad way to earn a living and most pilots will confess to that. For the cabin crew it was the ultimate in flying as a career.

For the passengers it invariably stirred a childhood excitement. Flying on the outer edge of space never failed to impress even the most regular passengers. It was exhilarating. It was unlike any other passenger aircraft in aviation history. Even after its twenty-seven years’ service it was still an icon. Here is my story of Concorde, the ultimate flying machine.

Sally Armstrong

THE ENDOFAN ERA – TEARSAND CHEERS:

LONDON HEATHROW AIRPORT

On 24 October 2003, the world’s press, TV camera crews and many thousands of spectators gathered at London’s Heathrow Airport. Every available spot around the perimeter roads was crammed with devoted fans. Police cordons were set up to ensure the spectators kept to their side of the barriers. A grandstand had been specially erected to hold 1,000 people.

Contrary to most VIP arrivals it wasn’t the guest list on board the incoming aircraft that was the subject of their attention. It wasn’t the arrival of a mega pop star who fans waited excitedly to see. It was the actual aircraft that held their focus of attention. But this was no ordinary arrival and no ordinary landing. A momentous event was about to happen. The landing of this iconic aircraft would herald the end of an era of supersonic flying.

It was Concorde the world waited for. This aviation phenomenon of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was making its final commercial flight into London’s Heathrow Airport. At the exact appointed time and, like a diva making her appearance right on cue on the world’s stage, the distinctive shape of Concorde appeared through the clouds, its pointed drooping nose leading the swanlike contours of its wing structure. Elegant and graceful, its four Rolls-Royce Olympus 593 engines throttled back as it made its final approach.

The spectators held their breath, marvelling for the last time at Concorde’s timeless elegance. History was being made, and this was one piece of history the public wanted to be a part of. Concorde was very close to their hearts and, in a time of economic uncertainty and upheavals in politics, it gave them a reason to be proud of being British. Concorde fans had come in their thousands to pay their last respects. Many millions more around the world watched on TV.

As Concorde approached Heathrow Airport for the last time in its twenty-seven years of commercial history, few could take in this moment. It was incomprehensible that the familiar shape that passed overhead on its ‘regular as clockwork’ arrival time into Heathrow would be, from this day, missing from our skies – that we would never again witness its feminine, graceful contours as it accelerated away to its supersonic altitude.

Concorde was to be consigned to the history books. Could we believe that the fastest passenger aircraft ever, able to cross the Atlantic in the same time it takes a train to get from London to Manchester, would now be ignominiously fated to sit in a hangar, never to fly the skies again?

The world was witnessing the end of an era, and the British public along with all the workers who been a part of its history were mourning its fate. Concorde had been the miracle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The first Concorde (G-BOAE) landed at 4.01 p.m. from Edinburgh. This flight had left London in the morning. Many of its passengers for the return flight were British Airways (BA) staff who had been lucky enough to win standby tickets in a prize draw. They had flown from London to Edinburgh subsonic. In the Executive Lounge at Edinburgh Airport they had enjoyed a champagne style reception as they watched Concorde land to the sound of bagpipes and cheering crowds. Amongst the passengers was a group of British Airways cabin crew. They felt very sorry for the working crew who, as one said, ‘were very emotional. The crew hold Concorde very dear to their hearts.’ As they took off it wasn’t only the crew who were feeling the weight of the moment. For the passengers on board, the emotionally charged atmosphere must have been an ironic mix of a party and a funeral wake.

The second Concorde (G-BOAF), having completed a supersonic flight around the Bay of Biscay, followed at 4.03 p.m. Three minutes later, the final Concorde (G-BOAG), flight BA 002, landed from New York. This Concorde had departed from London the evening before. Its passengers, who were avid enthusiasts, had paid £9,000 for a ticket.

Concorde had experienced a wonderful send-off in New York, its departure commemorated by a water canon spray of blue, red and white to evoke the colours of Great Britain, France and America. As flight BA 002 made its final approach into Heathrow with all the grace and finesse of the great ballerina Darcy Bussell (who was herself on that flight), the event was, without doubt, a tear-jerking moment.

