Concorde Jet Undergoing $22 Million Recommission

I don't know if they have the money and political power to make it happen, but I hope they do.

 

To make what happen again?

Fly a passenger aircraft that never made money?

Or have a flying show piece that supports itself by performing airshows, charging admission for interior tours, and charitable donations from individuals (ala the CAF)?

 

Flying Heritage Piece..kind of like the RAF did with the Vulcan, Spitfire, Hurricane, Mosquito, etc. Or yues, the CAF.

While it never made money from pax ops, it is still an impressive piece of engineering.

 

Believe it or not, Vulcan XH558 is not connected to the RAF but operated by a private group. A bit more enlightened than the US. I spent a couple summers in college helping some ConVair/GD folks restore the last B-36 at GSW. Everyone said, "Yeah, yeah, do what you can." When we got the hydraulics and 3 4360s working, the Air Force stepped in and said, "We are not going to give you an intercontinental nuclear bomber to play with." Ended up cutting the fuselage and trucking it to Carswell. It was kicked out of its hanger there a few years ago and trucked to Pima.

 

It's a common misconception that the Concorde never made money... it didn't make money initially as the public's perception was that the tickets were expensive, hence they weren't buying tickets, when the price was raised to expectations the plane became very profitable, making BA about 50 million pounds a year across the fleet.

 

If I recall correctly the problem was pushback from those who thought it was too inefficient to continue service.

 

Recently the USAF has proven to be almost as prickly as the Navy. The Navy earlier told a salvage ops that IF they raised a very rare Helldiver (if I remember correctly) it BELONGED to the NAVY. And recently the CAF suffered a setback when the USAF sued and took back the ONLY F-82 that was being readied for flight.

As for the Brits, they have stuff that flies but they keep a very tight lid on it and it is doubtful they will let Concorde fly. Still, one can hope.

There are some things on Concorde that were not available at auction such as the fuel control units for the Olympus engines. The story was that long ago, the Russians approached the Brits for some help with their Tu-144. They wanted the fuel control units. As anyone with a bit of historical perspective remembers, the Brits sold license copies of their jet engine in the late 40s and it showed up in the MiG-15. Anyway, the story is that once again the Brits were willing to help until someone pointed out that the engines in the -144 were the SAME engines as in the Backfire and any increase in the -144s range was an increase in the Backfire's range. So.. no sale.