The only photo of the Concorde flying at supersonic speed

https://petapixel.com/2025/01/25/photo-concorde-supersonic-speed-mach-2/

by alex_young • 1 year ago

177 133 1 year ago

petapixel.com

hinkley2• 1 year ago

Somewhere an SR-71 pilot is definitely rolling his eyes.

Only publicity photo, surely.

phire2• 1 year ago

The SR-71 might actually have a bit of a problem going slow enough.

As far as I can tell, it was never certified for a mach 2 cruise, normally accelerating right through it.

hinkley2• 1 year ago

Distance and a telephoto lens can fix a lot of that. If you're kilometers away going twice as fast you have a lot more time to snap a pic, versus being 500 meters away.

They used these for surveillance so I assume the motion compensation on these things was state-secret levels of good.

wiml• 1 year ago

A good excuse to link this SR-71 yarn: https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...

hammock• 1 year ago

Most of our fighters can pull a sustained Mach 2

sidewndr462• 1 year ago

"our" fighters? What military are you referring to?

drpixie2• 1 year ago

Yup. There must have been any number of photos taken by chase planes during development.

themadturk3• 1 year ago

The question is, how many were taken at supersonic speed? What non-military aircraft could keep up with the Concorde at Mach-2? Only another Concorde.

zeristor• 1 year ago

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

rwmj3• 1 year ago

Concorde used to fly over our house (landing at Manchester airport, I think?), and it was something of an event for our household of plane geeks, but happened fairly regularly.

These days I see Airbus A380s taking off and landing from Heathrow over the house almost daily and that never ceases to amaze me, mainly that humans built something so enormous that can actually fly.

loloquwowndueo2• 1 year ago

Remember the Hindenburg.

tetris11• 1 year ago

Used to fly over ours too (Gatwick flight path?), and I always remember that sharp screaming sound.

I still watch the planes when I'm in the garden, but it's not quite the same

timthorn• 1 year ago

It marked the end of playtime at our school. We were 30 miles west of Heathrow and as it went overhead, still climbing from takeoff, it would have interrupted lessons.

It was usually pretty punctual, but every now and then we got an extended break.

Theodores2• 1 year ago

So there would be thirty or so in your class, another thirty in the class below and another thirty in the class above. I am sure you were a noisy bunch, particularly at playtime, much to the annoyance of other residents of the street.

Now compare that annoyance level to that of the ninety or so special people on Concorde, or, more correctly, 'a' Concorde plane. You were thirty miles west of Heathrow, but I can remember being in South London and having to stop conversation for a few minutes for that stupid plane to screech overhead. Nowadays I learn that those were good times, to have that noise from miles away, making it impossible to hear the person next to me.

Until Concorde was some tens of thousands of feet in the air, cruising sub-sonically, that stupid plane was ruining everyone's day. All for what, Tony Benn's ego, 'jobs' and being best buddies with the old enemy - the French.

The need to be best buddies with the French was moot, after WW1 and WW2 it was clear that the UK and France were allies, at least in Europe.

We were lucky that the USA were a bit passive-aggressive when it came to Concorde, people would have had that thing fly supersonic but it wasn't in the economic interests of Washington (DC and the state) to have that.

Highlight of Concorde's career was Live Aid, bringing Phil Collins et al from the USA to Wembley so they could play both sides of the Atlantic, at the same event.

I am sure that people that went on a 'jolly' on Concorde for that special anniversary had their money's worth and a time to remember, but most people on that plane were pointless wealthy people that lacked purpose. In the bigger scheme of things, not one single flight of that plane was really important, even if Joan Collins was aboard. Your playtime, somewhere near where The Office was filmed, was far more important, in the bigger scheme of things.

elpocko• 1 year ago

I hope only the kids got used to the mindblowing event of seeing an airplane in the sky, and the teachers kept running away, screaming in panic every day even after 10 years of it happening.

mhandley• 1 year ago

Heathwow is 15 miles west as the crow flies from where I was at university in central London. When it took off flying away from us, you could clearly hear it over the London traffic. Amazing aircraft!

