I think it is a matter of useage rather than grammar. The corollary in the US is the use of "shuttle" rather than "the shuttle" when discussing NASA space shuttles.

Americans say "the shuttle."

I don't think there is an accurate corollary, language use simply differs from place to place.

Flew Concorde round trip JFK-LHR and onward in F to Namibia via JNB on BA using miles in 2002. The outbound flight was almost empty.
Loved seeing the curvature of the earth.
In terms of celebrity sightings Yoko Ono on the return flight, which was packed, who was a few rows ahead of me accompanied by very good looking male assistant. Yoko slept most of the time as did the person sitting next to me who flew it frequently.

Two questions:

- Are there any Concordes left flying at all? I remember reading that Branson wanted to keep one airworthy...

- Has anyone here taken one of those backseat MiG rides? I suppose on the raw coolness factor, that would still be a pretty fun option. Some might say the MiG is more fun: a shorter flight, but a more intense experience.

No, they typically do not say "the shuttle". On the other hand, I live and work right outside a major NASA facility and to NASA types, she is vehemently just "shuttle".

Unfortunately, there are not.


Regarding "shuttle" versus "the shuttle," I'm American and I've NEVER heard anyone just say "shuttle" if you mean as in "NASA will launch shuttle today." I've heard things like "Shuttle Discovery was to make the first polar orbit flight," but that's a little different; more typically I hear people say "Space Shuttle Discovery" anyway unless the context is already clear. I don't work for NASA, but then I wouldn't necessarily consider NASA usage to be the standard. By comparison, the usage "Concorde" is pretty standard if you read the BBC, the Independent, etc......

Sadly no and amazing to think that such amazing technology came about over thirty years ago and now we are left with no supersonic service.

I remember at the time the Concorde was being retired, most of the consensus was that Mr. Branson was doing it all for free publicity and probably didn't really have interest in running scheduled service. It was all for naught anyway, as both BA & AF refused.

Airbus would not have supported it anyway.

Boeing tried to come up with an SST all the way through the early 90s, my brother having worked with Lockheed and NASA on that project. When it came for Boeing to develop the Sonic Cruiser, it was supposed to go up to mach .9

The size of the core of the engine needed to be bigger and for it to be that way, it wouldn't be economically feasible for the Sonic Cruiser. However, it was in developing the engine for the SC, they led up to developments on the 787.

As for the Concorde schedule. There was a 12:15pm flight from New York that would arrive into New York around 8:00am, I would then catch a 10am flight to Chicago, arriving the same day at 11am, one hour before leaving. This was when there were two flights a day to/from JFK/LHR.

UG

Some more tidbits...
 

In addition, Singapore Airlines used to have a codeshare with British Airways, where on one side it would have the BA livery, the other SQ. It would go LHR to Bahrain and then to Singapore, which was short lived.

Also, there was an agreement with Braniff where there would be a DFW-IAD-LHR flight. The flight would have a mixed BA/Braniff f/as until IAD and then would switch to BA to LHR.

UG

Is anybody ever going to develop new supersonic commercial airplanes? It is amazing that Concorde's (left the "The" of - I was temped to added) technology is 30 years old.

Flew in 1997. It was 125,000 US Air miles for a round trip ticket. Certainly the best use of US Air miles considering what you can get for 125,000 miles today.

^^ You can say that again.

I being one of them, stick to my story...NASA guys excepted.

Whatever happened to the Tupolev 144 - Concord-ski?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordski

And the Tu-444?

http://www.tupolev.ru/English/Show.asp?SectionID=199

I'm surprised Aeroflot hasn't rolled them out :D