@ Musée de l’air et de l’espace, Le Bourget, France
December 2016
This is the cockpit of the first Concorde to fly, on 2 March 1969, and later retired on arrival at the French air museum at Le Bourget Airport on 19 October 1973, having made 397 flights covering 812 hours, of which 255 hours were at supersonic speeds. You can note the differences from the production aircraft as shown in a previous post. The big noticeable change from the prototypes was the addition of a full set of engine instruments in the center panel between the flight crew. Originally the manufacturers had believed the airlines wanted a moving map display but having common instrument panel layouts with easily readable engine readouts for various standard parameters took precedence. The iconic Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued flying until its retirement in 2003. Twenty aircraft were built in total, including six prototypes and development aircraft. Concorde was the first airliner to have an analog fly-by-wire flight-control system. Nikon D500 w/18-200 mm, processed with Aperture.
