Concorde, Glancey - B

                                              I have taken over 3,000 plane rides; I don't have a bucket list. I have a few regrets and one is the fact that I never flew one of the  20 Concordes that once graced our skies. The idea of supersonic commercial passenger transport was conceived in London on Guy Fawkes Day in 1956. Considering that a decade after the war, the UK had just ended food rationing, the idea was quite ambitious. The technological and development challenges were such that the French were enlisted as partners.  "The key to Concorde's success, indeed its very existence, was the design of its wing. This proved to be the greatest compromise in its design, a brilliant trade-off between low-speed lift and  high-speed flight...But ultimately, Concorde's Anglo-French design team turned each and every necessary compromise into an opportunity to shape a supersonic airliner that performed exceptionally well in almost all circumstances." On Dec. 11, 1967,  Concorde 001 rolled off the line. A decade of trials, assessments and 'noise' challenges followed. NY's Port Authority wouldn't allow the plane at JFK and it took a Supreme Court case to set aside that objection. Although the plane flew all around the world, it was the trans-Atlantic flights between London and Paris to JFK and back  that became the consistent bread and butter route for the Concorde. It turned out to be a safe, predictable plane that was a joy to fly.  On average, both BA and Air France had about 20 elite flight crews over the 26 years the plane flew. The cockpit and flight deck were old-fashioned analog and would have been familiar to a WW2 aviator.  Meals and libations were of the highest quality; because the flights were short, there was no entertainment. The Concorde was a target of environmentalists throughout its life because of the sonic boom and its vast consumption of fuel. Its perfect safety record was marred by a fatal crash just after a Paris take-off in 2000. The cause had been debris on the ground and the plane was re-certified in Nov, 2001. The post-9/11 swoon in the economy and the rising costs and availability of replacement parts led to its retirement in 2003. "Concorde, at heart the most poetic of machines, was not destined to fly into this era of Airbuses and prosaic flight." There are three exhibited in America: in Seattle, in the Smithsonian Annex in Virginia, and in Manhattan with the Intrepid.