Like so much in life the flight in the Concorde happened because we did a deal. I let the Concorde test pilot fly an Avro Vulcan, a subsonic delta bomber and he let me, a Vulcan test pilot, fly the supersonic delta Concorde.
Entering the Concorde for the first time was an amazing thrill, turning left on to the flight deck, not right as a passenger, knowing I was going to fly the airplane.
We started the engines and I felt enormous pride as I taxied out. It was all mine. I looked at the runway stretching into the distance and then I moved the four small levers fully forward. The engines roared as the four afterburners came on and the aircraft leapt forward, the airspeed increasing incredibly quickly. The critical speeds came and went, V1, so that we could not stop, Vr and I pulled the control wheel to rotate the aircraft, and V2 and we were safely airborne. With the aircraft nose high in the sky to stop the speed increasing, the drooping nose was raised, the undercarriage was retracted and the afterburners were turned off. We were airborne like any other aircraft, except we were in the Concorde.
In no time we were at 30,000ft and the afterburners were switched on again.� The aircraft went supersonic but there was hardly a tremor. Soon we were at twice the speed of sound over the Bay of Biscay drinking coffee and talking normally to one another. It was like magic and only the instruments told us� we were at Mach 2 and at 50,000ft height.
Our tests were routine and there was time for me to fly the aircraft with some of the safety features removed to see if it was safe to fly. It was not difficult, but then an airliner has to be capable of being flown by an airline's worst pilot. We ate our lunch on the way home, in style, on a tray.
I turned downwind for landing. The long nose was drooped and I could see the runway. As we approached the ground the engineer called out our height and I pulled the stick back to prevent the aircraft hitting the ground. The speed dropped but I felt nothing. For a moment I panicked but in reality we were on the ground and I had felt nothing because the runway was so smooth. I opened the throttles up and went round again trying to control the speed without the help of the automatic throttles, needed to fly this unstable aircraft. This time we all knew we had landed; maybe I should have stopped after the first landing.
I walked back to my car as if I was still in the air. An ambition realised.
Will there ever be another Concorde? Unlikely, because it was uneconomical and however efficient a supersonic aircraft can be made, the subsonic aircraft will always be better. In the years ahead people will look back and say how was it that there was ever a Concorde? All it had was speed, but then that is what aviation is all about.
Tony Blackman, 26.09.2004
EXHIBITION PHOTOS