Concorde: A Sad Day
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Agree with these sentiments, but would only add that great nations always seem to need a white elephant i.e. something which will never be commercially viable, to inspire them and provide a national focal point, and once they lose the capacity to have the vision to develop and produce them, decline follows. Examples in early civilisations abound. In recent 'civilisations' landing a man on the moon is the best example, the difference being that the Americans are still always looking for the next one : I sense that with the grounding of Concorde, the UK has given up and, as a nation, lost its self belief in being able to compete globally. Flying in Concorde was a great experience. I was on the first flight out of JFK after the Paris crash. The mood was strange to say the least : everyone being outwardly self consciously unconcerned about the safety issue. I know that Concorde was an uneconomic, gas guzzling anachronism whose time has gone, but my God, have we ever been as proud or so inspired by anything else mechanical in our lifetimes? Who didn't feel something special when they saw it and, having seen it, doesn't feel gutted that they won't see it fly again? I am as frustrated as other posters that the Government has been so unsupportive of Richard Branson's attempts to keep it airborne. A sad day for those of us who believe in the power of inspiration and motivation and appreciation of those who deliver it. Life's not just about Blunkett-style targets, repression and locking up people who aren't in bed by 10.30 : it's also about living !!!
Steve not arrogance but good business . Why give an edge to a competitor. BA survives from the profits on the North Atlantic route . It would have been unwise to allow Branson to cream off some of those profits.It would also have given him a magnificent marketing tool. As a shareholder I applaud Eddingtons & Air France decision.
ZigZag
I agree with that from a shareholder perspective, but BA got these aircraft for £1 courtesy of the UK taxpayer! Agree that RB would use it as a great marketing tool, but is it really beyond the whit of this government to ensure that the country continues to get a return on this massive investment in which, witness yesterday's events, the mass of the country takes pride. It's a potential marketing tool for GB, not just RB!!! Get Branson to undertake in exchange to keep & maintain 1 or 2 for 'Presidential', Ministerial or Royal visits. Let's have some creative thinking here before we confine arguably our greatest technical achievement of modern times to a premature end!!!
I agree with that from a shareholder perspective, but BA got these aircraft for £1 courtesy of the UK taxpayer! Agree that RB would use it as a great marketing tool, but is it really beyond the whit of this government to ensure that the country continues to get a return on this massive investment in which, witness yesterday's events, the mass of the country takes pride. It's a potential marketing tool for GB, not just RB!!! Get Branson to undertake in exchange to keep & maintain 1 or 2 for 'Presidential', Ministerial or Royal visits. Let's have some creative thinking here before we confine arguably our greatest technical achievement of modern times to a premature end!!!
Car Key Boi
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meanwhile in Queens NYC
Nancy Siesel/The New York Times
A crowd in Queens bade farewell and good riddance to the Concorde on Friday as it left on its last flight.
By COREY KILGANNON
Published: October 25, 2003
Queens (NYC)
The Champagne was fake, but the relief for long-suffering residents of Queens was very real at a gathering yesterday at a waterfront park in Howard Beach.
Many of those sufferers, from neighborhoods surrounding Kennedy International Airport, showed up to toast a jet that had provided them not with trans-Atlantic luxury and speed, but with a first-class earache that throbbed for a quarter-century.
"Come on, honey, show them what you do when the Concorde comes," said Liliana Manta, 30, to her 1-year-old son, Michael, who promptly put his hands over his ears. He did it again as the Concorde took off for the last time at 7:38 a.m. from Runway 31, and the crowd bade a robust good riddance to a supersonic nuisance.
"The first time I heard the Concorde when we moved in, I dove under the bed," Ms. Manta said. "I'm not kidding. I thought it was going to crash into the house, it was so loud. Immediately, I wanted to sell, but what can you do? You learn to live with it."
While staff members for Representative Anthony D. Weiner poured sparkling cider into plastic Champagne glasses, he announced "a day of celebration for people who want a little peace and quiet."
"Goodbye and good riddance to the Concorde," he said. "May she land safely at Heathrow and never come back."
"Hip, hip, hooray," shouted the crowd at Frank M. Charles Memorial Park.
