In December '98 I was invited by a parent of one of my students to visit Concorde at Heathrow, below is a post to the X-Plane mailing list describing the visit and some photos as well.
Hi folks, I've just got back from Heathrow after visiting Concorde and the British Airways ops centre with two students (Adam & Corrine) and Adams father who is a radio engineer for BA. We first went to the perimeter fence of 27L and watched the planes take off. About 10 minutes later Concorde took off bound for JFK. It has a very shallow angle of attack compared to the other jets taking off. You can see the glow of the afterburners which are shut off at 1,000ft. Concordes takeoff speed is around 217knots (250mph) and its landing speed is around 180knots, and it makes a heck of a noise on take off. Apparently when landing on 09 it sets of the car alarms in the car parks !! After getting our passes and getting through the huge security gates into the BA complex we walked down a long corridor with a strong engineering smell (oil, etc), then passed a large doorway and were confronted with the nose of a 747 - it was a bit of a surprise to just turn a corner and see a plane just sitting there. We walked further along and turned another corner to see Concorde looking almost magical in this huge hanger sitting next to the 747. It reminded me of the stealth planes and Blackbird, there was something eerie about it. We walked around under its belly, looking at its wheels, engine and wings. There are no flaps or elevator, just two sets of ailerons either side of the engines. The wings are curved in such a way that the airflow is sent by the leading edge to curve back to the wing and provide extra lift. Then we climbed the stairs and entered the cockpit. The first compartment houses the computers and then you reach the cockpit itself. I sat in the Captains chair. The plane was built in the late 70's and does not have a glass cockpit. The radios are still quite old as well and reminded me of the C-5 galaxy cockpit. At the engineers station there is a radiation detector as well as the normal instruments becouse when she first started flying people were worried about radiation exposure at 50,000ft. An engineer told us that Concorde expands during supersonic flight and showed us a picture of a flight engineer putting his hand behind his instrument panel which is normally flush against the cabin wall. We also had a look at the passenger area. the seats are leather and very comfy. Many passengers prefer seat no 1 (at the front), there is some sort of mythical status from having this seat. Unfortuantly our stay ended there as a grumpy engineer came on board, moaned about people being on board and stormed off, so we made our exit. We also had a tour of the radio communications network. One switch and we could have shut down the whole of BA's comms network!! We looked at a radio comms room with SELCAL where pilots from around the world could call in for weather reports or other information. Our next visit was the BA Ops centre where the air crew sit and wait for their flights (there is a hairdressers and manicurists for the stewardesses) or pilots can plan their routes. I think one of the highlights was the look of joy on Corrines face as she 'hugged' Concordes tyres, I think we all feel that way when we go flying or just being near a plane, it brings out the child within us Happy Flying, Ashley http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ashley.middleton/contents.html (apologies for the long post) The photos show Concorde in its hangar and the cockpit of the original Concorde at Duxford as we were unable to get any photos inside the Heathrow Concorde due to the engineers.