WalterBright7• 1 year ago

When I was a kid, we lived near an AF base. I enjoyed the sonic booms, and was a bit perplexed at the animosity towards them. Thunder is a lot louder. My dad would laugh at my antics with a car, saying there was nothing like flying on the deck with the afterburner on.

rwmj3• 1 year ago

I have a collection of back issues of Private Eye from the 1970s, and sonic booms seems to have been very much a live topic with the chattering middle classes at the time. In particular there are complaints that church windows [sic] had been cracked by a sonic boom, and there were other structural problems allegedly caused. I'm not sure how seriously to take the letters and articles, but you could see it was only a matter of time before supersonic flight would be banned over middle England.

MisterTea• 1 year ago

A lot of family lived in Howard Beach, NYC just off the edge of JFK right under the flight path for the main runway. I have distinct memories of being in my grandmothers yard and hearing the Concords piercing roar as they passed for landing. I also remember being at a block party further south directly under the flight path and it was so horrifically loud I had to cover my ears from the ringing pain. They were absurdly loud vs the standard passenger jets. When the Concord was finally retired there were parties thrown all over that neighborhood. I lived not much further north and could hear them distinctly from my house as well but they were not disruptive. My uncle still lives in HB and the aircraft of today are much quieter and even my uncle recognizes that fact and appreciates it.

jstanley• 1 year ago

You can go and see a Concorde at Bristol Aerospace Museum[0], and walk inside it.

There is an absolutely bewildering array of dials and switches exposed to the pilots[1].

And they have lots of other aviation stuff at the museum, it'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're nearby.

[0] https://aerospacebristol.org/

[1] https://i.redd.it/0vqv9qlx98m31.jpg

pchristensen• 1 year ago

There is also one at the Museum of Flight in Seattle - https://www.museumofflight.org/exhibits-and-events/aircraft/...

It looks like it would have been a very snug ride!

CalChris• 1 year ago

Matterport tour.

https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=uLQ9ZMRpPWY

Theodores2• 1 year ago

In period, it was not that snug. This was in an era when you could get a dozen people into town in a 2CV and the majority of adults smoked. People were a lot leaner then, and considerably shorter.

In 1954, in the UK, the average male was 5'7" and 11 stone, 6 lbs, which equates to quite a high BMI of 25 (18.5 - 24.9 is healthy BMI). Nowadays there are very few men in the UK with that weight. Let's ignore women from this because women were second class citizens at the time. Men are on average 2 stone heavier.

But average weight is just average, nowadays with 2/3 of UK adults overweight, there are far more people at the top end of the Bell Curve, at double the average weight people had on the 1950s. So half of today's population would not fit in the seats.

When you look at old European or Japanese cars such as the MINI or old FIATs, bear this in mind. Those cars might not have ever been spacious, but, in period, they were not cramped. Similarly, Concorde was never spacious, but it was not a very snug ride until obesity got the better of us.

duxup• 1 year ago

Yup I’ve been in that one. It has a wonder retro style, and yes with its 2 seats and 2 seats setup it seems very narrow inside.

LeFantome• 1 year ago

When the Concorde flew, the panels would expand. On the last flight of the one in Seattle, one of the crew stuck their hat in one. When it slowed down, the hat became stuck in the wall. It is still there.

Kinda cool.

chasing3• 1 year ago

Also at the Intrepid Museum in NYC.

ctippett• 1 year ago

There's also one parked at London Heathrow airport. You can see it while taxiing.

nunez2• 1 year ago

The 737-100 (and maybe the -200?) had a similarly busy cockpit, as the first examples were built when flight engineers were still required. Avionics simplified a lot since then, but the Concorde program died before it could get similar treatment.

kweks• 1 year ago

And (at least) two in Paris. One mounted on stilts at CDG2, which depending on how you taxi you may or may not see from the plane, and one just outside ORY, which is maintained by an association, and visitable.

rixed• 1 year ago

And one still in the Bourget museum?

thrance• 1 year ago

There are two in Toulouse, one you can walk into (the first prototype, actually). The place is called aeroscopia [1]. There's also an A380 prototype and a bunch of older planes.

