Waypoints

Editor in Chief Thomas B. Haines still awaits his chance to fly supersonic.

An era ends late this month when a British Airways Concorde touches down. As that beautifully sculpted delta wing stops lifting that sensually slender and curved fuselage, the days of commercial supersonic transport on this planet will end — at least for the foreseeable future (see " Later, Concorde," page 87). Oh, the hopes the world had three decades ago when Concorde first took to the skies. Instead of the envisioned mass transit, Concorde became the domain of the rich and influential — and a few of us who happened to eke out a ride nonetheless.

For years after our one encounter, Concorde provided a weekly reminder of my surreal ride. On Saturday afternoons at about 4:15 when I would be in the backyard working in the garden, playing with the kids, or simply lounging around, Concorde would thunder a greeting as it roared down the ridgeline just west of my house, headed for a landing at Washington Dulles International Airport. There was no missing the distinctive rumble of those four big Rolls-Royce Olympus engines even as the sexy craft loafed along at approach speeds.

The greetings ceased about six or seven years ago when British Airways stopped Concorde service to Dulles. I felt like I had lost a friend. But I'll always have the memory of that late July day in 1988 when I took a commuter to New York's Kennedy International Airport. There I snaked my way through the massive terminal to the British Airways gates and found the Concorde lounge — a special opulently decorated hangout for passengers waiting for the express ride back across the Atlantic, at speeds literally faster than a bullet.

For me, though, this Concorde ride would take me west to Oshkosh, for a landing at what is today called EAA Air-Venture. It was just a convention and airshow back in the Reagan era. Concorde was scheduled to be displayed at Oshkosh, so a tour company had booked it as a charter from London, mostly filling it with Brits anxious to see that great American aviation spectacle in Wisconsin. The airplane stopped in New York City to refuel, since transatlantic is about as far as you can stretch a Concorde's range, and to clear U.S. Customs. It seems that a few of the passengers had no interest in aviation and were planning on deplaning in New York (unimaginable, I know). My good fortune was to snag one of those empty seats for the flight from New York to Oshkosh.

Peering out the lounge windows at the ethereal bird, I notice that Capt. John Cook has followed procedure and brought the visor up, preserving Concorde's sleek look on the ground. Taxi and takeoff/landing are made with the nose drooped to give the pilots better visibility at slow speeds. But on the ground, the captains usually bring the nose back up to make her look all the sleeker.

With only 100 seats, loading goes fast. First impressions are that this is a small airplane. Except for those of us who are height challenged, most people walk down the single aisle hunched over. The diminutive windows give only a glimpse of the outside world. The seats are small but luxurious. Just before takeoff, the flight attendants cram the restrooms floor to ceiling with cases of champagne because there's no place else to put them.

With a full-afterburner takeoff, Concorde makes its presence known to the neighborhood. Inside, you really are pressed back in your seat. But shortly after takeoff and with a warning from the cockpit, Cook shuts down the afterburners (reheats, the Brits call them), giving passengers the feeling that the airplane has stopped in midair. In fact, we're still climbing steeply at a good clip.

As we cruise toward Oshkosh the digital readout on the forward bulkhead ratchets upward — Mach 0.82, 0.85, 0.90, 0.92, 0.95, 0.96. But alas, it hangs up at around 0.96, Cook following the rules that Concorde isn't allowed to go supersonic over land.

Later in the flight as I visit the cramped cockpit festooned with old-fashioned steam gauges, I suggest to Cook that maybe it would be OK if I, a bumbling passenger, perhaps mistakenly shove the thrust levers forward a bit and well, if we happen to go supersonic it wouldn't be his fault. He peers through steely eyes at this twenty-something as if I've grown a second head. He then grins and reminds me that retirement is within sight and he's not about to let me tarnish his record.

Concorde descends over the Wisconsin countryside and soon the Oshkosh airport complex appears out the side windows — thousands of airplanes and hundreds of thousands of people. I learn later that the crowds anticipating our arrival began lining the runways hours before. As we pass midfield at about 500 feet, Cook lights the reheats and that spectacular airplane rockets forward and upward. Later, Marc Cook (no relation to the captain), then also an Associate Editor at Pilot, described the scene from the ground: "The sound waves from the four Olympus turbojets trailed behind the gleaming white jet a tearing-sheet sort of roar, the unmistakable sound of pure, unadulterated thrust."

Inside the narrow cabin, the passengers glimpse the crowd cheering and clapping as Capt. Cook takes us around for another pass, and then another before finally setting the craft gently on its tall gear.

As we park in the display nose-to-nose with a Rockwell B-1B bomber, the crowds swarm the airplane. Crews maneuver the airstairs to the forward door and we deplane into the throng. It's the only time in many subsequent visits to Oshkosh that I arrive wearing a jacket and tie. I have a prized picture snapped by a colleague in the crowd ahead of me, wearing a younger man's clothes and, for some reason, a red carnation, descending the air-stair into a sea of heads. As I reach the bottom step, a man from the crowd grabs my arm. "Tell me about it! Was it fun?" I am too stunned to answer. "Thrilling" seems such a lame answer, but it is all I can muster at that moment. Fifteen years later I still struggle for the right adjective.

Thanks, Concorde, for such a memorable first visit to Oshkosh. I miss you in the neighborhood.

E-mail the author at [email protected].

Learn the latest on engines

No doubt about it, engine technology drives the development of new airframes. All of the new personal jets in development are possible only because of new small turbine engines. But what about engine development for light airplanes? There's more going on than you might think.

Join me at 3 p.m. October 31 at AOPA Expo 2003 as I host a panel discussion on developments in aircraft engines. Leaders from all of the major manufacturers and a number of companies with engines in development are scheduled to appear. Learn the details of the new Thielert and SMA diesels. Continental will talk about its R&D work with Honda and about its own work on the revolutionary GAP engine. Hear the vision of the future from the establishment at Lycoming and from newcomers Bombardier and Superior Air Parts. Even secretive Toyota at this writing has expressed an interest in participating. See you there. — TBH