ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 22, 1996 TAG: 9601220070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PARIS
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The needle-nosed Concorde, a technological breakthrough when it first took to the skies, marked its 20th birthday Sunday searching for more passengers.
Traveling at twice the speed of sound, 53,943 passengers flew the supersonic luxury jet's Paris-to-New York leg alone in 1995.
But the Concorde is moving at a snail's pace in erasing the $7 billion it took to put it in the air on Jan. 21, 1976, when it made its first commercial run from Paris to Rio de Janeiro, via Dakar, Senegal.
``Technically, we could fly until 2015. But the more time that passes, the more expensive it gets to run,'' said Franck Debouck, in charge of Concorde operations at Air France.
The state-run airline won't say just how deeply the Concorde is mired in debt, but says it is content for now to absorb the red ink. Those linked to the airline puffed with pride Sunday as a Concorde roared from Paris to New York on a ceremonial birthday flight.
``I spent the most beautiful years of my life thanks to this plane,'' recalled Edouard Chemel, a seven-year Concorde pilot for Air France. ``Its beauty is immortal. At all the airports on the planet, the Concorde has always been an attraction.''
Operated by Air France and British Airways, the Concorde travels at more than 1,350 miles per hour - a speed known as Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. It can carry up to 128 passengers across the Atlantic in just three hours.
It has been the pride of France, developed in the 1960s during the space race, yet enduring in the 1990s as a sleek symbol of technological know-how.
Only 16 of the jets were ever made, the last in 1980. Two planes already have been retired, but the rest of the fleet is designed to fly until 2015. They have flown nearly 69 million miles and never had an accident.
``The first test flight of the Concorde took place in 1969, the same year that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. What a symbol,'' said Michel Polacco, author of a book on the aircraft.
Highlights in the Concorde's 20-year reign:
It has carried luminaries ranging from pop star Michael Jackson to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Last August, it shattered the record for around-the-world travel with a six-stage flight of 31 hours and 27 minutes.
It raised eyebrows on New Year's Eve 1994 when it carried revelers who paid $23,000 apiece for a 32-hour trip to nowhere. Travelers got to ring in the New Year twice because the jet twice crossed the International Date Line.
It made headlines earlier that year when an impatient Saudi prince, unwilling to wait two hours for the next conventional jet, paid $236,000 to charter one to ferry his party of 20 from Paris to the United States.
But financially, the Concorde has had a bumpy ride. Largely because of its huge overhead and fuel costs, it isn't cheap - a round-trip ticket from New York to Paris now runs about $6,400.
The Concorde guzzles 22 tons of fuel an hour, twice the fuel consumption of a Boeing 747 carrying four times as many passengers and luggage.
That has put the Concorde out of the reach of business travelers increasingly mindful of their companies' bottom lines.
``I'd love to fly the Concorde. Who wouldn't?'' said Jack Myers, a U.S. expatriate working in Paris for a small engineering company. ``But not at that price.''
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB