By Vincent Safuto staff writer
May 14, 2003
News that Air France and British Airways will be ending service on the Concorde and retiring the planes is the sign of yet another era ending in commercial aviation.
Granted, supersonic travel never caught on amongst ordinary fliers, mainly because of the very high prices and limited destinations. But leaving faster-than-sound flying to the Top Guns is a crimp in aviation's progress.
As an airplane fanatic growing up in New York City, the SST (supersonic transport) was touted as the future of flying. I admired those subsonic airliners that flew over my house on their way to LaGuardia Airport, but the prospect of a streamlined plane racing through the upper atmosphere caught my imagination.
On my first trip to Florida, in 1975, my parents took my two brothers and me on Amtrak to Disney World, and I prevailed upon them to visit an aviation museum whose brochure was in the hotel.
I don't even remember its name, but do recall that the main attraction was a mockup of what would have been the American SST.
I could have spent all week in that museum, and saw not only the mockup of the plane that would never be, but planes that were, including a B-25 Mitchell bomber from World War II (doors locked, sadly) and an old twin-engined taildragger that was open. My parents snapped pictures of me in the cockpit as I looked around from the best seat on any airplane, the left one, upfront.
The museum may have been a tourist trap, but to me it was the coolest part of the trip to Florida. It was, I dare say, even better than the Eastern Airlines "To Fly" ride at Disney.
One time, I was riding in a car near JFK Airport in New York and saw the Concorde, in its trademark high flare, coming in to land. It looked like something out of a futuristic science fiction film.
Another time, when I was flying out of JFK, our airliner taxied past the terminal where Concorde flights were loaded and the other passengers and I gazed out the windows as a sleek Concorde being readied for another fast flight in the thin air.
I've heard all the reasons why the Concorde shouldn't fly any more: It's '60s technology, it's noisy, it burns too much fuel, it's uncomfortable and it's an extravagance few can afford. I'll grant all those, plus the fact that the brutal realities of commercial aviation make it impractical, but we should never lose sight of the fact that for a time, if you had the money, you could go faster than sound.
When the Concordes are retired, let's hope they are all put in museums all over the world so people can see them and walk through them.
Hey, maybe an aviation museum somewhere in Florida could have one. Place it in a hangar with some nice exhibits, and I'd gladly drive for several hours to stand next to and in a piece of aviation history.
Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com.
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