Concorde: The Pinnacle of Commercial Innovation

Braden Thompson, Spring 2024

In modern commercial aviation, aircraft are generally restricted to subsonic flight, meaning that they are required to fly below the speed of sound. However, this restriction only arose in the early 2000’s in Europe and 1973 in the US. Before this ban on civilian supersonic flight, the Anglo-French Concorde was revolutionary for bringing faster-than-sound travel to the commercial sector of aviation. This research seeks to find the development decisions that led to Concorde becoming the first commercial supersonic transport (SST) and the legacy resulting therefrom.

The origins of the Concorde development can be traced back to the early 1950’s when the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) formed a committee to study the SST concept. Although it would not be the first aircraft to fly faster than sound, with the Bell X-1 achieving supersonic flight more than 20 years prior to Concorde in 1947, the SST would face unique challenges by attempting to bring supersonic travel to civilians. As such, there were a number of design decisions that would set Concorde apart from previous supersonic aircraft. The first of these was the design of the “slender delta” wings presented by Dietrich Küchemann to greatly increase lift at low speeds, which was significant for a heavy SST to give it reasonable takeoff and landing speeds (Küchemann, 2012). The discovery of this property along with research into supersonic aerodynamics was considered to be the birth of the Concorde project (Brown, 2007). After some preliminary designs and discussions of collaboration with French aerospace companies, development of Concorde officially became a joint venture between the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) and Sud Aviation, later Aérospatiale. Besides the wing shape, there were two other major problems in the development of Concorde - engine efficiency at high speeds and visibility issues that came from the high angle of attack required by the slender delta wings. Engine efficiency is a major concern in supersonic aircraft as traditional jet engines rapidly lose efficiency when air is flowing at high speeds (Carioscia et al, 2019). Considering Concorde’s top speed of 1,300 miles per hour (mach 2.04) and its engine's most efficient airflow of about 300 mph, the powerplant - the system of the intake, engine, and exhaust - had to be designed to slow down air at high speeds while letting it flow with normal efficiency at low speeds in order to get enough power to take off. Concorde’s solution to this problem would end up being variable ramps in the intake, which would be adjusted to various angles to deflect the entering air at high speeds to slow it down by up to 1,000 mph (Owen, 2001). The visibility issue also had a similar solution in the final design. Although the slender delta wings provided enough lift at low speeds to let the Concorde take off in a reasonable distance, it required Concorde to take off in land at a high angle of attack. In other words, the nose was extremely high, and the pilots would be unable to see the runway, as the nose was also long and needle-like for aerodynamics. Much like the adjustable intake ramps, the Concorde team decided on an adjustable-pitch nose which would allow the pilots to lower the nose during landing so they could see the runway while not sacrificing aerodynamics at high speed. Today, the adjustable nose is known as the iconic “droop nose” (Carbonel, 2018). Finally, despite the immense weight and drag forces, flights in Concorde were also incredibly smooth as the plane introduced fly-by-wire to civil aviation, meaning that a flight computer made micro-adjustments to smooth out the flight, highlighting Concorde’s role as a commercial aircraft (Heritage-Concorde, 2016). 

Considering how many advancements Concorde brought to civil aviation, it is no surprise that it became a point of pride to the British and French people. While visiting Weybridge, I had the immense pleasure of meeting a former Concorde stewardess as well as a kind lady who was a child when Concorde was still in service, and I was able to discuss what Concorde meant to them personally. Although the majority of people were never able to afford a flight on Concorde, with roundtrip Transatlantic ticket prices being around €25,000 when adjusted for inflation, it was still a marvel for the people on the ground watching it fly over. The lady that I met had grown up near London, so she got to see Concorde fly by quite often as a child. Despite how often she and her friends got to see the Concorde, it was so culturally significant that the children would still apparently drop what they were doing to point out the plane every time they saw it fly by. The fascination with Concorde was not exclusive to the children either. According to the stewardess, there were four main groups of people that would fly on the Concorde. Out of these groups, there was one that particularly stood out to me when she brought it up. During the aircraft’s service, there was a significant portion of people that were not wealthy enough to fly on Concorde regularly, but they would still save up for years to buy a ticket rather than something that would last longer, like a luxury car. Particularly, the majority of these people would use their flight as a honeymoon after their weddings. In other words, the British were so proud of Concorde that a significant portion of them would take a single flight over a traditional honeymoon, showing just how important it was to the British people.

While Concorde and SSTs in general were retired in 2001 following its sole fatal accident in France, its legacy still continues today as modern aviation companies are looking to revive supersonic commercial aviation. The main problem that led to the end of supersonic aviation was the sonic boom - a shockwave that is a byproduct moving faster than sound which creates incredibly loud noises and has the potential to shatter windows. Today, however, Lockheed Martin is researching designs to create a “sonic thump” which would allow aircraft to fly at supersonic speeds without breaking noise regulations (Donaldson, 2024). Furthermore, a company called Hermeus is attempting to develop hypersonic passenger planes which would fly faster than mach 5 - over twice the speed of Concorde. While this future may seem beyond Concorde, it remains the inspiration for many commercial aviation developments and a point of pride for the Anglo-French people that will not disappear any time soon.

Bibliography

Brown, Eric. Wings on My Sleeve. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007.

Buttler, Tony and Carbonal, J.C. Building Concorde: From Drawing Board to Mach 2. 2018. Accessed via National Aerospace Library

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the UAH Honors College for providing funding for this research. I would also like to thank Tony Pilmer of the National Aerospace Library for his immense help in this research.