BRITISH YOUNG PILOTS

Concorde Day

Twice the speed of sound — built here in Bristol

✈  50 YEARS · 1976 – 2026  ✈

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New — How this works

This is an interactive presentation

🎮 Games built in

Know-your-Concorde hotspot game, Balance-the-Jet, quizzes with scores — come up to the screen and play!

🎬 Real footage

Reheat take-offs and the final landing at Filton. Click the play button when you see one. (Videos need internet — everything else works offline.)

🏛️ A real Concorde

This morning you will stand INSIDE the last Concorde ever to fly. This deck is your mission briefing.

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For Instructors

Introduction for BYP Instructors

✓ Success looks like

  • Kids retelling the engineering stories at pick-up
  • Worksheets completed as a team
  • Everyone flies the sim profile
  • One honest "whoa" per session

✗ This is not

  • A history lecture or a dates test
  • Museum free-roam without the mission
  • About perfect sim landings
  • A quiet day — keep them talking!

A guide, not a script.
Ages 8–16 · adapt pace and depth · the miracles work at every age — younger kids take the stories, older kids take the numbers.

Concorde Day Agenda

1
9:00 – 9:30
The Mystery begins hook + museum mission briefing
🚌
9:30 – 10:00
Coach to Aerospace Bristol
2
10:00 – 12:15
Mission: Alpha Foxtrot board Concorde · projection show · worksheet hunt
🚌
12:15 – 12:45
Coach back to Bristol Grammar
🥪
12:45 – 13:15
Lunch
3
13:15 – 14:30
The Five Engineering Miracles + paper dart contest + Balance the Jet
☕
14:30 – 14:45
Break
4
14:45 – 15:30
Fly Concorde Xbox sim rotations — the full supersonic profile
5
15:30 – 16:00
Final quiz + The Big Debate then pick-up

The Mystery

In the 1960s — before computers existed in any office —
engineers in Bristol built a passenger jet that flew at TWICE the speed of sound.

Nobody has done it since. How did they do it?

Faster than sound itself

MACH 1
tap to reveal

The speed of sound — about 767 mph. Sound travels as invisible ripples in the air. Mach 1 means catching up with your own ripples.

SONIC BOOM
tap to reveal

Go faster than sound and the ripples pile into one giant shock wave — like a boat's wake, but made of noise. On the ground: BOOM. That is why supersonic flight over towns is banned.

MACH 2
tap to reveal

Concorde's cruise: 1,350 mph — 23 miles every minute. Bristol to Cardiff in about 90 seconds. Faster than a rifle bullet leaves the barrel of some rifles.

Built 8 miles from here

🤝
1962
Britain + France agree to build her together the name "Concorde" means agreement
🛫
1969
British Concorde 002 takes off from FILTON test pilot Brian Trubshaw — the airfield you visit today
🥂
1976
First passenger flights London and Paris, the same minute — 21 January
⚡
1996
Fastest Atlantic crossing ever New York → London in 2 h 52 m 59 s
🛬
2003
The last flight of any Concorde Alpha Foxtrot lands at Filton — 26 November
🎂
2026
She turns 50 — and TODAY you meet her on the very airfield where her story began and ended
🎮 Game — Know your Concorde

Find the nine parts

✅ Quick Quiz

Session 1 check

Mission: Alpha Foxtrot

Aerospace Bristol · Filton

You are about to board the last Concorde ever to fly.

Your mission worksheet

14 things to find

Concorde Alpha Foxtrot at Aerospace Bristol

🕵️ Work as detectives

Teams of 3–4. The answers are hidden on board Alpha Foxtrot and around the museum — on displays, in the cabin, in the cockpit.

🏆 Every box ticked

Question 12 is the special one: find a detail nobody else spots. Bonus points if the instructor didn't know it.

The explorer's code

Tap each one as we agree it.

👀 Guess first, then flip

On board — what to look for

🔤
The letters on the tail
G-BOAF
Her name is the last two: Alpha Foxtrot
🪟
The windows
Tiny — on purpose
Keeps the cabin safe 11 miles up
💺
The seats
Only 100
Smaller inside than your holiday jet
⏱️
The Machmeter
Watch for 2.00
Passengers cheered it every flight
👨‍✈️
The third crew seat
Flight engineer
A wall of dials — you'll learn their secret job today
👃
The famous nose
It droops
12.5° down — find out why this afternoon
🏭
Bristol's other aircraft
100+ years
From the 1910 Boxkite to Concorde
⚡
The record
2:52:59
New York → London, 1996. Still unbeaten.
Session 3

How did they do it? The Five Engineering Miracles

You have now stood inside her. Time to solve the mystery — five problems that should have been impossible in the 1960s.

