Concorde Safety Thoughts
 

So much has been said here on Flyertalk lately about weather the Concorde is safe or not. I've been thinking about this.

Yes the Concorde has an excellent safety record, but. Given the rash on incidents in the last 2 weeks and the cracks found in BA's Concordes.

Could it be possible, that these 30 years old wonders and just getting old and starting to fall apart?

To me it's not a pressing issue, since I dont plan on flying on them.
I was just wondering.

Well a quick answer appears somewhat unlikely, since investigators said today it could take at least a year and a half to determine what caused the supersonic jetliner to burst into flames and slam into a small hotel minutes after takeoff.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum...ML/000943.html

What matters to the condition of an airframe is not years, but operating hours and takeoff/landing cycles. In both these respects the Concordes are in fact far "newer" than most conventional jetliners. They have compiled far fewer air hours and takeoffs/landings than many subsonic airliners introduced into service much more recently.

So I do not think the Concordes are "just falling apart" due to age. But I do think the forensic evidence from the AF accident suggests the fuel tanks may have an inherent vulnerability to debris thrown up from below, which, coupled with the Concordes' tires demonstrated propensity to shred/rupture on takeoff or landing, bears some investigating.

In terms of airframe life, both BA and AF think (thought) that Concordes would continue to fly in passenger service until approx. 2020.

It's not just the tires that are the problem. The wheels (rims) are made of magnesium, a light-weight metal that burns ferociously. I wonder how much weight steel rims would add? Maybe that's all the change needed. Incidentally, I flew the Concorde last November and loved it.

Bruce

james, where did you hear the 2020 figure? Everything I have heard said 2007.

Reading varoius reports, most seem to be focusing on a tire/rim explosion piercing the gas tank. One very good question on either this board or the Professional Pilots board, is to add Kevlar in the area where a burst tire/rim or compressor failure might cause rupture of the tanks. It would seem a lightweight fix to a problem that has already occured several times, this one with tragic consequences.
Beyond this, the piots love the plane.

I agree that compared to other aircraft like the MD-80s and Boeings, the Concorde has a relatively small number of cycles.

However, what's to rule out that the concorde is not as durable a plane. Maybe they are starting to reach a point where reliability is going downhill.

The concorde is a very different type of plane than the subsonic planes, maybe different rules for judging reliability are needed also.

I'm not a aircraft safety expert, i'm just wondering.

Here is picture I picked up from another site. Thanks goes to "globaliser" for posting it.
Not very sharp, but compare the right landing gear to the left. Seems to missing some tires.
http://members.aol.com/globaliser/concorde.jpg

Wow, you must have good eyes! I can't tell from that picture. In any case, the better evidence is pieces of tire and wheel found on the runway.

I can't imagine why the French are predicting that the cause of the accident will not be known for 18 months. Maybe it will take them that long to write their report http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif, but they seem to know what happened already.

Bruce

I'm no expert either Boomer, but certainly agree that the Concorde is a different bird all together. The extreme temperature range in which this plane operates is far greater than any subsonic aircraft. Normal rules do not apply. The plane actually expands by inches during flight due to the extreme heat generated by supersonic flight. After its maiden flights, the carpet used on the interior of the plane's passenger cabin had to be redesigned and replaced... it had stretched and torn apart as the fusalage expanded.

Well, sadly, the FOURTH Concorde problem for BA since the unfortunate AF crash last week, occurred today in London! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

Another aircraft grounded for repairs!
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum...ML/000953.html


BTW- Bagold posted a similar thread earlier:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum94/HTML/002043.html


[This message has been edited by doc (edited 08-01-2000).]

I have NO doubt that the engineers know more about the plane than I do, BUT...I could draw an analogy to the SR-71 where the engineers predicted about 15 more years of trouble-free flying about a year before they started to fall apart every time they landed.

The reality is that there is no thorough real-world analysis of the long-term effect of supersonic flight on the alloys involved...only guesses by computers based on the best information and guesses that engineers can come up with.

All and still, if I were offered free (or even affordable) passage on the Concorde tommorow I would jump at the chance...

Baze - the BBC and Sky both reported 2017 for AF. BA often comment(ed) that they anticipate flying concorde until 2020-2025.

For those who missed it, there was an interesting article in the Washington Post regarding safety and the Concorde. The title says it all...

With One Crash, Concorde Ranks Last in Safety

By Don Phillips
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 30, 2000; Page A26

The crash of the Air France Concorde near Paris on Tuesday transformed the supersonic aircraft from the safest plane on earth to the most dangerous, statistically speaking.

This quirk shows the dangers of measuring aviation safety by numbers alone in an era when flight is so safe that just one accident can skew the ratings dramatically. But statistics can also tell useful stories.

For more than three decades, the Concorde flew the earth's airways with no crashes, no deaths and no injuries more serious than bumps and bruises from occasional evacuations after nonfatal incidents. That means that on the industry's standard safety measure, "hull losses" per million flights, it scored a perfect zero. A hull loss is counted when an airplane is damaged so badly that it will never fly again.

And because the Concorde has been in service far longer than other aircraft that now have zero hull-loss ratings--the Airbus A330 and 340 and the Boeing 777, 737NG (for "new generation") and 717--many people considered its record to be the best.

However, because there are so few Concordes and because each flies fewer than 1,000 hours a year, the Tuesday crash boosted the hull loss per million flights figure to 11.64, according to statistics developed by Boeing Co.

This is by far the worst record among jetliners flying today. It is exceeded only by those of the first generation of jets, which have long since been phased out--the Comet, the Caravelle, the Trident and the VC-10. Together they racked up an average figure of 15.51.

"I am bothered by continual references in all the media about the safety record of the Concorde," said John Purvis, Boeing's former safety chief who is now a consultant and partner with Safety Services International of Seattle. "The entire fleet was good up to now, but in fact, it had less than 80,000 takeoffs and landings.

"I think people have to realize that safety is a numbers game," Purvis said. "Concorde had a good record partly because there weren't many of them, they were underutilized and had special maintenance handling and crews that were the cream of the crop."

The Boeing 737, by contrast, has had 77 crashes but still has an excellent safety record, ranging from 1.25 per million to .43 to zero hull losses for different versions of the plane, because it is the world's most common airliner. The huge 737 fleet flies more hours in one week than the Concordes have flown in their entire existence. The 737 has great exposure to potential crash situations but still avoids accidents.

At first glance, the wide-body McDonnell Douglas MD-11, with five crashes and a hull-loss rate of 6.54 per million departures, appears to be the least safe subsonic aircraft now flying. This is worse than the first-generation U.S. airliners--the Boeing 707 has 116 hull losses and a rate of 6.51, while the McDonnell Douglas DC-8 has 72 losses and a rate of 5.91.

However, a more careful examination tells a different story. First, the MD-11 has not yet flown a million departures. This makes it susceptible to statistical quirks. And several of the crashed MD-11s were cargo planes, meaning there was no danger to the flying public.

The 707 and DC-8, on the other hand, suffered from the growing pains of the early jet age. And now most of them are flying in the Third World, where crash rates tend to be higher for all types of planes.

Safety statistics can tell stories that defy conventional wisdom.

For example, John Lauber, vice president for safety and technical affairs at Airbus Industrie, conducted a study comparing the hull-loss rates year by year for each of the four generations of passenger jets that are still in the air.

In each case, the hull-loss rate was very high in the first few years of flight for each generation. It then dropped to a very low rate for each generation in all subsequent years.

Airbus concluded that pilots, maintenance crews and engineers using new planes must go through a significant learning curve before they can establish optimum safety.