[1] https://www.aeroscopia.fr/

qingcharles• 1 year ago

I lived right at the end of the runway there in Bristol and Concorde needed the whole length to land, so it would come in real low and shake all the loose stuff upstairs.

gambiting2• 1 year ago

There's also one in Scotland in East Lothian, you can also go inside it:

https://www.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-flight/see-and-do/c...

schlupa• 1 year ago

You can also visit one in Germany at the Technik Museum Sinsheim[1]. It has the advantage that it can be compared to the soviet counterpart Tupolev Tu-144 that is also exposed.

[1] https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/

neilv• 1 year ago

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

walterbell3• 1 year ago

Boom Supersonic (US) has a Mach 1 test flight in 2 days, https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/boom-supersonic-mach-one-...

Test flight livestream (Tue Jan 28 6:45AM PST/9:45AM EST/2:45PM GMT), https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/xb-1-supersonic-test-flight...

esskay2• 1 year ago

It's going to be interesting to see where things go with this. I'm still struggling to see why their offering would have a different fate, if not worse. It's got a lower passenger capacity but still has the same cost issues that plagued Concorde.

I guess the only difference really is they arent shy about making it clear its for business customers and not commercial airliners, and tickets will be expensive.

idlewords9• 1 year ago

The real product Boom hopes to offer is regulatory capture, so that restrictions on supersonic business jets can be lifted. Then the bizjet itself can sell as a luxury status symbol.

bragr3• 1 year ago

It is really going to come down to how much they can reduce the sonic boom. Supposedly their aircraft will produce more of a rumble like distant thunder rather than a bang. If its at a level that's agreeable to both regulators and the public, that would open up all the overland routes the Concord could never do. If they can combine that with higher production numbers with a corresponding drop in unit, operating, and maintenance costs, they _may_ have a valid business model.

Looking at how many people rent (or own) business jets with five figure+ price tags per flight, I think there's definitely a market for premium tickets, especially if you can do say LAX to Heathrow in ~5 hours instead of 10.5 hours.

Retric• 1 year ago

The world and more importantly the wealthy are vastly richer today than in 1976 when the concord started flying, and the R&D costs should be far lower.

There’s thousands of billionaires in the world. Not all of them would buy a supersonic private airplane, but include non billionaire CEO’s etc and the market is plenty large to support moderate scale production assuming they can keep costs within a fairly low multiple of a business jet.

WeylandYutani• 1 year ago

What killed Concord iirc is that only a few airports could handle them. A rich person would just prefer a slower private jet that can land much closer to their destination. Especially since today you can basically turn your plane into a private office.

TylerE6• 1 year ago

Not really. THat's an unmanned small scale model. Every credible engine manufacturer on the planet has declined to work with Boom. Viable engines do not exist and will not exist.

walterbell3• 1 year ago

Yes, the 64-seat commercial version is years away, but this subscale prototype will carry a civilian test pilot, https://x.com/bscholl/status/1883218536476061803

  - YC incubated, 150MM+ total funding
  - quiet medium bypass turbofan engines
  - wing aspect ratio higher than Concorde
  - 5y of production orders, incl. United and American

whartung• 1 year ago

It should be noted you can see the curvature of the earth in the photo.

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.

raldi4• 1 year ago

I thought I remembered reading someplace respectable that the apparent curvature of the earth as seen from the surface or planes is actually just perspective, and would look indiscernible on a flat planet (or a huge one). But I don’t have a citation to share. Maybe it’s only true at sea level.

loloquwowndueo2• 1 year ago

I wonder where you read that because it sounds like a very flat earther thing to say.

AnarchismIsCool7• 1 year ago

IME the curvature isn't really discernible until far higher altitudes. Most of the "curve of the earth" shots you see are because someone stuck a go-pro on a hiball and a combination of haze and fisheye effect makes the earth look round. If you use a camera without the lens distortion it just looks like a normal horizon.

idlewords9• 1 year ago

The sky was also noticeably darker.

toephu2• 1 year ago

It always saddens me that in the 1960s it took 7 hours to fly from NYC -> London, and today, 60 years later, it still takes 7 hours to fly from NYC -> London...

