Le Mythe Concorde : L'Histoire du Sensationnel Avion Supersonique (Documentaire, 2006)

Video from the channel wocomoFRANÇAIS about Concorde, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 52:22. Language: German. Video type: Documentary.

A 2006 documentary, dubbed into German, that traces the history of Concorde from the first attempts to break the sound barrier to its retirement. It combines the last flights in May 2003 in Paris, a commercial Air France flight between Paris and New York showing the cabin, passengers and crew, and testimony from test pilots André Turcat and Brian Trubshaw, along with material on the Tupolev Tu-144 and the 2000 crash.

The piece traces its origin to the first supersonic flight of the Bell X-1, piloted by Chuck Yeager in October 1947, and to European forerunners such as the delta wing of the Fairey Delta 2 and the French Trident. In June 1962, France and the United Kingdom signed a treaty obliging both to build the aircraft with no possibility of withdrawal. France kept prototype 001 and the first flight, which Turcat carried out on 2 March 1969 in Toulouse, landing after 27 minutes; the British 002 flew about five weeks later, and Trubshaw had to land by eye after both altimeters failed. The Soviet Union beat them with the Tu-144, which flew on 31 December 1968, but in 1973 one example crashed during an air show in Paris. That same year, rising oil prices and opposition in the United States led to the withdrawal of purchase options (the documentary mentions around 77) so that only the state airlines of France and the United Kingdom bought the aircraft.

According to the documentary, a round-trip ticket cost about 7,000 euros and the Paris–New York route took about three and a half hours. The aircraft used four afterburners on takeoff, and the fuselage lengthened by about 20 cm from the heat of supersonic flight. Every flight hour required 20 hours of maintenance, and a full overhaul was carried out every ten years. On 25 July 2000, a roughly 20 cm metal strip that had fallen from another aircraft onto the runway burst a tyre on flight AF 4590, and fragments pierced a fuel tank; the aircraft caught fire and crashed, killing 113 people. After reinforcing the tanks with Kevlar and changing the tyres, it returned to service a year later, but Air France and British Airways retired it in 2003. One example was sold for one euro to the Sinsheim museum.