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Concorde: Two for eternity

Shortly before the end of Concorde's commercial operation, two new - and final - records have been set. As there is no other commercial supersonic jet in operation and probably won't be for a long time, both might be "records for eternity". Reports Gordon Roxburgh of Concorde SST:

"[British Airways' Concorde G-BOAD] landed in Boston on Wednesday [October 08] in a record London-to-U.S. time of three hours, five minutes and 34 seconds, according to airline spokesman Jeff Angel. The old record to Boston of three hours and nine minutes was set in 1974 on a flight from Paris to Boston, flew before the aircraft entered service on one of the development aircraft, Concorde 02 (F-WTSA). British Airways (and Concorde G-BOAD!) now hold both the East-West and West-East transatlantic records, with the JFK-LHR record of 2hrs, 52mins and 59 seconds being set on the 7th of February 1996, by Captain Leslie Scott and his crew."

And:

"In September [the very same] lightly loaded aircraft was able to accelerate to supersonic speeds directly out of Cardiff, into the Bristol Channel, and reached Mach 1 in under 5 minutes, the best ever performance for a civil airliner. Only 7 minutes later they were cruising at Mach 2! The aircraft had never before had the chance to accelerate straight away with a light load. One Concorde test pilot commented that this performance was not even seen during the development programme as the departures always had a subsonic section before they reached the supersonic acceleration point."

More at the Concorde Newslog (that badly lacks permalinks)

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