Customer Reviews

Flying Concorde

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This book talks about the design of the aircraft and flight operations first. Then it goes on to describe flight testing and the history of the aircraft.

It is a special plane and it is flown in a special way. It is a must have for those curious about the concorde.

I looked at a number of Concorde books, and this one and Orlebar's Concorde Story stood out.

This one is easy to read, very informative, talks about the technology without getting too detailed and talks about some of the politics and difficulty without getting caught up on it.

It's black and white and medium format, so the Orlebar makes a nice color complement to it.

Enjoy

Brian Calvert had the unique perspective of flying both pre-production and in-service models of the Concorde which is pretty rare in this business. Often test pilots test and airline pilots fly passengers, rarely is there crossover. Additionally, Brian was among one of the first pilots at many different destinations with the Concorde. I read the 2nd Edition which is not as updated as the one for sale now, it only went up through 1989 which things were looking very good for the craft.

It has a good balance of technical vs. stories so the non-pilot will never be bored. The sheer number of innovations on the machine are fascinating to hear about and how it's competitors all failed to be built with the exception of the TU-144 which was its own horrorshow. Most interesting fact: they did NOT test a two-engine failure at Mach 2 because the same type of testing crashed two American B-58 Hustlers and they knew that loss of a single test article would mean the end of the program. I did enjoy learning the stories behind the FUD campaign (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) with respect to SST engine noise and sonic booms which were two things the public did not know the difference about.

The Concorde flies from New York to London New York to Paris
Washington,D.C. to London Washington,D.C. to Paris.
Air France/British Airways. they use the Concorde on the set of The Concorde Airport 79.