Daniel boudreau
4/1/2014
ESN95
Concorde supersonic aircraft: fail or success?
Concorde aircraft, the first supersonic commercial aircraft in human history, is retired in 2003. United Kingdom and France associated Concorde airplane designed, only British Airways and Air France owned it in the world. Concorde reflected the high technology, adventurer and human intelligence. When it first flight in 1960s, millions on black and white television sets watched Concorde. As a high speed airplane, Concorde cruises at twice the speed of sound, just like as fast as a rifle bullet leaves the muzzle, only 20 were built and 16 of them serve people from 1976 to 2003. Nevertheless, not all of people admire such new airplane, because of one disaster accident in 2000 and 911 in 2001, supersonic airplane gradually out of our sight and finally finished its last fight in 2003. However, Concorde’s advantage is overweight than its disadvantage; I will go discuss it in the following three aspects.
Safety Concorde is the safest transportations in human history. During the first 23 years, it had no fatal accident. Unfortunately, on 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590 crashed in takeoff which kills all 100 passengers, 9 staffs and 4 people on the ground. It was the caused the important role in Concorde retirement. Since that, no doubt many passengers worry about the safety of the Concorde. Prior to the accident, Concorde had been arguably the safest aircraft in the world because it had passenger deaths-per-kilometers with zero before accident. However, the Concorde did not cause the reason of Concorde Flight 4590 crash. According to the official investigation of “Bureau d'Enquêtes et analyses” (an analyst organization from France), the crash was caused by a titanium strip falling from a “Continental Airlines” airplane which had taken off a few minutes earlier. This strip pierced the tire on Concorde’s left main undercarriage when Concorde takeoff. Then the