And so went the cheers yesterday along Cross Bay Boulevard and Beach Channel Drive. While aviation buffs regarded the Concorde's last flight as a nostalgic end to the era of the supersonic transport, residents under Kennedy flight patterns celebrated victory, basking in the idea that after years of making angry phone calls, signing petitions and pestering politicians, they had helped slay the mighty SST.
"We lost a few battles, but after 25 years, we finally won the war," said Frans C. Verhagen, the president of a coalition of civic groups in Queens, Sane Aviation for Everyone. "It took 25 years, but a bunch of citizens in Queens stopped the SST from proliferating into the rest of the United States and the world."
Others attributed victory to cold, hard economics, and still others to cosmic justice. While pampering the rich and famous, the Concorde touched lives, perhaps 100,000 people living near the airport, in southern Queens and parts of Brooklyn and Nassau County. It reached into homes, teaching adults to glue their china to cabinet shelves, and into schools, teaching children the letters SST before ABC.
But yesterday, they exhaled. The neighbors attribute many horrors to the Concorde. They say it caused ceilings to crack, eardrums to ring, houses to shake, windows to rattle, trash can lids to blow off and car alarms to blare, and was responsible for SST breaks in schools, weekend wake-up rumbles at 8 a.m. and a drag on property values.
"It may be beautiful to look at, but not to live near," said Christine Modafferi, 40. The Concorde roared overhead twice each morning, she said, and vibrations from it caused recurring cracks in her ceilings.
Yesterday, the Concorde seemed to launch itself straight out of the rising sun. It turned and climbed in a swooping graceful arc out over Jamaica Bay, then the Rockaways, then the Atlantic and toward London. The sky-cracking sound from the afterburners seemed to travel behind the plane.
Not everyone on the ground was jeering. "I love everything about that plane, even the noise," said Judy Gardonyi, a graphic artist from Oceanside, N.Y., who came to the park. "It's the end of an era."
Maggie DeMarzo, 73, from Woodhaven, came with Mary DiMambro, 70, her sister, from Ozone Park. Yesterday was the end to their daily trips to the park to sip coffee and watch the Concorde fly overhead. "This day is an historic event, are you kidding?" Mrs. DeMarzo said. "That plane is a thing of beauty. It's a big beautiful bird in the sky, and when I see it, I'm in seventh heaven."
This kind of talk did not sit well with Elizabeth Grassi, 65, of Hamilton Beach, who helped fight the Concorde in 1976. "Hey, you don't live here, so you don't know what it's like," she said. "We've been putting up with noise since the day it started flying."
The sisters then began chanting "Bring back the Concorde!"
Mrs. Grassi shouted: "You want it? Let it fly over your house."
During the takeoff, Mr. Weiner poked fun at the celebrity party scene on board: "Folks, they're away from the terminal and they're opening the Champagne. Wait, I think Sting is having his first piece of Brie."
Noting the end to the three-and-half-hour flight to London, about half the length of a trip by regular jet, he added, "Sorry, Madonna and Sting; you'll just have to find another way to get there."
Neither celebrity was actually on the flight. But Mr. Weiner's contempt reflected a longstanding view that the Concorde's operators sheltered its moneyed passengers from the noise, while caring little for the ethnic working-class and poor minority neighborhoods below.
In 1976, local civic groups pressured powerful Democrats and staged demonstrations. The complaints reached the White House and Paris and London. The British prime minister weighed in, and the French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, said the only thing the planes would fly over was fish.
When a federal court finally lifted a state ban on the flights in 1977, local people saw the move as a small step forward for air travel and a giant one backward for human rights. The government, they said, caved in to French and English businessmen.
But yesterday, in their eyes, the wrong was finally righted. "We used to set our watches by that plane," said Paul Lanza, a dentist who lives nearby. He stood shivering in the morning chill and watched the Concorde disappear forever.
"Come on everybody," he said. "Let's go to Starbucks."
http://www.nynewsday.com/nyc-concside1025,0,6511668.story?coll=nyc-topheadlines-right
Queens Residents Celebrate Concorde's End
By Merle English
Staff Writer
October 24, 2003, 12:49 PM EDT
"Hip, Hip! Hooray! Hip Hip! Hooray!"
Cheers rang out over Jamaica Bay as the sun rose above the horizon and the British Airways Concorde jet soared overhead, its sonic boom sounding over Queens for the final time.