Apart from fuel efficiency improvements, there hasn't been much innovation in the commercial commercial aerospace industry, with the exception of Boom's supersonic passenger airplanes which is just now starting to become a reality.

BlandDuck• 1 year ago

Look at the bright side, at least flights today are still as fast as 60 years ago.

For trains, you would be hard pressed to find a route that is not significantly slower today than 60 years ago.

idlewords9• 1 year ago

They are not; the 707 flew noticeably faster than modern airliners (525 knots cruise, compare to 485 knots for the Boeing 787).

lqet• 1 year ago

For trains, you would be hard pressed to find a route that is not significantly slower today than 60 years ago.

It took 64 years (until 1997) to again reach the 1933 speed of the Flying Hamburger [0] - 138 minutes from Hamburg to Berlin. Trains today need about 115 minutes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRG_Class_SVT_877

blks2• 1 year ago

For USA, that is. In Europe speed has increased drastically.

chasing3• 1 year ago

I think there has been a ton of improvement in commercial flight — think safety, for example — but my understanding is that there has simply been no incentive to improve flight times. Customers aren’t willing to pay for it. Which sort of makes sense: Generally speaking flight time is less than half of the total door-to-door time of air travel.

greazy• 1 year ago

Generally speaking flight time is less than half of the total door-to-door time of air travel.

Maybe for domestic flights but for international flights (especially if you live in Australia) it would improve the flying experience. I've noticed a big difference on my body when flying 8hr vs 12hrs.

It may not seem like a big difference but those extra 4hrs put a massive strain on your body and mind.

mrcsharp• 1 year ago

Customers aren’t willing to pay for it

I would be more inclined to travel overseas if travel times were shorter thus making me a more frequent customer and bringing the airlines more money.

WalterBright7• 1 year ago

Going faster means a lot more fuel consumption. Air doesn't like being violently shoved aside. In fact, it gets all hot about it :-/

arp242• 1 year ago

there has simply been no incentive to improve flight times

It's more that you just run in to real limits of physics; many planes already fly at mach 0.8 to 0.9, and going faster than sound is always going to be difficult because of the sonic boom. Realistically, there just isn't that much you can do without solving that first, which is a difficult problem to solve in a practical way. And even if you do, the fuel efficiency is always going to make it much more expensive.

Spooky23• 1 year ago

Trains are worse. I found a New York Central timetable from the 1930s. The morning train I take from Albany to NYC is 7 minutes longer (although it now goes to Penn station.

thfuran• 1 year ago

There's been a ton of innovation in the space. It used to be seven hours hotboxing a melange of cigarettes while they lose your luggage, but now it's 7 hours of having your knees jammed up against the seat in front of you while they tell you that three grams of peanuts is a proper snack. It's a whole different experience.

lostlogin3• 1 year ago

Wifi might be the best innovation.

Ringz• 1 year ago

Exactly as shown here: https://img.ifunny.co/images/9ceaa0fcb71a2f61bb5ddf5e1129035...

bruce511• 1 year ago

It varies a lot depending on airline.

Top tip : if you are flying internationally avoid Uas airlines where possible. The US airlines are built around domestic flights. They treat international flights as "long domestic ".

By contrast some airlines are built around long-haul (international) flights, with domestic either not there at all, or just a feeder.

Don't get me wrong, economy is still economy. But an economy seat on Emirates is better than economy on United or Delta (well, last time I flew those anyway.)

Perhaps the biggest innovation though is seat-back entertainment. Done well, it makes a huge difference to long-haul flights.

AnarchismIsCool7• 1 year ago

Correction: while they helpfully wake you up in the middle of your redeye to tell you about a new exciting credit card offer only available to you in flight

sidewndr462• 1 year ago

You also get the complementary full body check for any unusual protrusions before flight, if you ask for it.

