BA Concorde Twice Abandons Take Off

Ananova ^ | 3-9-2003

[Grut]

Military crews do this. Do civil crews also do it now?

Dunno, I'm working from 25-year-old memories of my AF days. An onboard computer probably checks accelleration automatically, now.

[Milwaukee_Guy]

I'm a weather nut, ham radio operator and a Skywarn Spotter. My awareness of severe weather does not help when I am flying.

Remember a Sun Country 727 at General Mitchell Field (MKE) as we started a takeoff roll and saw a decent black/purple gust front about a couple of miles ahead, directly in our path. Saw one, two, three spectacular cloud to ground strikes bracketing our path. Great! We slowly pull up and I knew we would get hammered the second we got into the low cloud deck. Bounced around real good for about two minutes. Might have experienced some wind shear.

My wife was at the gate watching us leave and said we were the last plane out. They halted flights because the tornado sirens were going off!!!! :-O

[CommandoFrank]

Aborting a take-off roll is like slamming on the brakes in your car. The closer you get to lift-off the harder the effect. Flying is shear boredom enticed with moments of stark terror.

[BfloGuy]

Isn't it appropriate to question the capability of the French to provide an adequate platform to serve as a safe means of transport for passengers at US airports??

C'mon. If there's anything the French are concerned with, it would be safety -- as in "take no risks".

With a French crew on board, I think we can be assured there will be no risks taken.

We can criticize the French for many things. Taking risks is not one of those.

[Salgak]

Yeah, S-1 was "committed to flight" and S-2 was "rotate", i.e. pull back the stick and start flying. . .

Mind you, my buddy WAS banged up, he had bruises that were visible for several weeks. . . not really hurt, but was hurting for a few days (after immediate treatment by the flight surgeon and after-incident interrogation by the safety folks, the entire crew had two weeks off to recuperate. . .

[El Gato]

Inaccurate. They apparently refer to afterburners.

The Brits usually call the 'burners the 'reheat', I've never heard the term "thrusters" in the context of a jet aircraft before.

[mombonn]

"If you want to fly the Concorde, book your flight quick.

I'm more likely to book an elective root canal.

[El Gato]

BA has obviously hired some NASA brass. I don't know why you would say that. The mechanics checked the engine, found what they thougt was the problem and fixed that. Just because they didn't really fix the problem doesn't mean they didn't at least try.

[Newbomb Turk]

Attention Martin Sheen, Shaun Penn, Sheryl Crow, Babawa Strisand, Alex Baldwin your flight is now boarding.

[Milwaukee_Guy]

Betcha the Hollywood elite flys the Concorde often.

How much fuel per elitist passenger does that dinasour consume in a flight?

Why don't they just send a check to the terrorists?

(Sticking up for SUV owners although I drive a 2 Liter turbo, 31 MPG on the highway, 200 HP!)

[boris]

The Russians have strange nomenclature, too. For example, what we in the West call "staged combustion" in rocket engines is termed "afterburning" in Russia.

Their texts refer to something called "consumption ratio" which I never have figured out. I -think- it is the ratio of volumetric flow of fuel and oxidizer. We call the weight flow ratio "mixture ratio."

--Boris

[Milwaukee_Guy]

Luftwaffe pilots called their ME-262 jet fighters "turbos".

Is that the first use of that term? Pretty modern sounding for 1944!

[rustbucket]

We were a little further along when our plane had trouble.

We had just gotten into the air on a United flight from Houston to San Francisco and were still over the runway, I think, when there was a large bang and the plane shuddered. People on the left side reported a large flash in the left engine at the time of the bang.

The pilot then gunned the other engine, and the flight continued on at fairly low elevation for a few minutes. Nothing was said over the intercom, but the right side engine stayed revved up. All the passengers were looking at each other.

The pilots gradually turned back to the airport. The intercom finally came on, and the pilot asked us to put our head between our knees as we were going in for a landing. Still no word about exactly what had gone wrong. Obvious, I guess. We were to follow the instructions of the stewardesses and jump out of the plane onto the inflatable slides once it landed.

Fortunately, the plane landed without a hitch, and we didn't have to evacuate on the slides.

[RWG]

You've got my vote.