📐

1 · The Shape
a wing with no flaps

🔥

2 · The Heat
a plane that grows 20 cm

🚀

3 · The Engines
intakes that think

⚖️

4 · The Balance
flying by pumping fuel

🧠

5 · No Computers
slide rules and brains

1The Shape — a triangle called delta

The problem: a normal wing that works at 1,350 mph is terrible at 180 mph — and you must land at 180 mph.

The answer: one huge triangle. No flaps, no slats — just elevons. At slow speed she tilts her nose high and the wing makes spinning tornadoes of air (vortex lift) that carry her like a kite.

The catch: landing that nose-high, the pilots could see only sky. So the engineers made the whole nose bend downwards — 12.5°.

Concorde nose and visor at Filton

The droop nose you saw this morning — cameras of the 1960s were not good enough to land with, so they bent the aeroplane instead.

✂️ Activity — 15 minutes

The great dart derby

🛩️ Build TWO darts

  • Dart A — your classic long thin dart
  • Dart B — wide TRIANGLE wings, like Concorde
  • Same paper, same size sheet
  • Name them. Decorate the fin.

🏁 Two contests

  • Speed run: throw HARD and flat — which flies straighter and faster?
  • Slow landing: throw GENTLY — which floats down nicest?
  • Watch: the delta usually wins the speed run…
  • …and lands nose-high. Sound familiar?

Concorde's designers faced the same trade-off: brilliant fast, tricky slow — and they fixed it with the droop nose.

2The Heat — she grew in flight

127°C
nose temperature at Mach 2 — hotter than boiling water, just from rubbing against air
+20 cm
the whole airframe stretched longer as the metal heated and expanded
WHITE
special super-reflective paint to throw the heat back out
⛽ = ❄️
the fuel was used as a giant heat sponge, soaking warmth away from the skin

🧢 The cap in the gap: in flight, a gap opened on the flight deck as she stretched. Crews say that on a final flight, an engineer slid his cap into the gap at Mach 2 — she cooled, shrank… and sealed it in forever. That cap is still trapped inside a Concorde today.

3The Engines — the intakes did the thinking

Rolls-Royce Snecma Olympus 593

An Olympus 593 — you stood next to one this morning.

Four Olympus 593s — the only airliner ever with reheat: fuel sprayed straight into the hot exhaust for a monster push at take-off and through Mach 1.

The problem: jet engines choke on supersonic air. Feed them 1,350 mph air and they simply stop working.

The miracle: moving ramps inside each intake slowed the air from 1,350 mph to 500 mph in just 4.5 metres — adjusting themselves many times a second. The intakes did the thinking.

🎬 Real footage

Reheat take-off

Concorde departing London Heathrow, reheats lit · YouTube: Heathrow Aircraft — past and present

Watch for…

  • The golden glow behind all four engines — that is reheat
  • How steeply she climbs away compared to a normal jet
  • The noise — passengers said take-off felt like a sports car launch
🌆 Bonus: twilight take-off — see the reheats glow in the dark

4The Balance — flying by pumping fuel

The problem: passing Mach 1, the lift holding her up suddenly slides 2 metres backwards along the wing. Nose drops. Unfixed, that is fatal.

The answer: if the lift moves back, move the weight back to match — by pumping fuel between 13 tanks, nose to tail, in flight.

Whose job? The flight engineer — the third crew seat you saw this morning. Every flight, by hand. A human being balancing 185 tonnes at 1,350 mph.

Concorde flight engineer panel

The flight engineer's wall of dials — fuel pumps included. No screens. 1960s.

🎮 Game — you are the flight engineer

Balance the jet

◀ NOSETAIL ▶
▼WEIGHT (fuel)
▲LIFT pushes here

5No Computers — guess before you flip

📏
The calculator of 1962
Slide rule
Two sliding sticks. Every Mach 2 sum done on one.
📐
The design office
Drawing boards
100,000+ parts drawn by hand, in pencil and ink
🌬️
The simulator of the 60s
Wind tunnels
Thousands of hours blowing air over hand-built models
🧠
The processor
People
Rooms of humans doing the maths — checked, then checked again

A £100 phone today has millions of times more computing power than the entire Concorde programme had.
And still — nothing you can buy a ticket on flies faster than she did in 1969.