WalterBright7• 1 year ago

Apart from fuel efficiency improvements

Those have been huge, and are a primary driver for new airplane designs. The reason is simple. Back in the 80s, fuel was 40% of the operating cost.

The 757 came about because of new, more efficient engines and a more efficient wing. If my brain hasn't fully rotted away yet, it offered a 35% reduction in fuel costs.

The 737MAX was green-lighted because it offered a 15% improvement in fuel consumption. That's Big Money for the airlines.

snakeyjake• 1 year ago

There has been a ~90% decrease since the 1960s in the cost to fly from NYC to London due, in large part, to mind-blowing technological innovations in materials, engines, and aerodynamics.

nunez2• 1 year ago

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.

I wish I was old and well-off enough to take a flight on that majestic bird.

happyopossum• 1 year ago

deregulation

No, hard disagree here - regulation is a big part of what killed supersonic flight the first time around.

idlewords9• 1 year ago

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's design and operation.

WARNING, serious temporal hazard. Do not click if you have work to do today or are supervising small children.

https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.htm...

walterbell3• 1 year ago

Long live old-school forums!

Fizzadar• 1 year ago

Thank you for the lost hours :) Fascinating read.

anothertroll456• 1 year ago

That was amazing! Thank you.

Wait, idlewords is still around??

bragr3• 1 year ago

serious temporal hazard

Wow, you're not wrong. "I'll read just a little bit," I said. 2 hours later...

dang• 1 year ago

Discussed way back when (thank you!):

Epic Forum Thread on Concorde (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8277343 - Sept 2014 (49 comments)

We should have another HN thead about this once the Boom boom settles down.

idlewords9• 1 year ago

There's also that thread about the Belgian couple who drove across the Congo:

https://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/democratic-republ...

I call these kinds of forum threads "afternoon destroyers". It would be fun to weaponize them into a whole organized link page.

Jedd2• 1 year ago

I was fortunate to travel in one of these, back in 1996 - London to New York.

(BA was offering some sweet deals to staff at partner airlines, at about 10% of retail pricing.)

At the time there was no expectation that we'd regress, though had I been more generally aware I'd have noticed the lack of next-gen SST R&D during Concorde's operational lifetime.

I recall they flew one out to Sydney Australia in the mid 1980's, but I think appetite was quite low, probably from both regulators and small market size -- despite the obvious appeal (it's about 24h flight time still in conventional commercial passenger jets, to get to the antipodes).

donavanm• 1 year ago

I believe Qantas will be offering Sydney to London direct on a newer A350 variant latter this year. Should be about 20hrs direct.

Travel to europe is a bit of a pain in that layovers and scheduling can easily blow it out to 30+ hours today, especially if going to a secondary market in europe. It makes the ~14 hours overnight to the US west coast seem very reasonable in comparison.

Jedd2• 1 year ago

That route's been touted for a while - and having done the SYD-LHR trip quite a few times, I'm not 100% confident it'd be a significant QoL improvement (except for business travellers).

Pricing will be interesting to watch, in any case.

As you note, a lot of the time cost is incurred for the 'last mile' part of that trip, so apart from the (tourist / comfort) benefits of splitting flights of that length, I could see it being much less appealing for travellers bouncing through London to get elsewhere into the continent.

guenthert• 1 year ago

"Meanwhile, the Concorde continued its effortless cruise toward New York’s JFK Airport."

i.e. it used only 4,800 US gallons per hour of fuel (a 747 burns around 3600 gallons/h). Not what I would label "effortless", but not nearly as bad as I expected.

Almondsetat• 1 year ago

Seems strange that's the only photo. They never made test flights in pairs to monitor each other? And during these tests they didn't take any photos?

themadturk3• 1 year ago

Well, the only photo released to the public at least.

barrettondricka• 1 year ago

There is a story about Concorde chasing a solar eclipse for an hour.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Concorde_eclipse_flight

blks2• 1 year ago

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

The only photo of the Concorde flying at supersonic speed

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