Reverse inflight on Concorde?

[John Moore]

I’ve read on some forums that it was possible to engage reverse on at least some engines inflight on Concorde. Is there any truth to this?

[Mike Ionas]

That is correct. The procedure is described in p.119 of the tutorial in the Concorde's documentation "In-flight idle reverse".

[John Moore]

38 minutes ago, Mike Ionas said:

That is correct. The procedure is described in p.119 of the tutorial in the Concorde's documentation "In-flight idle reverse".

That’s incredible, I don’t own the Concorde (yet, I’m waiting for the v4 version) so I wouldn’t have access to it. Thanks for the information, I’ll try and do some more digging through the actual flight manuals for more detail on it!

[Ray Proudfoot]

John, I believe it was only ever used when ATC wanted the aircraft down quicker than the usual descent profile of up to 6000fpm. I've not tried it myself but I'm sure Frazz has.

[John Moore]

7 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

John, I believe it was only ever used when ATC wanted the aircraft down quicker than the usual descent profile of up to 6000fpm. I've not tried it myself but I'm sure Frazz has.

Seems like that would be quite the ride for the passengers, with the descent rate and the noise/vibrations and all. 

[Ray Proudfoot]

24 minutes ago, John Moore said:

Seems like that would be quite the ride for the passengers, with the descent rate and the noise/vibrations and all. 

I never flew on the real one but I would guess they would hardly notice the descent rate. 7000-8000 fpm compared to 5000-6000 is not a huge difference. And it would be a relatively short duration. I’m sure the Captain would have had a word anyway as few aircraft could descend at that rate.

And bear in mind the engines were only in idle reverse so any vibration would be minimal.

 But if anyone has real world experience of that situation they’ll be in a far better position to describe it than me.

[John Moore]

That’s a really good point, still the fact that a commercial airliner pulling 7-8k a minute on descent with idle reverse is super cool!

[Ray Proudfoot]

Everything about Concorde was super cool. 

My favourite stat is it could overtake a 747-400 cruising at Mach 0.85 at 750mph.  550mph compared to 1300mph.

Imagine the look of surprise on the 747 pax faces as a white blur hurtles past them. 

 

[John Moore]

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Everything about Concorde was super cool. 

My favourite stat is it could overtake a 747-400 cruising at Mach 0.85 at 750mph.  550mph compared to 1300mph.

Imagine the look of surprise on the 747 pax faces as a white blur hurtles past them. 

 

Or the pilots after realizing that it had departed 2 hours after they had

[Milton Kuser]

It is not a difficult procedure. The buckets on engines 2 & 3 would rotate back to a certain amount when the system was armed and commanded to do so.  It has to be done at subsonic speeds, and only for a limited amount of time (I can't remember the exact amount of the top of my head).  Also, all the throttles must be in the idle position.  The buckets rotated back to a much higher degree during reverse thrust on the ground during landing.