From the Rockaways, Woodhaven and throughout southeast Queens, people left their beds at dawn and bundled up against the chill to stand in sand at the water's edge and wave at the jet, holding up glasses with non-alcoholic champagne in a cheer led by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens).
Weiner organized the send-off on behalf of "long-suffering" Queens residents to say "good riddance" to the sleek, faster-than-sound aircraft which British Airways called "an icon of speed and glamour," but which airport neighbors called a noisy and intrusive nuisance that affected their quality of life for more than three decades.
"While there may be some who will shed a tear over the final flight of the Concorde, there will be no crying in Queens today," Weiner said in a release issued before the event. "This is one flight cancellation that was long overdue."
A woman among those celebrating shouted, "Gone, gone and forgotten."
Nancy Siesel/The New York Times
A crowd in Queens bade farewell and good riddance to the Concorde on Friday as it left on its last flight.
By COREY KILGANNON
Published: October 25, 2003
Queens (NYC)
The Champagne was fake, but the relief for long-suffering residents of Queens was very real at a gathering yesterday at a waterfront park in Howard Beach.
Many of those sufferers, from neighborhoods surrounding Kennedy International Airport, showed up to toast a jet that had provided them not with trans-Atlantic luxury and speed, but with a first-class earache that throbbed for a quarter-century.
"Come on, honey, show them what you do when the Concorde comes," said Liliana Manta, 30, to her 1-year-old son, Michael, who promptly put his hands over his ears. He did it again as the Concorde took off for the last time at 7:38 a.m. from Runway 31, and the crowd bade a robust good riddance to a supersonic nuisance.
"The first time I heard the Concorde when we moved in, I dove under the bed," Ms. Manta said. "I'm not kidding. I thought it was going to crash into the house, it was so loud. Immediately, I wanted to sell, but what can you do? You learn to live with it."
While staff members for Representative Anthony D. Weiner poured sparkling cider into plastic Champagne glasses, he announced "a day of celebration for people who want a little peace and quiet."
"Goodbye and good riddance to the Concorde," he said. "May she land safely at Heathrow and never come back."
"Hip, hip, hooray," shouted the crowd at Frank M. Charles Memorial Park.
And so went the cheers yesterday along Cross Bay Boulevard and Beach Channel Drive. While aviation buffs regarded the Concorde's last flight as a nostalgic end to the era of the supersonic transport, residents under Kennedy flight patterns celebrated victory, basking in the idea that after years of making angry phone calls, signing petitions and pestering politicians, they had helped slay the mighty SST.
"We lost a few battles, but after 25 years, we finally won the war," said Frans C. Verhagen, the president of a coalition of civic groups in Queens, Sane Aviation for Everyone. "It took 25 years, but a bunch of citizens in Queens stopped the SST from proliferating into the rest of the United States and the world."
Others attributed victory to cold, hard economics, and still others to cosmic justice. While pampering the rich and famous, the Concorde touched lives, perhaps 100,000 people living near the airport, in southern Queens and parts of Brooklyn and Nassau County. It reached into homes, teaching adults to glue their china to cabinet shelves, and into schools, teaching children the letters SST before ABC.
But yesterday, they exhaled. The neighbors attribute many horrors to the Concorde. They say it caused ceilings to crack, eardrums to ring, houses to shake, windows to rattle, trash can lids to blow off and car alarms to blare, and was responsible for SST breaks in schools, weekend wake-up rumbles at 8 a.m. and a drag on property values.
"It may be beautiful to look at, but not to live near," said Christine Modafferi, 40. The Concorde roared overhead twice each morning, she said, and vibrations from it caused recurring cracks in her ceilings.
Yesterday, the Concorde seemed to launch itself straight out of the rising sun. It turned and climbed in a swooping graceful arc out over Jamaica Bay, then the Rockaways, then the Atlantic and toward London. The sky-cracking sound from the afterburners seemed to travel behind the plane.
Not everyone on the ground was jeering. "I love everything about that plane, even the noise," said Judy Gardonyi, a graphic artist from Oceanside, N.Y., who came to the park. "It's the end of an era."
