Last Days of the Concorde

The Crash of Flight 4590 and the End of Supersonic Passenger Travel

By: Samme Chittum

Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt

Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

The gripping true tale of a devastating plane crash, the investigation into its causes, and the race to prevent similar disasters in the future.

On July 25, 2000, a Concorde, the world's fastest passenger plane, was taking off from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris when it suddenly burst into flames. An airliner capable of flying at more than twice the speed of sound, the Concorde had completed 25 years of successful flights, whisking wealthy passengers - from diplomats to rock stars to corporate titans - between continents on brief and glamorous flights. Yet on this fateful day, the chartered Concorde jet, en route to America, crashed and killed all 109 passengers and crew onboard and four people on the ground. Urgent questions immediately arose as investigators scrambled to discover what had gone wrong. What caused the fire? Could it have been prevented? And, most urgently, was the Concorde safe to fly? Last Days of the Concorde addresses these issues and many more, offering a fascinating insider's look at the dramatic disaster, the hunt for clues, and the systemic overhauls that followed the crash.

©2018 Cineflix Media Inc. and Smithsonian Institution (P)2019 Tantor

Concorde, the last and one civil supersonic plane

This audiobook offers a captivating account of the Concorde crash in 2000. It delves into the investigation, the plane's history, and the individuals aboard the fateful flight. If you're a Concorde enthusiast eager to explore the world of this remarkable aircraft, I highly recommend giving this narrative a listen.

nice to have the story in one place

It's a pretty good book but I also found the constant conversion of units to be a little bit annoying. There were also more than a couple of occasions where the wrong units were used all together for example when she mentioned several thousand tons of fuel :). I've not quite sure I understand her changing voices when she was quoting men speaking. In any case it was an interesting and sometimes emotional listen that provided cohesion for information which I mostly already knew.

The history of the Concorde

Here's a rule for you... if a plane crashes and there's no survivors, the author is going to have to come up with something to fill out the book. In this case, the author uses the history of the plane as the filler. Overall it's not bad, but it repeats a ton of the same information and can get dry at times.

Overall it's like a 3-out-of-5 book, where you read it and go, meh, what's next. It's neither good or bad, it's just meh.

End of an Era

Chittum does a good job of describing the chain of unlikely events that culminated in the crash, and ultimately, the scrapping of the Concorde. She casts the loss of the unique aircraft as a loss to the world of aviation, and so it is.

Teri Schnaubelt's narration grows more irritating as she plods her way through endless lists of measurements rendered at least twice each - once in imperial measure, once again in metric - and occasionally three times as she converts feet to yards or yards to miles.

Clearly, Chittum intended her book to be a definitive source of information on the topic, but perhaps the overwhelming pile of data could have been included in an appendix where it would not have cluttered the narrative with numbers and measurements.

Go Christian Go!!!!

So Sad! Very informative! Helped me develops a love for this beautiful aircraft!!!!
Come back!

Lots of research

Great book with lots of research and simple technology explanations. My only real complaint is that the last chapter had nothing to do with the rest of the book.

A Fair review

I thought I'd check this book out to see if there was any greater level of detail as to the Concord flight that famously took off in a ball of fire. Nothing much new here other than some of the investigation information and a great level of detail on the pilots and passengers - which I appreciated. In starting the book I wondered if it would be possible had they NOT gone airborne and just forced the plane back onto the ground over the runway had they stood a chance of at least some surviving the inferno. They went into that aspect of things as the post-crash analysis revealed it wouldn't have changed the outcome. Never mind that decision would have had to come against every aspect of training the pilots had and they had no information available at the time to even consider something different.

great inside story

when it is concorde no questions asked. liked the narrators voice!. great book hope to have some more about concorde.

Extraordinary book appalling performance

The book is amazing, very well written and organized. It’s only flaw, the constant translation of measurements, meters into feet and inches, pounds into kilos and stones etc.
The narrator was almost unbearable: the drawl in her accent, her terrible French prononciation, it was truly painful to listen to her. If it were not for the book itself, I would have returned it after barely an hour of listening. I will never buy a book read by this narrator.

Too much fluff

The tragic end to the Concorde is painful. The loss of life that signed its death warrant is more than I can speak to. This telling of the tragedy that was Concordes end was filled with far too much fluff. The story could be told with fewer words and better focus. The narrator was good. But the story left many questions unanswered. Example were the landing gear doors preventing the landing gear from retracting? It said the doors would close once the gear were locked in place. Was there something that told the flight crew that the effort to raise the gear being thwarted by the closed doors? Why didn’t the system automatically open the doors to allow the gear to be retracted? Why didn’t they fix the tire problem long before this event occurred? I have more questions but will bore you with them. The book does answer a lot of questions about the disaster and gives a reasonable explanation of what happened to cause that crash. One must admire the effort the investigators made to answer what happened. The respect they paid to the crew that made a valiant effort to save that flight and the lives on board and on the ground. It’s sad that more Supersonic aircraft were never built. Covid-19 seems to have slowed the current development of a new generation of supersonic aircraft. SST’s could make lots of places closer and much less arduous to visit. Imagine 6 hours to fly from NYC to Sydney! Or Seattle or LA to Aukland. Imagine a SST that could fly over land. Or perhaps it could fly subsonic then go supersonic over water and areas where the sonic boom would be okay. The Concorde flew around the world there must be routes that a 21st Century one could travel and be profitable.