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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Braniff International, now defunct for more than a decade, is the only U.S. airline ever to play a role in the Concorde story. In 1979 the eccentric, Dallas-based carrier, which once contracted Alexander Calder to paint two of its airplanes by hand, operated Concorde as part of a code-share partnership with British Airways and Air France. Flown by Braniff pilots and carrying U.S. registrations, Concordes flew (alas, subsonically) between Dallas-Fort Worth and Dulles. Although crewed and registered by the U.S. airline, it never wore a Braniff livery.
Ticketless, but using my airline credentials, I once tried to talk my way aboard Concorde at JFK to snap a few photos of its flight deck. This was a few years ago, when skulking around an airport terminal didn't necessarily rouse the suspicion of employees, security guards or federal officials. My cargo-pilot identification issued by "the world's most experienced shipping company" was apparently not impressive enough for "the world's favourite airline." I was handed a pair of authentic Concorde baggage tags and sent on my way.
British Airways always parked its Concordes at JFK's Gate 1, closest to the interterminal road, giving those of us stuck in cabs or stuffed into shuttle buses a view of what we were missing. One of the inevitable remarks from those seeing it for the first time had nothing to do with how pretty or graceful it looked. It was about the windows: how small they appeared. Indeed, they were small -- tiny portholes from which, at 60,000 feet, roughly twice the average cruising altitude of most jets, the curvature of the earth could clearly be seen below. Their diminutive size was a concession to the extreme differential between the pressure of the cabin air and that of the lower stratosphere outside.
On the same day that B.A. turned me away, I made it over to the sparkling new Air France terminal, whose staff wasn't any more helpful. The marquee at the Club L'Espace lounge announced that Flight 2 would be departing shortly for Paris. Concorde uses these low and suggestively prestigious flight numbers. As a pilot, you hear them on the radio sometimes: "Speedbird 1, roger, cleared for ILS approach to Runway 31 left."
The Air France man sent me away like some kind of curiosity-seeking oddball. ("Oh, you wan' to look at ze era-plen, do you?") No Club L'Espace for me. So I got a look at the plane -- or at least its tail -- from the upstairs food court, kitty-corner to the windows, while eating a Supersize Big Mac Value Meal.
But that, in some sense, was perfect. I couldn't have been happier about not getting to see Concorde that day at Kennedy. The mystique. That's what Concorde was all about.
And, of course, it never crashed.
Not until July 25, 2000. On that day at Charles de Gaulle Airport, an Air France Concorde readied for takeoff. This particular ship, registered as F-BTSC, had been mothballed for some time. Only recently, the airline had given it an overhaul and pressed it back into service. It was the same aircraft that had once been borrowed for the filming of "Airport '79," and had even shuttled Pope John Paul II. Today its manifest included a full complement of 100 passengers, a group of German tourists headed initially to New York, and from there to catch a cruise boat in Ecuador. It was a charter flight, not the regular departure to JFK.
As the plane accelerated along the runway, it struck an L-shaped piece of titanium debris. Investigators would later determine this piece had fallen from a Continental Airlines DC-10 that had taken off for Houston. Upon impact, one of Concorde's tires burst violently. It did so in a manner, as British Airways pilot Mike Bannister recently told Airways magazine, that four different tire manufacturers all reported they had never seen in 40 years of aviation.
As is so often the scenario when it comes to air disasters, a chain of highly improbable events was about to end the lives of all those aboard. Down in the undercarriage, Concorde was playing the lottery with fate, and its number had come up, just as it might for a commuter plane to Dubuque or a cargo flight to Madagascar.
