[esselle]

Agree it will likely never happen, but it is a nice thought.

I’d love to have one more ride, as long as they still serve the CSWC.

[LuganoPirate]

Building a new one would cost a couple of billion in development costs, but being the optimist, I think £120m would get her airborne again. After the AF disaster a lot of modifications were made and the air-frames have nowhere near reached their full life cycles.

Likewise the engines, assuming they are still around, will likely still be in good condition though obviously maintenance would be needed.

I don’t know about the avionics and over the last 12 years they’ve obviously become more sophisticated, but there are still many aircraft flying with older avionics than are fitted to Concorde, so with some modernisation will be fine.

All in all I wish them luck and look forward to what would be my third Concorde flight!

[AnthonyDunn]

Sadly, I cannot see £120m being anywhere near enough. I recall my time dealing with the same generation of military aircraft, engines, avionics etc and the cost of re-establishing the engineering support and production facilities to produce necessary parts would be horrendous. And then you’d have the certification (and insurance) issues. Would the CAA, BEA and FAA be prepared to play ball?

That said, I’d be prepared to pay a not inconsiderable sum for what would be my first (and probably last) Concorde trip.

[Cheeryguy]

@esselle your comment did make me chuckle. I’d happily drink warm lidl cola to fly on the pointy plank again.
Each to their own I guess.

[esselle]

Cheeryguy

I suppose you’re right, warm cola would be fine. But the Pol was lovely!!

[RegSpotter]

I’m sure there will be no European aerospace company that will want to take the responsibility as Design Authority for Concorde . A part of why BA and AF walked away was Airbus wanting to charge massive fees to continue supporting the aircraft. Second issue is that much of the avionics was designed before the word microprocessor entered the dictionary. The unique to Concorde avionics is impossible to source or repair. I would love to see her fly again like many other . Yes the Pol was lovely .

[stevescoots]

using the Vulcan as an example with regards to an old bird with aging avionics and lack of engineering support then i think 120kk is enough to get one up on the airshow circuit again. not enough for charter flights, insurance alone would cripple it, not to mention which commercial airport would also have insurance, I am sure somewhere there are details of BA and AF’s operating costs

[MrMichael]

Who would fly it…ex Concorde pilots? To carry pax I guess they would have to un mothball the Concorde flight simulator for pilot training….is it still about and in working order?

[FDOS_UK]

The Concorde sim at Filton was ancient when she retired, I believe running on 8″ floppy disk technology!

Very much doubt it would be in working order these days, probably impossible to get parts for, even if it is intact.

When I did some consulting work at BA, I remember one of their IT managers telling me he’d been asked to look at moving it from BAE Filton to Cranebank (to save the cost/hassle of crews having to go there), so he went down with a couple of engineers, who took one look at it and said words to the effect it was almost 100% that moving it to Heathrow would stop it working and they wouldn’t be able to fix it.

[midorosan]

How far do you think £120 million would go?

[midorosan]

How far do you think £120 million would go?

[FDOS_UK]

Unfortunately, when talking about SSTs (supersonic transports), it doesn’t go very far in restoring flying status, the certification costs alone (if anyone would act as design authority) would be huge..

It could go a very long way towards creating the experiential simulator they mention, which would be a dynamic and fitting tribute to an aircraft that was marvellous in its day – I’d pay to have a ride in that and I bet a lot of others would do, too.

[SuhByungDoh]

I overheard in a Seoul Restaurant as long as 1 year ago that the gentleman from the East was interested in a stake in a resurrected service to an airport not too far from ICN. Having missed out just before the early retirement I sought solace in the First Class Shower on Emirates A380 several times. It was my substitute bucket list item. I was highly amused by the plaque on the two shower doors that stated
” No more than 2 persons allowed in the shower at the same time ” !
I now really fancy having a supersonic shower to complete the revised bucket list !

[Author]

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