For sheer flying excitement, nothing has ever beaten a trip on Concorde, that droop- nosed white arrow of the skies which is soon to become extinct. Flying at just over Mach 2, or 1,350 m.p.h., was an unforgettable experience, writes Hugh Oram
A lot of Concorde training was done out of Shannon, but the pencil-slim aircraft came into Dublin airport only a handful of times. On one of those occasions, a Dublin travel agent was running a weekend special to the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe horse-race at Longchamp in Paris. My wife and I weren't remotely interested in going to the races, but we were passionate about flying on Concorde. At great risk to our bank account, we paid £1,000 just for the flight on an Air France Concorde. It was worth every penny.
The first impression on boarding Concorde was how narrow the cabin was. It was like being confined in an elongated vacuum cleaner. The aircraft can take a maximum of only 128 passengers, with the leather seats in rows of two on each side of the aisle. The sense of claustrophobia is intensified by the tiny, porthole-like windows, much smaller than in a conventional airliner.
The first surprise was take-off, a turbo- charged affair. An ordinary jet seems to take for ever to crawl into the air, but with Concorde, take-off is at 250 m.p.h. and the g-forces really push you right back in your seat. Dublin was just a blur, gone in the flash of an eye, and it seemed a mere five minutes later that the pilot's voice was telling us we were over Shannon.
To give everyone the maximum thrills for their money, the aircraft flew to Paris by a circuitous route over the Atlantic - we must have gone half-way to New York, before flying back towards Paris over the west coast of France. Then the pilot announced that we were going supersonic. With an almighty roar, the after-burners were switched on and the plane soared up to its cruising altitude of close to 60,000 feet (a commercial jet normally cruises at around 35,000 feet). The Mach display in the cabin clicked up our progress as our speed climbed ever higher. Soon, it was on Mach 2.04, the maximum, or twice the speed of sound.
At this speed and altitude, Concorde has a disconcerting little habit: it seems as if the engines cut out momentarily and the plane dips a little.
Were we going to fall to earth? The short answer was no. Out of the tiny window, we could see the curvature of the earth, with the sky a very surreal pale blue. We could vaguely make out the ocean far beneath us. However, we were unaware of the immense heat generated by this speed. At its maximum speed, the nose of Concorde heats to 127° Centigrade and the fuselage actually stretches a little because of the heat.
In the cabin, everyone was in a jolly mood. A meal was served and, for airline food, it was excellent. The champagne flowed with abandon - after all, this was a French Concorde. There was another little Gallic je ne sais quoi in the shape of an in-flight cartoonist. He was a young Italian artist who signed himself "Carlelli" and in no time at all he gone up and down the cabin doing lightning sketches of the passengers. We still have ours, together with all the other Concorde paraphernalia. For something done in about 10 seconds, its a good likeness of this pair of intrepid travellers. Perhaps every airline should employ onboard cartoonists; Ryanair please note.
We were airborne for about 90 minutes and then it was down to earth at Charles de Gaulle airport. We floated through the rest of that weekend in Paris, before coming home on a plain, ordinary jet. It was like going to work in a Porsche and coming home on the bus.
Because of its still futuristic image, it is easy to forget that Concorde has been around for a long time. Devised in the early 1960s, it was first test-flown in 1973 and went into commercial service in 1976.
For several years during the 1960s, the British and French governments squabbled like fractious children over whether or not Concorde should have an "e". The actual name had been chosen by the family of an aircraft manufacturing executive in Britain who spent an afternoon thumbing through Roget's Thesaurus. Finally, that wise old politician Tony Benn, who was then Britain's Minister of Technology, decided that Britain should use the French spelling.
Many things can be said against Concorde: that it's élitist, for example, that it's noisy, and that it guzzles enormous quantities of fuel, 25,000 litres an hour. It has also turned out to be a technological cul-de-sac and experts in the industry say that another supersonic airliner is unlikely to be developed for 20 years or more.
When a Concorde full of German tourists crashed at Roissy nearly three years ago, it was like Icarus falling to earth. Concorde did eventually return to service, but it was never the same again. Bits of the plane keep falling off in flight, but it's the sharp drop in transatlantic business travel that has spelt the end of the aircraft's commercial life.
These days, Concordes travel with only a handful of passengers on each flight - a sad last chapter for to a plane that was once such a potent image of aviation magic.