Few who witnessed the sight of Concorde’s final landing will forget the poignancy as Captain Mike Bannister taxied the aircraft and dipped Concorde’s nose in salute to the crowds, waving the Union Jack from out of the cockpit window. The air traffic controllers responded with the message, ‘The eagles have landed – welcome home.’

Chief Pilot Captain Bannister, who had joined the Concorde fleet in 1977 as its youngest pilot, commented that they had tried to make the day of Concorde’s retirement a celebration that both the public and airline could look back on with pride.

Flight 002 was a celebrity packed flight. Luminaries such as the BA chairman, Lord Marshall, Sir David Frost, the Duke of Kent and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber were on board. Sir Terence Conran, who two years earlier had redesigned the Concorde interior, was a guest along with Julien Macdonald, designer of the new BA uniforms. Actress Joan Collins and her husband, Percy Gibson, Jeremy Clarkson, politician Tony Benn and Bernie Ecclestone were all on the VIP passenger list.

Purser Julia van den Bosch is the longest serving Concorde stewardess. She joined it in 1976 and was on this last flight from New York. She shares her memories of the last flight:

We were all very aware that we were making history. When we arrived in New York the day before our last flight home, we sat down in the hotel and did a lot of signing of memorabilia and autographs and gave interviews. I had also given a lot of interviews in London before Concorde’s departure as the interest was global – journalists had arrived from all over the world. Before I left London, friends and neighbours were coming to my door asking me if I would take something belonging to them on the flight with me just so they could say it had been on Concorde’s last flight. They felt that strongly about it.

In New York we signed first day covers, flight certificates and gave each other mementos. We had the British Airways wine and food supervisors come to tell us exactly what we would be serving for the flight home and we went through the meal schedule. The evening concluded with a wonderful last night dinner at La Cirque.

The really strange thing was that British Airways would not allow the occasion to be written up as ‘sad’ and kept insisting that the last flight was a ‘celebration’ of Concorde, and we were all briefed accordingly. Of course the press spent the whole time trying to catch photos of us crying to prove the airline wrong!

None of us could feel that it was a celebration. It was an incredibly sad occasion, but equally we wanted to do our best. In one interview with the BBC I said that I wanted to say thank you to Concorde, because it had been quite some journey and I had done such wonderful things in my time with her. Likewise with the passengers, I think they all were very aware of the historical significance of the flight – especially as we had people on board who had been hugely connected with the aircraft right from the beginning.

The flight itself was chaotic – our cabin had all the press, two of whom, Mary Nightingale and Jeremy Bowen, were broadcasting live, and those who weren’t broadcasting live were trying to interview the celebs, so it was ‘Oh I’ll eat later’, or ‘leave it over there would you and I’ll get round to it’ – so I said to the crew, ‘We have to say no. There is no later, it’s now or never! And on this flight, we really mean it’s now or never!’

For all the crews who had worked on Concorde, the engineers, ground crew, pilots and cabin crew, it was the break-up of a close-knit family. The Concorde crews and staff were an elite group who never lost sight of the privilege of working on such a special aircraft. To fly Concorde was an unrivalled aviation experience.

To work on it was to be a part of a special team and at the forefront of the British Airways flagship. For the flight crew it meant keeping to the tight arrival and departure schedules. For the engineers it meant keeping Concorde up to its mechanical best and for the ground crew, to ensure the passengers check-in ran like clockwork. The cabin crew had to be at their most professional, with a service that was second to none, and the five-course meal served during the constrained flight time had to be as near perfect as possible, given the size of the supersonic restaurant and its 100 guests.

It must have been a supremely difficult decision for British Airways management to pull the plug on their flagship aircraft and many believe it was indeed a step backwards for mankind. Who can honestly say they never stopped to stand and stare as it flew overhead? Concorde never became mundane. Its familiarity in the skies never bred indifference. If it was still flying today I’m sure the same would be true. As it cruised over London just after 1800 hours, at the start of its Atlantic journey, and then the return flight from New York coming over just before 2200 hours, its unique engine noise never let one forget that overhead was an exotic and glamorous icon.

