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QE2/Concorde: a unique air/sea program teams the world's fastest jet liner with the world's most famous cruise liner - Trans-Atlantic Tandem - Queen Elizabeth 2
Cruise Travel, March-April, 2003 by Theodore W. Scull
Walking along the Queen Elizabeth 2's Boat Deck in mid-Atlantic, I hear a sharp boom-boom and look up to the heavens, but I am too late. The Concorde, flying Mach 2 at 61,000 feet, is already 23 miles away. Then just under 24 hours later, I hear it again, but still have no luck spotting the airplane--or even her jet stream.
When the QE2 takes the Great Circle Route between Bishop's Rock off Cornwall, England, and Cape Race, Newfoundland, the Concorde's sonic boom, following a path 32 miles wide, may be heard over a period of three days--28 minutes earlier each day when the ship is sailing westbound and the Concorde is flying east. To actually see the Concorde flying overhead, you will need warning (available when a former Concorde pilot is sailing as a guest lecturer), the direction in which the aircraft is flying and, of course, a cloudless sky.
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The jet is a beautiful sight to see approaching an airport as she drops her nose to improve the pilots' visibility, making her look like an elegant bird gliding in for a landing--on the runway at JFK, not on the waters of Jamaica Bay (that's for the birds)! Once the airplane was the ocean liner's arch enemy, at first slowly eating into the trans-Atlantic market. Then in October 1958, regular Boeing 707 European air service began, and ships as transportation took a sharp dive to virtual oblivion by the 1970s.
Yet Cunard Line's Queen Elizabeth 2 has successfully soldiered on, and remains in trans-Atlantic service through 2003; then her new running mate, the Queen Mary 2, will assume the role beginning in April 2004. If you want to be part of a great oceanic tradition, there is but one year left to experience the QE2 crossing before she becomes a full-time cruise ship, primarily based in Southampton, England.
Rather than adversarial, the subject of sea travel versus air travel soon became a much needed partnership, where planes deliver many millions of passengers for pleasure cruises to Alaska, Caribbean, Europe, and indeed the world. Without doubt, the most spectacular air/sea marriage occurred when British Airways and Cunard Line joined forces to create the Concorde/Queen Elizabeth 2 package, matching the world's fastest passenger aircraft with the world's fastest and most famous ocean liner.
The combination became available for sale in 1982 when Cunard began chartering a BA Concorde on a regular basis for the next 10 years. Various air-sea-hotel packages spread out the flight demand, as a single Concorde flight carries just 100 passengers while one QE2 sailing can take up to 18 times that number. When the Cunard-chartered Concorde filled up, overflow passengers were booked on regularly scheduled BA supersonic flights between Washington, New York, and London and also on the Air France Concorde to and from Paris. Pricing for the Concorde/QE2 combination has varied considerably during the last 20 years, from being included in the fare for the higher cabin categories to being available at a surcharge. The one-way add-on for 2003 is $2,995, still an almost 50 percent discount on the regular one-way Concorde fare if bought separately.
When flying Concorde in the westbound direction, BA 001 leaves London Heathrow at 10:30 a.m. and arrives New York JFK an hour earlier at 9:25 a.m., taking into account the flight time and the five-hour time change. The Concorde is popular eastbound because the flight to England is by day, while most eastbound subsonic schedules are overnight, save for a handful of daylight departures from some East Coast cities to London. Eastbound, BA Concorde 002 leaves New York at 8:30 a.m. and arrives London at 5:15 p.m.
My eastbound supersonic flight came at the last minute, so the reading material I had on hand went more than half unread because of the shorter air time and the excitement of it all. Concorde passengers have a separate check-in counter and lounge at both JFK and Heathrow, reducing the boarding time, and a high-speed luggage delivery after the flight.
The cabin interior seems narrow compared to wide-bodied jets, but the two pairs of seats flanking a central aisle are plush and spaced well enough. Tall people prefer the aisle seat because of the inward curvature of the cabin. The arrival at Mach 2, reached at 51,000 feet, takes about 40 minutes. A sensation of speed is hardly present except when passing through clouds, and the only way to determine speed is via a video monitor on the forward bulkhead. (Mach 2, about 1,350 mph at 60,000 feet, is twice the speed of sound.)
For regular flyers used to subsonic air travel, the Concorde flight is over all too soon, making the journey a delight rather than an endured experience. Flying the Concorde is a throwback to an earlier more elegant era of air travel, but there is no need to dress up--save the tux for evenings aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2.
When you are making the trans-Atlantic crossing on the QE2, one of the daytime speakers may be a former British Airways Concorde captain or Campbell Pritchett, aviation educator and lecturer, who was of great help in preparing this article. You can have all your aviation questions answered, and if you flew over, you can share your experiences with a professional.
