The only photo of the Concorde flying at supersonic speed

Here is a monster pilot forum thread on Concorde that ends up pulling in senior engineers, pilots, aerodynamicists and even a former flight attendant. They lovingly go over every detail of the plane&#x27;s design and operation.<p>WARNING, serious temporal hazard. Do not click if you have work to do today or are supervising small children.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pprune.org&#x2F;tech-log&#x2F;423988-concorde-question.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pprune.org&#x2F;tech-log&#x2F;423988-concorde-question.htm...</a>

Boom Supersonic (US) has a Mach 1 test flight in 2 days, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aerotime.aero&#x2F;articles&#x2F;boom-supersonic-mach-one-speed-of-sound" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aerotime.aero&#x2F;articles&#x2F;boom-supersonic-mach-one-...</a><p>Test flight livestream (Tue Jan 28 6:45AM PST&#x2F;9:45AM EST&#x2F;2:45PM GMT), <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boomsupersonic.com&#x2F;flyby&#x2F;xb-1-supersonic-test-flight-mission" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boomsupersonic.com&#x2F;flyby&#x2F;xb-1-supersonic-test-flight...</a>

You can go and see a Concorde at Bristol Aerospace Museum[0], and walk inside it.<p>There is an absolutely bewildering array of dials and switches exposed to the pilots[1].<p>And they have lots of other aviation stuff at the museum, it&#x27;s not just Concorde. Other highlights include some very early planes, cut-away jet engines, and a cut-away section of a jumbo jet fuselage, so you can see the locations of pipes, tubes, cargo, etc. in relation to the seats. It is well worth a visit if you&#x27;re nearby.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aerospacebristol.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aerospacebristol.org&#x2F;</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;0vqv9qlx98m31.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;0vqv9qlx98m31.jpg</a>

It always saddens me that in the 1960s it took 7 hours to fly from NYC -&gt; London, and today, 60 years later, it still takes 7 hours to fly from NYC -&gt; London...<p>Apart from fuel efficiency improvements, there hasn&#x27;t been much innovation in the commercial commercial aerospace industry, with the exception of Boom&#x27;s supersonic passenger airplanes which is just now starting to become a reality.

Circa 2000, British Airways(?) did a competition for technical people&#x2F;students, and the prize was... to get to fly on the Concorde. I remember thinking &quot;big whoop&quot;, and didn&#x27;t enter. Not knowing that the Concorde would soon never fly again.

I was fortunate to travel in one of these, back in 1996 - London to New York.<p>(BA was offering some sweet deals to staff at partner airlines, at about 10% of retail pricing.)<p>At the time there was no expectation that we&#x27;d regress, though had I been more <i>generally aware</i> I&#x27;d have noticed the lack of next-gen SST R&amp;D during Concorde&#x27;s operational lifetime.<p>I recall they flew one out to Sydney Australia in the mid 1980&#x27;s, but I think appetite was quite low, probably from both regulators and small market size -- despite the obvious appeal (it&#x27;s about 24h flight time <i>still</i> in conventional commercial passenger jets, to get to the antipodes).

It should be noted you can see the curvature of the earth in the photo.<p>As I understand it, that was one of the perks of the Concorde in that in flew so high that the passengers could see this as well.

I remember at school at lunch time we’d see a Concorde fly overhead, just sort of got used to it.

As much as I appreciate being able to fly for relatively cheap, I think we can all agree that deregulation and fuel costs absolutely destroyed this kind of innovation for commercial air travel.<p>I wish I was old and well-off enough to take a flight on that majestic bird.

&quot;Meanwhile, the Concorde continued its effortless cruise toward New York’s JFK Airport.&quot;<p>i.e. it used only 4,800 US gallons per hour of fuel (a 747 burns around 3600 gallons&#x2F;h). Not what I would label &quot;effortless&quot;, but not nearly as bad as I expected.

There is a story about Concorde chasing a solar eclipse for an hour.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1973_Concorde_eclipse_flight" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1973_Concorde_eclipse_flight</a>

Seems strange that&#x27;s the only photo. They never made test flights in pairs to monitor each other? And during these tests they didn&#x27;t take any photos?

It says that it was fastest airliner with 2.05 Mach, but Tu-144 was faster with 2.15 Mach

Somewhere an SR-71 pilot is definitely rolling his eyes.<p>Only publicity photo, surely.