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Concorde, when parked up in the hangar adjacent to a 747
Whilst Concorde was still in service, a group of us railwaymen from up north, managed to get a visit to the maintenance hangers at Heathrow. It was one hell of trip. In effect as they stopped one Concorde for a major exam, they robbed it of parts to get the one that was coming off exam in to service. There was a stack of olympus engines all with little labels describing what had been taken off.
On the service boards next to the aircraft was a list of faults reported by air crew, the sign off reports included phrases like, unable to fault. Awaiting more reports, more information needed.The whole job was run exactly the same as the system we used on repairing trains.
They let us have any access and we took advantage. I had a great photo taken of me, sat in the pilots seat with the side window open and my arm hanging out like was in a Ford cortina. Unfortunately the photos have got lost, but I keep the memories.
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paininthe
Apropos of nothing in particular, over the few months I worked on that job at Heathrow, a number of interesting facts came to light:
Number of parking places BA owns at Heathrow = 4. Everything else, they rent.
I guess if it isn't flying, it isn't making any money.
Concorde, when parked up in the hangar adjacent to a 747 is absolutely tiny.
80% of workshop space in the hangar is dedicated to overhauling landing gear.
I guess if you are throwing ~300 tons of aircraft at concrete on a regular basis, that makes sense.