I flew twice Concorde twice while working on an early telepresence project back in 1999-2000. Once on Air France and once on British Airways.<p>Things that stood out for me:<p>It is REALLY small inside, I bumped my head both times getting into the plane, and they just laugh and said "first time?"<p>Passengers were all 50-70 year old white men, no women at all on either flight I was on, I was the youngest person on both flights.<p>Takeoff is violent, Landing is more Violent, the Concorde was just not designed for low speeds. I thought something was wrong both landings, but that is just the way it lands. It felt like slamming into the ground at 100 MPH.<p>The windows were really tiny, just a few inches wide and probably thicker than they were wide. The view outside was amazing and you really had a sense of being at the edge of the atmosphere, but it was so hard to see it through the tiny little windows.<p>It was pretty amazing to be at a 9AM meeting in Europe and then make it back to New York for a 10 AM meeting.
Hey, I did. In the cockpit.<p>Well, OK, it wasnt a full-blown Concorde. It was an engine flight simulator at Rolls Royce in Bristol, England. (They made the engines.) Two of us from Control Data were installing software for a month at Rolls Royce. They let us stand in the simulator cockpit while the flight engineer controlled the engines. He had a flameout but recovered nicely.<p>Our office was at the en of the runway. Every day at noon, a Concorde would take off right over our office. Noisy beasties.
I flew the concorde NYC->London in 2000. The actual flight experience was underwhelming. The seats are narrow and you can't really 'feel' how fast you're going. I never heard or felt anything when we crossed the sonic barrier.<p>As for the good stuff: I loved crossing the atlantic in 3 and a half hours. I remember enjoying the caviar and a little too much bubbly. I also enjoyed the custom boarding process - everything was so damn convenient.<p>Nowadays I can still relive the experience by walking through the concorde stationed at the Seattle flight museum. My boys never get tired of me explaining how fast the plane goes or how the fuselage expands by a few inches during flight.
It was a different world back then (both the design and implementation of the Concorde). France and Britain both put billions into the program in the hopes of being on the leading edge of the supersonic revolution. Clearly they were the leading edge, but there was no revolution.<p>It was the small, slow 737 and A320 that really changed aviation. I can fly between cities for less than $50 (on special) in 2011. Price won out over service and speed.
Also on Quora: <a href="http://www.quora.com/Flying/What-was-it-like-to-fly-on-Concorde/answer/Rocky-Agrawal" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Flying/What-was-it-like-to-fly-on-Conco...</a>
| Concorde operations are from the International terminal at the airport, so even though we were not actually leaving the country we had to go through passport control.<p>I've always wondered why so many counties outside of the US require showing one's passport when <i>leaving</i> the country. Is there a restriction on leaving?
I flew on the Concorde at the EAA AirVenture (or whatever it was called back then) fly-in in 1994.<p>The thing I remember most about it was the ridiculously steep takeoff angle - that was when you could really tell you were on a different breed of aircraft than your standard Boeing.
My dad flew on the Concorde several times for business trips. He was actually on one of the flights that had to turn back to paris after an engine blew out (or something). Considering what happened to other flights, could have been a lot worse for my family...