🧮 Mental maths for pilots

Mach maths — answers hidden, guess first

🗺️ CHALLENGE 1
Mach 2 = 23 miles a minute. Bristol → Edinburgh ≈ 300 miles. How long?

300 ÷ 23 ≈ 13 minutes. Less time than morning break. [Younger: use 20 miles/min → 300 ÷ 20 = 15 min]

🕐 CHALLENGE 2
Leave London 10:30. Fly 3 h 30 m. New York clocks are 5 hours BEHIND. Landing time?

10:30 + 3:30 = 14:00 London = 09:00 in New York — 90 minutes BEFORE you left. Passengers called it time travel.

⛽ CHALLENGE 3 — STRETCH
Tanks hold 95 tonnes. She burns ~21 tonnes an hour at cruise. How many hours of flying?

95 ÷ 21 ≈ 4½ hours — which is why New York (3½ h) worked but Los Angeles was impossible. Range decided her whole career.

✅ Quiz — the Five Miracles

Miracle check

You Have Control

Fly Concorde on the simulator — the full supersonic profile

This morning you stood in her. Now you fly her.

🗺️ Tap through the flight

The supersonic profile

Your flight card — tick as you fly

🏆 Captain's points

  • Smooth through Mach 1 +10
  • Hold 60,000 ft steady +10
  • Nose drooped before final +5
  • Gentle touchdown +15

👥 Fly in pairs

One pilot, one flight engineer calling the card. Swap next slot. Highest score of the day gets bragging rights at pick-up.

🎬 Real footage — 26 November 2003

The last landing — the plane you met today

Concorde G-BOAF — final flight into Filton, 2003 · YouTube: Mark Stead

Watch for…

  • The droop nose coming down on final — exactly what you just flew
  • Thousands of people lining the fences at Filton
  • This is Alpha Foxtrot herself — the aircraft you boarded this morning
🎞️ Bonus: Concorde comes home to Bristol — with her flypast welcome
Session 5

Why did she stop flying?

💔 Paris, 2000

A terrible crash after take-off killed everyone on board. The whole fleet was grounded, made safer, and returned in 2001 — but trust and passenger numbers never fully recovered.

💸 She was expensive

Four times the fuel per passenger of a jumbo jet. Tickets cost thousands. Only 100 seats to share the bill.

📉 2003 — the end

Fewer people flying after 2001, and the spare-parts support was ending. British Airways and Air France retired the whole fleet the same year.

She didn't fail. The world around her changed.

🎬 January 2025 — it's stirring again

The future — supersonic returns?

Boom Supersonic XB-1 breaks the sound barrier · official Boom Supersonic channel

Watch for…

  • How TINY XB-1 is next to Concorde — one pilot, no passengers yet
  • The Mach number ticking past 1.0
  • January 2025 — the first civil aircraft supersonic since Concorde retired

Also coming: Boom's Overture airliner (Mach 1.7, 2030s) and NASA's X-59, testing a quiet "thump" instead of a boom — which could make supersonic flight over LAND legal at last.

🎤 The Big Debate — 15 minutes

«This house would bring back supersonic travel»

✅ Team FOR — ammunition

  • Time is the one thing money can't buy back
  • New tech: quieter, cleaner engines than 1969
  • X-59's quiet thump could end the over-land ban
  • Progress needs bold machines — Concorde proved it

❌ Team AGAINST — ammunition

  • Huge fuel burn per passenger — climate cost
  • Tickets only the rich can afford — who is it FOR?
  • Video calls beat 3-hour meetings in New York
  • That money could improve flying for everyone

How it runs: 3 min prep · 1 min each side · 1 min replies · whole-room vote. Use worksheet question 14 — you already wrote your first argument this morning.

✅ Final Quiz — the whole day

Concorde Day final check

See you at Mach 2 ✈

Today you boarded the last Concorde ever to fly,
solved five impossible engineering problems — and then flew her.
🚀 Watch at home: XB-1 goes supersonic 🛬 Watch at home: the last landing 🌆 Watch at home: twilight take-off

Photos: Wikimedia Commons — Eduard Marmet (CC BY-SA 3.0), Adrian Pingstone (public domain), William M (CC BY-SA 3.0), Alan Wilson (CC BY-SA 2.0), Nimda01 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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