Concorde : la folle aventure du supersonique

Video from the channel TF1 INFO about Concorde, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 13:15. Language: French. Video type: Documentary.

TF1 report broadcast 21 years after Concorde's last landing. It brings together those who keep its memory alive in France: a former Air France head cabin crew member who still keeps her uniforms, the Cap Avenir Concorde association from Toulouse, which holds about 300 parts rescued from the aircraft, an enthusiast who drives the roads in a car decorated with its image, the volunteers who clean the aircraft on display at the Le Bourget museum, and a mechanic who maintained it for four decades.

The report looks back at a design begun in 1962 without computers, with drawings made by hand and at full scale, and the first flight in Toulouse on 2 March 1969. It continues with the flight tests, the promotional tours and entry into commercial service in 1976, with passengers such as Queen Elizabeth and Fidel Castro. A 95-year-old test pilot recalls exceeding Mach 1 in 1969, landing in a storm at the Pompidou-Nixon summit in the Azores in 1971, and the Shah's transfer to Tehran in June 1974.

The report cites a round-trip ticket costing 8,600 euros, an altitude of up to 18,000 metres, a sonic boom of over 100 decibels on the ground, and about 1,200 kg of kerosene per passenger to cross the Atlantic, at least five times more than a subsonic aircraft. Its commercial launch coincided with the first oil shock of 1973. The Gonesse accident in July 2000 killed 113 people, and after flights resumed, low occupancy led to its retirement in 2003. It also highlights the carbon brakes and fly-by-wire flight controls that Airbus later made use of.