B S D Chapman mail-at-benchapman-dot-co-dot-uk wrote in message ...
On 4 Feb 2004 23:29:54 -0800, pacplyer wrote:

IMHO, best to retire that fine old girl before she starts falling out
of the sky like the Commet.

Hmmm.
The comparison with the commet is most unfair - to both aircraft.
Commet fell out of the sky because of the lack of understanding about
metal fatigue.

I thought the rudder tear-aways that happened several times on the
Concord were design/operator metal fatique problems. I would say that
there are only a few supersonic airframes the size of the concord that
have ever flown. Just like Commet's square windows with repeated
pressure vessel expansion and contraction, the behavior of large
vertical stab structural members over thirty years at mach numbers is
unknown except on Concord and Blackbird. Wouldn't you say?

As well, the lack of a robust wheel-well area that could not allow for
tire fragments at 200mph seems like another pioneering shortfall just
like square windows on a pressurized fuselage. My comments were not
meant to denigrate either spectacular flying machine, just to point
out that these were the first of their kind out of the gate, and that
without good factory/national support the continued operation of a
sole example seems risky at best. (but I too would like to see it fly
again.)


Pressurisation was a new thing for the airliner industry.
It was a tragic design flaw (which may or may not have been covered up)
that everyone in the world learnt from - not least Boeing.

I can't argue with that. Those falling Commets probably led to boeing
overdesigning the 707. My dad flew those tanks and was shocked later
at how the DC10 fuselage "flexes me all over the place." I too flew
the "deathcruiser" as we called it for one year, and I agree: I've
never heard so much cracking and snapping as that thing did especially
in descent or in turns on the ground.


The second
generation of Commet lasted many years... and 19 of those airframes will
be arround for another 20 years

Flyable? I didn't know that. Are you sure?


(with just a minor overhaul costing
billions of pounds of course!!!)

Concorde on the other hand has been amazingly successful considering the
boundries the designers had to cross. More amazing that the one fatal
accident it has had was nothing to do with the design around those
boundries.




I agree. The fact that it grows six inches in flight boggles the
mind. Something about the pax rolling along on rollers!

Best Regards,

pacplyer - out





B S D Chapman mail-at-benchapman-dot-co-dot-uk wrote in message
...
On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 15:59:20 +0000, Peter

wrote:


B S D Chapman mail-at-benchapman-dot-co-dot-uk wrote:

Airbus wanted to withdraw the Type Certificate (in other words, their
support for the aircraft), without which the PTCoA could not be
maintained.

Ok, but that leads to the question as to WHY they wanted to withdraw
it.

I've got a customer who wants to buy an old obsolete product which I
discontinued years ago and which is a pig to make, so I quoted him a
high price. I didn't tell him to go away. So there is more to this
story.

That's exactly what Airbus did.
They said that they would tripple their costs from October 2003. If
that
wasn't acceptable to the airlines, then they would drop their support
for
the Type Certificate.

Airbus didn't want concorde on their conscience anymore. It was simply
bad press. Since the Paris accident, every engine surge and maintenance
related delay has been headline news, as if another concorde was about
to
drop out of the sky. Add to that the real problem of rudder failures,
and
you have Bad Press every month.

What if?

Airbus wanted to drop concorde because it was too hot to handle for
them.
Sad thing is of course, that in the public eye, airbus had f**k all to
do
with the project!!!

So they priced themselves out of the market.