Concorde, Adieu!

4 June, 2014
Houston


In my 5th Grade class in a little school in New Orleans, I first read of the future of air travel, and how it would look. Artsts' conceptions of those Land of Tomorrow craft were fascinating. The date of the article was September 27, 1963. The concept had been unveiled publicly in January of the previous year.


Five years later, On 31 December, 1968, the first test flight of a Russian Tupolev SST was made, and the era of the SuperSonic Transport had arrived. Just two months after the Tupolev, on March 2, 1969, the first test flight of the joint British/French SuperSonic Transport (SST) was made.


In 1976, the world officially entered a brief era of SuperSonic air travel. And on May 21 of that year, I got a glimpse of the Concorde for the first time as it visited New Orleans, bringing with it the President of France, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

It was the U.S Bicentennial, and the state visit was to commemorate it. Airline Highway was lined with parked cars as thousands of people thronged to see the plane and it's illustrious occupant. It was, as they used to say, a "two-fer" meaning two for the price of one. I was working in that general area, so I was able to watch the beautiful "White Bird" land. What a sight!

The takeoff was televised the following day, as Mr. d'Estaing returned to France. Many thought the use of the Concorde was ostentatious and extravagant, and there is some merit to that argument - particularly if one is a French taxpayer. but the French were always so proud of this achievement, and to see French on the cutting edge of technology was indeed heartwarming and inspiring to the folks back home. Nothing succeeds like success!

And succeed it did. The plane went into service in several markets, and some two dozen were constructed, including a Russian "Concordsky".

During those twenty years since it landed in New Orleans,  I never got to see the Concorde - on the ground or in flight. In 1996, I became a flight attendant and because of my proficiency in the French language, I was able to work the Newark/Orly routes.  I was transferred to Houston, and a few years after that we began flying from Houston to Charles deGaulle, instead of to Orly.

On one of my first departures from CDG, we were awaiting takeoff, and to my utter delight, I saw from my jumpseat, the Concorde take off right by our plane. The roar of the engines was tremendous and mighty, and it was a thrill to see something like this so up-close.

After that, seeing the Concorde got to be a regular thing. I saw it takeoff, taxi, land, and even saw one in storage: Twice we were assigned a hard-stand - away from the terminal. We showed up well before it was time to board the passengers, and we were right next to one of the Concordes. So we walked over to it and the ramp was up. One of the airport ground staff was kind enough to let us in both times.

The inside of the craft was TINY! The windows were much smaller than I thought: they were about the size of an index card! And the galley was so small that only one single smaller person would possibly fit inside. Talk about claustrophobia! No matter: the trips didn't last long anyway.

I never got tired of seeing "l'Oiseau Blanc" (The White Bird" as the French called it) and I saw it often enough - nearly every week. My favorite times were the  Independence Day celebrations on Bastille Day (14 July). There is always much pomp and pageantry: a huge French flag waves gallantly in the wind hanging from the Arc de Triomphe, and the French Air Force sends dozens of planes to fly overhead in a dazzling display. And there out yonder, ahead of them all, leading the leaders, would come the Concorde, flanked by a  half-dozen fighter jets streaming red, white, and blue smoke. I watched this from the hotel window - and it was impressive to see the planes fly overhead!

Then the Millennium came! The Y2K computer threat that everybody said would shut down the world only turned out to be worry for nothing, thank goodness. We were now flying new Boeing 777's into CDG, and began to slowly eliminate the DC-10 from our fleet.

One day we were taxi-ing for takeoff, standing in our safety demo positions, when we felt the plane shudder, and heard a muffled BOOMFF! The plane came to a quick stop. The girl on the aisle opposite me looked at me and I looked at her as if to ask each other: "OK, NOW what?" We aborted our takeoff and returned to the terminal. We had blown a tire. That was it - a small thing, really, a blown tire.

It was repaired within a half hour, and the captain came back on, and showed us the reason for our blown tire: we had picked up a piece of metal on the taxiway that had punctured one of them. I suppose those things do happen. We took off, and I didn't give the incident another thought.

Soon enough, hard study had netted me a chance to fly to Japan as a Japanese speaker. It was an apprentice-type stint to enable me to improve my Japanese by actually flying to Japan!  I left Paris, Charles deGaulle Airport, and the Concorde behind, and began doing runs to Narita. I was enjoying this new experience, and nearly finished my second month. A few days after getting back from a trip, I turned on the news to learn that a Concorde had crashed on takeoff at Charles deGaulle Airport!  I watched the TV transfixed: What happened? What went wrong?

Over 100 people were dead, including everyone aboard the Concorde, plus some people in a hotel the plane hit as it crashed. I must have seen the amateur videos 100 times. It was so sad.




An investigation was made, of course, and it was eventually determined that the Concorde crashed because it blew a tire. IT BLEW A TIRE!! It had picked up a piece of metal from the runway. THAT also sounded very familiar. "Don't they clean those runways?" I asked rhetorically.

The disaster hit closer to home when it was eventually determined that the piece of debris that caused the tire to blow came from one of my company's planes! Apparently, one of the few DC-10's we still had in operation had dropped some piece of metal onto the runway, and this happened just prior to the Concorde's takeoff.

A show-trial was held in which, according to Continental's own lawyer, the French judges would here little of the American side, and there were many valid points to consider that were ignored. So much for French justice.

Besides the tragic loss of the individual aircraft and all the people, there was yet another victim to all this: the Concorde aircraft itself. Service was suspended, and a tremendous battle ensued to eliminate the aircraft entirely because of safety concerns. There were those who had always been opposed to such an extravagant aircraft, and there were others who complained the plane was a money loser.

When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, the bell tolled the death knell for the Concorde. The planes were parked and stood empty.

It was a Saturday, the 14th of June, 2003. We had a bumpy "rough" landing at CDG, deplaned the passengers, and boarded our crew bus for the hour-long ride to the hotel. As we headed out onto the highway, near leBourget Airport, we saw, for the very last time, the Concorde fly. The F-BTSD, being donated to the air museum at le Bourget, had taken off from Charles deGaulle airport, and flew overhead low and slow. We watched as the plane made a slow, wide circle over Paris to say adieu, and all of us knew it was not to be an au revoir.

It flew overhead, as gallant and as exciting a sight to see as ever, and then it disappeared into a spec on the horizon, and into history.

A month later, the French bands played la Marseillaise, the huge French flag gallantly flew from atop the Arc de Triomphe, and the planes flew in formation overhead with their streamers. If anything, the overflight that day was a "missing man" formation in the truest sense of the word. I am sure there was not a person watching that Bastille Day parade who didn't miss the beautiful white bird who once proudly lead leaders.

On one of the Concordes, it is said that a captain left his own cap forever wedged between the console and the fuselage, as a final parting token of friendship between man and machine, and a fine machine it was.

In my lifetime I watched the Concorde go from conception to inception, then to its coming of age, a fatal tragedy, and then a sad, unceremonious end. This was indeed the end of an era, the disappearance of an entire type of technology. 

Usually in the world, a technology becomes accepted until it becomes obsolete, and then it is replaced by something better, different, more advanced. It just doesn't disappear without some sort of replacement. This is not the way of things.... but it was for the Concorde. 

After that, I would see the White Bird many, many times again, as one of the planes was mounted upon a stand like a child would place a model airplane, as a toy display. Not much of a tribute for such a fine machine. 

What does that say about us, about Mankind? Are we no longer striving to be the best, to build the fastest, the strongest, the highest? Have we come so far as a civilization - only to stop looking ahead?

I indeed hope not