Maggie DeMarzo, 73, from Woodhaven, came with Mary DiMambro, 70, her sister, from Ozone Park. Yesterday was the end to their daily trips to the park to sip coffee and watch the Concorde fly overhead. "This day is an historic event, are you kidding?" Mrs. DeMarzo said. "That plane is a thing of beauty. It's a big beautiful bird in the sky, and when I see it, I'm in seventh heaven."
This kind of talk did not sit well with Elizabeth Grassi, 65, of Hamilton Beach, who helped fight the Concorde in 1976. "Hey, you don't live here, so you don't know what it's like," she said. "We've been putting up with noise since the day it started flying."
The sisters then began chanting "Bring back the Concorde!"
Mrs. Grassi shouted: "You want it? Let it fly over your house."
During the takeoff, Mr. Weiner poked fun at the celebrity party scene on board: "Folks, they're away from the terminal and they're opening the Champagne. Wait, I think Sting is having his first piece of Brie."
Noting the end to the three-and-half-hour flight to London, about half the length of a trip by regular jet, he added, "Sorry, Madonna and Sting; you'll just have to find another way to get there."
Neither celebrity was actually on the flight. But Mr. Weiner's contempt reflected a longstanding view that the Concorde's operators sheltered its moneyed passengers from the noise, while caring little for the ethnic working-class and poor minority neighborhoods below.
In 1976, local civic groups pressured powerful Democrats and staged demonstrations. The complaints reached the White House and Paris and London. The British prime minister weighed in, and the French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, said the only thing the planes would fly over was fish.
When a federal court finally lifted a state ban on the flights in 1977, local people saw the move as a small step forward for air travel and a giant one backward for human rights. The government, they said, caved in to French and English businessmen.
But yesterday, in their eyes, the wrong was finally righted. "We used to set our watches by that plane," said Paul Lanza, a dentist who lives nearby. He stood shivering in the morning chill and watched the Concorde disappear forever.
"Come on everybody," he said. "Let's go to Starbucks."
http://www.nynewsday.com/nyc-concside1025,0,6511668.story?coll=nyc-topheadlines-right
Queens Residents Celebrate Concorde's End
By Merle English
Staff Writer
October 24, 2003, 12:49 PM EDT
"Hip, Hip! Hooray! Hip Hip! Hooray!"
Cheers rang out over Jamaica Bay as the sun rose above the horizon and the British Airways Concorde jet soared overhead, its sonic boom sounding over Queens for the final time.
From the Rockaways, Woodhaven and throughout southeast Queens, people left their beds at dawn and bundled up against the chill to stand in sand at the water's edge and wave at the jet, holding up glasses with non-alcoholic champagne in a cheer led by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens).
Weiner organized the send-off on behalf of "long-suffering" Queens residents to say "good riddance" to the sleek, faster-than-sound aircraft which British Airways called "an icon of speed and glamour," but which airport neighbors called a noisy and intrusive nuisance that affected their quality of life for more than three decades.
"While there may be some who will shed a tear over the final flight of the Concorde, there will be no crying in Queens today," Weiner said in a release issued before the event. "This is one flight cancellation that was long overdue."
A woman among those celebrating shouted, "Gone, gone and forgotten."
ZigZag
ok, that maybe a valid point - but if Branson could have gained in some way - why have BA not used Concorde as a marketing tool themselves - why would Branson do better out of it
and business is about making profit - why did BA not say - ok - take the plane - but we want a cut of future revenues for it - or whatever - but do a deal - deals make money for shareholders -but lazy arrogant management dont do deals - and they dont make money for shareholders
ok, that maybe a valid point - but if Branson could have gained in some way - why have BA not used Concorde as a marketing tool themselves - why would Branson do better out of it
and business is about making profit - why did BA not say - ok - take the plane - but we want a cut of future revenues for it - or whatever - but do a deal - deals make money for shareholders -but lazy arrogant management dont do deals - and they dont make money for shareholders
Steve: Lets agree to disagree. However the one point you made which I totally agree with is B. A. management. All the members of the BA board should have been sacked in allowing a debt of 7 billion pounds to accrue. The cost cutting which is in progress is about just doing enough to stay in business and to placate the militant unions. Would you believe the engineers were going on strike for a better pay deal and as par for the course BA caved in. Until we have someone like Bolton to shake their cage the drip,drip of cost cutting will continue. As I said before what saved the company from becoming insolvent is the beginning of a rise in the world economy.
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