Supersonic Debut: Two Views

After $3 billion in development costs and years of delay, the supersonic Concorde went into commercial service last week. An Air France plane made an inaugural flight from Paris to Rio de Janeiro; a British Airways craft flew from London to Bahrain. Aboard the Rio flight was Chris English, a TIME Washington Bureau copy clerk whose hobby is flying commercial airliners (since 1969 he has logged 412,000 air miles). TIME London Bureau Chief Herman Nickel flew to Bahrain. Their accounts follow, along with their ratings of their flights on factors other than speed (four airplanes was the highest possible).

PARIS TO RIO. 5,741 miles; total time: 6 hr. 30 min, (plus a 1-hr. refueling stop), v. the usual 11 hr. 55 min.; fare: $1,434, v. $1,195 standard first class.

My seat, 6-D on starboard, was comfortable without being luxurious, about equal to a DC-9 in coach. Engine startup seemed quiet,* although I was some distance forward in cabin 1.

No one clapped or cheered at liftoff. We climbed steeply into a cloud bank. By the time we were out of it, our speed was nearly that of a conventional jetliner. Aside from a brief sinking feeling shortly after takeoff the flight was remarkably smooth in accelerating. A "mach meter," an aerial speedometer, in view of passengers in the first few rows reached mach 1. There were gasps and cheers. Then came an announcement from the cockpit: "Ladies and gentlemen, you have just become the first 100 passengers in the history of the world to pass the speed of sound in a scheduled flight." [Actually, some passengers aboard the Soviet TU-144 were first.]

Champagne flowed at a rate that rivaled that of the Olympus engines' fuel consumption. At mach 2 (1,320 m.p.h.) which we passed without a tremor, came the food--smoked salmon, rib of veal, chateau potatoes, cheese, apricot pastry, Chablis Vaudesir and Chateau Haut-Brion, plus liqueurs. Many passengers paid the smoothness of supersonic flight the ultimate compliment; they fell asleep. We touched down in Dakar, West Africa, right on schedule, refueled and were on our way to Rio in an hour. A minor engine problem held our speed below mach 1 for an extra 20 min., but it was corrected and we landed in Rio at 4:10 p.m. local time, 40 min. behind schedule. It didn't matter. We had sipped Gevrey Chambertin (1961) at twice the speed of sound.

LONDON TO BAHRAIN. 3,515 miles; total time: 4 hr. 10 min., v. the regular 6 hr. 20 min.; fare: $686, v. $597 standard first class.

The flight was fairly routine until we reached supersonic speed. It then became a new and exhilarating sensation--like having the carpet of the world map magically moved away from you. Just 20 min. after Venice, the heel of the Italian boot had been reached. Moments later, Greece flashed by on the left, and soon Crete and Cyprus were behind us, too. The yellow-brown dusk of the desert began to descend as Captain Norman Todd of British Airways throttled back and glided toward Bahrain, a 231-sq.-mi. island of oil rigs, a refinery and an aluminum smelter; it is a key stopover on the air route to Australia.

In terms of space, Concorde seems like a throwback to the cramped piston age. "Mind your head," warned the steward as I boarded and made my way to my seat in the long cigar-tube fuselage. If your seat is near one of the tiny windows, you notice the sharp curvature of the fuselage. The reading light is close to your head. In supersonic flight, the windows warm up and the cabin tends to get a bit stuffy.

We were served by an efficient crew that had gained experience on Concorde demonstration flights. But with TV crews and interviewers blocking the narrow aisle, even they had difficulty coping with the limited space. The tiny galleys produced two hot-food choices: duck and steak. I chose steak, and it arrived thoroughly overdone, though upgraded by a prior portion of caviar and lobster hors d'oeuvres and a fine 1970 Chateau Brane-Cantenac. The passengers did not seem to mind the limited menu or the out-of-the-way destination. Said the Duchess of Argyll, 62: "I would have flown her anywhere."

A postscript: Nickel returned to London by subsonic jet, taking 9 1/2 hr. door to door, including stops in Vienna and Amsterdam. The Concorde carries 100 passengers from London to Bahrain, but only 71 the other way; takeoff temperatures, head winds and weather delays in Europe require more fuel.

* To observers outside, the Concorde's engines seem anything but quiet. Takeoff noise, as measured at London's Heathrow Airport, was four times as loud as that produced by a 747 jumbo jet.

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