For more details on how to get to the Museum click here. Museum opening times and admission prices. Find Concorde on our Interactive Map. Brooklands Museum is a large open-air museum with many period buildings and exhibits, some with stepped access.
There is no wheelchair access on board our aeroplanes, which all have steps including Concorde. We use cookies to improve your browsing experience.
Learn more I Accept. Home Concorde Concorde Experience. Concorde Experience. Book Tickets. Pre-Flight Briefing under Concorde. First the de Havilland Comet and later, the Boeing , greatly increased the speed of travel from to over mile per hour. Airlines and customers flocked to the new jet airliners as travel times were cut dramatically and the seat-mile costs to the airlines dropped.
The conclusion drawn by engineers, managers, and politicians seemed clear: the faster the better. In November , in a move reminiscent of the Entente Cordiale of , the two nations agreed to pool their resources and share the risks in building this new aircraft. They also hoped to highlight Europe's growing economic unity as well as its aerospace expertise in a dramatic and risky bid to supplant the United States as the leader in commercial aviation.
The aircraft's name reflected the shared hopes of each nation for success through cooperation - Concorde. Quickly the designers at the British Aircraft Corporation and Sud Aviation, later reorganized as Aerospatiale, settled on a slim, graceful form featuring an ogival delta wing that possessed excellent low speed and high speed handling characteristics.
Realizing that this first generation SST would cater to the wealthier passenger, Concorde's designers created an aircraft that carried only seats in tight four-across rows. They assumed that first class passengers would flock to the Concorde to save valuable time while economy class passengers would remain in larger, but slower subsonic airliners. Despite mounting costs that constantly threatened the program, construction continued with exactly 50 percent of each aircraft built in each country.
The first Concorde was ready for flight in With famed French test pilot Andre Turcot at the controls, Concorde , which was assembled at Toulouse, took to the air on March 2, Although the Soviets had flown their version of the SST first, the Tupolev Tu had been rushed into production and suffered from technological problems that could never be solved.
Following the successful first flight a total of four prototype and preproduction Concordes were built and thoroughly tested and by , the first of 16 production Concordes were ready for service. Twenty were built in all. But all was not rosy. During this time America sought to produce its own bigger and faster SST. After a contentious political debate, the federal government refused to back the project in citing environmental problems, particularly noise, the sonic boom, and engine emissions that were thought to harm the upper atmosphere.
More ominously for Concorde, no airlines placed orders for this advanced SST. Despite initial enthusiasm, the airlines dropped their purchase options once they calculated the operating costs of the Concorde. Consequently only Air France and British Airways - the national airlines of their respective countries - flew the 16 production aircraft and only after purchasing them from their governments at virtually no cost. A technological masterpiece, each Concorde smoothly transitioned to supersonic flight with no discernable disturbance to the passenger.
In service, the Concorde would cruise at twice the speed of sound between 55, and 60, feet - so high that passengers could actually see the curvature of the Earth. The Concorde was so fast that, despite the outside temperature of less than degrees Celsius, the aircraft's aluminum skin would heat up to over degrees Celsius while the Concorde actually expanded 8 inches in length with the interior of the window gradually growing quite warm to the touch.
And all the while each passenger was carefully attended to while enjoying a magnificent meal and superb service. This means with the Concorde's low speed at take-off and landing the aircraft must fly in a nose up position.
To improve the pilot's forward view the entire nose section forward of the windshield is drooped during take-off and landing. Concorde's delta wing shape is reasonably stable throughout the flight envelope.
However, during acceleration from subsonic to supersonic flight the point at which the aircraft is supported by the air, called aerodynamic centre of pressure, moves rearwards, this affects the balance and handling of the aircraft. Concorde uses a group of trim transfer tanks to maintain the balance of the aircraft by transferring fuel rearwards during acceleration to supersonic flight and forwards during the return to subsonic flight.
Concorde requires very powerful engines. The engines themselves are of a conventional design just as would be fitted to any fighter aircraft. However, Concorde operates over a much wider speed range than a subsonic aircraft and the necessity to supply the engines with the correct amount of air and at a speed which the engine can handle, has led to the development of a variable intake and exhaust system.
This system works by changing the amount of air that can enter the engines by narrowing the intake area when the aircraft speed increases. This enables the air entering the engine to be kept at a similar speed throughout the aircraft's speed range.
Concorde uses a reheat system to achieve its high speeds. This increases the thrust that the engines produce and propels the aircraft forward at a faster rate.
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