Another great British icon was Frankel, the nation’s favourite racehorse. He had bowed out of his spectacular racing career and experienced a similar exit on his retirement in 2012. Thousands of fans and ardent racegoers turned out to watch him at Ascot in his last ever race. It made headlines across the world. It was a sad day to see such a fine horse being retired to a stud farm. Frankel was a true thoroughbred and unbeaten in his race history. In the case of Concorde, however, there was no future generation to carry on the marvels of supersonic flight.

With her exceptional flying ability, Concorde was often described as a thoroughbred by the men and women who flew her. Jock Lowe, the longest serving pilot on the Concorde fleet and former president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, elucidates on this. He describes her as being more advanced than the Apollo 11 that put the first men on the moon and, in terms of manoeuvrability and power, she was on a par with or even better than any military aircraft of the time.

As a member of the Concorde cabin crew and flying supersonic at 60,000ft, it was for me another day of ‘going to the office’, and in this case going to the office was always a consummate adventure.

CONCORDE BEGINNINGSAND DESIGN ISSUES

The development of Concorde is a wonderfully intriguing story in itself. It was as early as 1956 that a British project was started with the view to developing a supersonic passenger aircraft, and two years later it had been agreed by the Supersonic Transport Advisory Committee that it was indeed a feasible project.

In 1962 the British and French governments signed an agreement for joint design, development and manufacture of a supersonic airliner. A workforce of over 200,000 were engaged on the project, which incidentally was on the same scale as the American space programme to the moon. Ten years later, British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) ordered five Concorde into production and Air France ordered four.

To get her to the stage of commercial operation there was, naturally, a huge amount of costly development and many obstacles to overcome and there is no question that flying ordinary men at an altitude of 60,000ft without space suits was one of the greatest technological achievements of the age. The intricacies of design and development were such amazing achievements for the time that it could be described as the new Elizabethan age in aircraft development. They are deserving of a book in themselves, of which there have been many superb ones written by the pilots.

However, some of the design development cannot be passed by without a mention. The simple, yet elegant shape of Concorde with the swept-back delta wing was unique to a passenger aircraft. Although efficient in supersonic flight, it was not brilliant at giving the aircraft the lift needed to propel it into the skies. Simple paper aeroplanes were used to test the wing shapes. This simple form of testing was revealed years later when papier mâché prototypes were uncovered in a dusty warehouse. These simple experiments graduated to wood then metal versions.

The Concorde wing has the appearance of total simplicity, but this was one area on the development side that took more attention than any other – 5,000 hours of testing was conducted in the wind tunnel. Looking at the delta-shaped wing head-on to the aircraft, the wing can be seen to twist and droop. As aircraft speeds have increased over time, the amount of ‘sweepback’ that can be seen on the wings has also increased. On traditional aircraft, the vortex (swirling air needed to give the aircraft lift) is formed on the wing tip. These can be seen on a damp day as an aircraft comes into land or take off. Trails of vapour are seen on the wing tips.

However, on Concorde’s delta wing, because of the higher angle of attack on take-off (most subsonic jets leave the runway at an angle of 3–4 degrees and Concorde’s angle of lift was 10–11 degrees), the vortices are formed along the entire wing tip. Thus, the end result of all the development was that the supersonic aircraft could fly at a complete range of speed, from the take-off speed, to fly gracefully at Mach 2 and then slowing down on her approach for landing.

Another massive challenge facing the designers of this innovative passenger aircraft was the issue over the air intakes. No jet engine can accept air into its compressors at supersonic speed. Necessarily the air had to be slowed by 1,000mph, from Mach 2 to Mach 0.5, in order to enter the engines. The British engineers achieved a feat that had never been done before with computers that technically were not in common use at the time. These computers controlled the flow of air into the engine via hydraulically powered ramps that moved up and down to control the airflow and reduce its speed.

A view inside Concorde’s cockpit. (Courtesy of Louise Brown)