For some time – from the second half of the seventies to the beginning of the 2000s – the Concorde was the closest medium to teleportation available to man. The supersonic aircraft of Air France and British Airways took just over three hours to fly from London to New York. Aboard a Boeing 737 needed – and still need – at least eight.
Looking back now, looks like science fiction. Concorde – when it was still a prototype – made its maiden flight on April 2, 1969, in a period in which we looked to the future with optimism and, above all, with the nose up.
Here’s the only picture of Concorde flying at supersonic speed. The Concorde had to slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5-1.6 so that the Tornado crew could get the shot over the Irish Sea! pic.twitter.com/pIRKvCY9na
— Aviation (@webflite) August 4, 2023
Indeed, within a few months, the race to the skies and to Space has known a crazy acceleration. On December 31, 1968, another supersonic plane took off, the Tupolev Tu-144 built in the Soviet Union. Then it was the turn of the Concorde, in fact. And a few months later the American Neil Armstrong quit his footprint on the moon.
For many the Concorde he was too far ahead of his time. And it is normal, perhaps, that for this very reason you no longer fly.
The last wake in the sky, at twice the speed of sound, the Concorde left her twenty years ago. The farewell flight carried 100 celebrities from New York to London on October 24, 2003. On the other hand, the Concorde has never been an airplane for everyone: in 1976 a round trip it cost $1,500. In the last year the plane was in service, the ticket price climbed to $12,000.
For an infinitely smaller amount, around 200 euros, that engineering masterpiece can now be “purchased”. A new Lego Icons set, composed of 2,038 piecespays tribute to the aircraft that the UK and France began designing together in 1962. And that French President Charles de Gaulle christened the Concorde for the first time the following year.
Concorde was therefore expensive, extremely noisy – due to the sonic boom it produced every time it passed the speed of sound – and also polluting. But it was also beautiful, beautiful to see. “Every time that plane took off and landed, you couldn’t help but interrupt what you were doing – said Brian Lovegrove, a former employee of British Airways -. You could never get enough of it, it was a pleasure to watch and even listen to him.”
Twenty years later that charm remains unchanged, as demonstrated by the videos and amateur shots that accompanied the recent move of an old Concorde fromIntrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum di Manhattanwhere it has been on display since 2003, at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where it will receive a minor maintenance.
“It is the highest speed Concorde has reached in the last twenty years” ironically wrote a user, on X, after seeing the plane gliding on the Hudson River aboard a large barge.
The Lego reproduction is extremely faithful to the original. Even the toy plane has a “tilt nose”: it allowed Concorde pilots to have a better view during landing. When the nose folds, a second large internal window appears, the same one present on the real Concorde.
The model, this time without a minfigure, is crossed by a fascinating device that allows – by rotating its tail – to bring out the three trolleys with wheels. On the ogival delta wings they stand out the four-engine Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines which propelled the aircraft over the sound barrier, at Mach 1, at an altitude close to 60,000 feet, practically at the edge of Space.
Furthermore, by detaching a piece of the fuselage, one can access a reconstruction of the spartan interior of the aircraft. The seats, in particular, on the real Concorde were anything but ultra-luxury. A single class, 90 seats in all, with little space between one session and another. Those who have flown aboard the supersonic plane tell of “narrow” spaces and “insignificant” and “uncomfortable” seats: “The Concorde was magical. But the nostalgia, combined with the regret ‘I should have bought a ticket’, has contributed to the romantic memory of a playground for the rich and famous”.
It wasn’t the champagne served before and after take-off that certified the “wealth” of those flying on a Concorde. Nor the ability to sit close to Mick Jagger o Gwyneth Paltrow.
On its pedestal, the set Lego Icons Concorde 102 cm long – slightly less than the gigantic Titanic made of bricks which reaches 135 cm – reminds us of the most precious thing guaranteed by the supersonic plane: save time. Concorde and its passengers have lived on this awareness for many years.