Mach 1 ride on Concorde at Oshkosh 88!

(image courtesy of Dave Hamster. Released under a Creative Commons Attribution license)

It's not often I'll pimp a fairly low quality Youtube video here on the Flying Cafe. But I saw this video on Concorde and figured "What The Hell"

This is a download of a VHS video taken on board a BA Concorde back at the Oshkosh Air Show in 1988.

With the demise of Concorde a few years ago it's impossible for videos like this to be made any more. The high cost of doing something like sending a supersonic plane (one of only 13/14 in existence) to an air show made this prohibitive even before the plane was canceled. Now of course there are no airworthy versions left which means this is a time capsule to the past.

A couple of things to notice. I believe that even on regular flights the cockpit door was left open during the journey and people were allowed to wonder up to the cockpit as they desired (although I'm not sure how this changed after 9/11). According to Dave Gunson the Mach meter isn't actually attached to the instrumentation it's just one of the cabin crew cranking it up behind the scenes (although I'm pretty sure that isn't true). It is true that you can balance a 50p coin on the tray table as the plane transitions through the sound barrier and it will not fall over. It's that smooth.

Just to put the flight in the video in perspective, at the time the Concorde went out of service a transatlantic return ticket LHR to JFK retailed at around $10,000 (£6000). That equates to around £1000 ($1600) per hour for the flight. For this you got a narrow, cramped, leather seat, tiny windows and very little in terms of in-flight movies etc. But you did also get first class cuisine, free champagne, a view of the curvature of the earth from 60,000 ft, priority landing at LHR on the runway closest to the terminal (regardless of the runway in use) and the luxury of knowing that you have bought the one thing that money cannot buy - time: A 10am departure from LHR would get you into JFK at 9.30am, giving you time to hold an important meeting and catch the return flight to arrive back in London on the day you left.

I lived in London for many years and saw, literally, thousands of flights head over the city towards Heathrow. Almost without exception the only plane that made me and other Londoners stop and look twice a day was the Concorde. A fabulous plane.

Has anyone else reading this flown Concorde? Loved it? Loathed it?

Thanks to airpigz for the video which has recently been updated.