Reflections on the Concorde

I wonder why they took the Concorde offline. Granted, it was dirty, loud, and expensive. It was also one of the best-built airplanes in the world. This fast, sexy beast could fly like a fighter. Nothing surpassed it for looks, except maybe the B-1 Lancer. You could fly from Washington, DC—one of the few metro areas that allowed it to land, because of the noise—and Paris, halfway around the world, in 3½ hours.

I’m a trains, not a planes kind of guy, but I could soldier through 3½ hours without a cigarette. Rumor has it that they’ll let you light up on a trans-Atlantic flight, but being a white-knuckle flier, I resent the domestic ban on smoking. I don’t puff my pollutants into the faces of fellow passengers, and I’ll willingly retreat to the restroom if that’s what it takes. I’m convinced, however, that if I get on an airplane, there are a lot of things besides cigarettes that will kill me before my feet touch ground again.

So, why was the most elegant, well-engineered plane in history pulled offline? Yeah—the interior was small; some would say cramped. Anyone who has been packed into the slaughterhouse of a contemporary airline’s 757 might take issue with that.

The Concorde had one lousy crash. One, and that due to foreign object damage, an FOD. When an airliner breaks, it falls like a rock. That’s the major reason I take trains. Once you are on the ground, you go no further.

If I have to board an airplane, I want to travel faster than the speed of sound, and guzzle vast quantities of champagne in flight. The Concorde offered both options.

One crash, and the greatest plane in the history of aviation is gone. It’s a late date, but I want to know why.