F-14 Tomcat cutaway illustrations
As its market shares were eroding on the soft drinks market, the US company Pepsi Cola undertook a major re-branding project of $500 million US which would be unveiled in 1996 after about two years of work. Pepsi therefore started to look around for a spectacular and efficient manner to advertise its new brand style and enhance its sales. It was eventually decided to have an advertisement operation involving the Concorde.
Pepsi started requesting proposals from both Air France (AF) and British Airways (BA), the sole two Sud Aviation/BAC Concorde operators. Eventually, the French carrier was awarded the contract (of which terms were not disclosed).
Because the new identity of Pepsi was based on the color blue, the aircraft would have to be painted alike. Therefore the Air France maintenance staff had to call Aerospatiale (successor of Sud Aviation) as the airplane, for which temperature is so important, was only certified with a white color scheme. They received approval to paint the fuselage in blue, but were advised to keep the wings in white (because of the fuel temperature).
It was advised to remain at M2.02 for about 20 minutes at most, but there was no restriction under M1.70. This was not a concern for Air France as the aircraft was not due to operate any scheduled flight to New York ‚ John F. Kennedy (JFK) or any such long sector.
A part of the preparation included the constitution of a maintenance package, necessary handling tools and ground equipment, etc., as for any unscheduled Concorde operation.
Air France required its name to be kept close to the cockpit, as well as the seahorse despite the Pepsi scheme. This is a usual requirement from the airline, which was for the occasion very important as Concorde was due to be presented in British Airways’ backyard.
The Concorde registered F-BTSD (c/n 213) was selected for maintenance availability reasons. The paint work was started in late March 1996 at the Air France maintenance facility of Paris ‚ Orly (ORY), where all airplanes go after their D-check to get a new livery. It required 200 liters of paint and 2,000 hours of work.
The whole operation was to be undertaken secretly, as Pepsi wanted to keep all the surprise for the moment when it would unveil its new identity. “Sierra Delta” was thus covered by brown wrapping paper after it was painted, so that as few people as possible would be aware of the event. It eventually left the hanger on March 31st at night, and was quickly rolled to the runway where it took off for London - Gatwick (LGW), where Pepsi had planned to receive its guests. The aircraft was immediately towed to the hanger after its arrival, and made ready for the show. And yet, a few days before the new brand was unveiled, Richard Branson had apparently heard about the advertisement operation, as proved ads for the Virgin Cola soft drink in the British press. A few articles about an Air France Concorde being repainted with a blue color scheme were issued in the newspapers.
The show took place on 02 April 1996, with the presence of Claudia Schiffer, Andre Agassi, Cindy Crawford, and hundreds of journalists invited by Pepsi for the event. People were really astonished to see the Concorde with the blue livery. Flight attendants each had a special pin on their uniform designed for the occasion.
Afterwards, “Sierra Delta” started a promotion campaign in Europe and the Middle East. For the Pepsi commercial operation, there were a total of 16 flights (including the ferry flights from ORY) and 10 cities visited. Each flight, except the first and last ones, would have been occasions to go supersonic
A Trans-Atlantic Trip Turns Kafkaesque 
By GARY SHTEYNGART
NY Times Published: September 29, 2012
You, American Airlines, should no longer be flying across the Atlantic. You do not have the know-how. You do not have the equipment. And your employees have clearly lost interest in the endeavor. Like the country whose name graces the hulls of your flying ships, you are exhausted and shorn of purpose. You need to stop.
Flight 121 from Paris to New York began on a clear autumn afternoon. It ended over 30 hours later. For those of us without miles, it is probably still going.
The initial delay was a mere hour or two. Some were told that our aircraft possessed faulty tires and brakes. Others were told that the crew could not find their way in from Paris. Neither scenario was particularly encouraging.
The aircraft was indeed an interesting one. One of the overhead baggage compartments was held together with masking tape. Halfway across the Atlantic you decided to turn Flight 121 back because your altimeter wasn’t working. Some of us were worried for our safety, but your employees mostly shrugged as if to say, Ah, there goes that altimeter again.
And so you took us to Merrie England for a spell.
At Heathrow, fire trucks met us because we landed “heavy,” i.e., still full of fuel we never got to spend over the Atlantic. At the terminal, a woman in a spiffy red American Airlines blazer was sent to greet us. But the language she spoke — Martian — was not easily understood, versed as we were in Spanish, English, Russian and Urdu.
Using her Martian language skills, the American Airlines woman proposed to take us “through the border” at Heathrow, for a night of rest before we resumed our journey the next morning. An apocalyptic scenario: an employee of the world’s worst airline assigned to the world’s worst border crossing at the world’s worst airport.
The Martian took us to one immigration lane, which promptly closed. Then another, with the same result. A third, ditto. Despite her blazer, the Martian was obviously not the ally we had made her out to be. So, ducking under security ropes, knocking some down entirely, we rushed the border with our passports held aloft, proclaiming ourselves the citizens of a fading superpower.
Come morning, you, American Airlines, provided us with a free, daylong tour of Heathrow Airport. By bus. The bus brought us to our new plane, but the doors of the bus would not open. We stood, pressed to one another, in sweltering heat, as the plane was sprayed down for no reason we could discern. It would have been nice, in retrospect, had you sprayed us down, or at least given us something to drink. After an hour, we were told this flight would be canceled because this plane, too, had caught ill. Back to the terminal once more.
It became clear that the older and more feeble of us would be at a disadvantage. A 70-year-old cannot rush past 140 gates to check in for yet another canceled flight with the same brio as a 20-year-old. Some of us started to cry. Not because the journey was never ending, but because you can be told that you are not a human being only so many times.
And then you stopped telling us. The American Airlines representatives we were promised failed to materialize. One passenger told us this was all part of the union’s strategy to destroy the airline. All I know is that with each encounter, I steadily began to feel that your employees were prisoners just like us, armed only with their little walkie-talkies from which issued tinny instructions, lost communiqués from some distant Oz.
“This used to be a great airline,” one old-timer said as we were sweltering to death on the bus. I know you were. And I know you are not alone in failure. An American diplomat based in Moscow tells me he prefers flying Aeroflot to Delta. But Delta is a futuristic paradise of working altimeters and braking brakes when compared with you, dear American Airlines. So what can you do? Empires rise and empires fall. A metaphor you may need to consider closely.
“… The B2 Bomber, despite the essential ugliness of a machine dedicated to mass-destruction at enormous cost, addresses the constraints of its task (of combining extreme speed with invisibility to enemy radar) with such ruthlessness that, like a viking long ship or a renaissance suit of armour, it has a purity of form that cannot but be interpreted as beautiful.” —John Pawson
A helicopter airlifting one of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes.
William Rankin
In the summer of 1959, Rankin was flying from South Weymouth Naval Air Station, Massachusetts to Beaufort, South Carolina. He climbed over a thunderhead that peaked at 45,000 ft (13.7 km), then—at 47,000 ft (14.3 km) & at mach 0.82—he heard a loud bump and rumble from the engine. The engine stopped, and a fire warning light flashed. He pulled the lever to deploy auxiliary power, and it broke off in his hand.
Though not wearing a pressure suit, at 6:00 pm he ejected into the −50°C air. He suffered immediate frostbite, and decompression caused his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth to bleed. His abdomen swelled severely. He managed to make use of his emergency oxygen supply.
Five minutes after he abandoned the plane, his parachute hadn’t opened. While in the upper regions of the thunderstorm, with near-zero visibility, the parachute opened. After ten minutes, Rankin was still aloft, carried by updrafts and getting hit by hailstones. Violent spinning and pounding caused him to vomit. Lightning appeared, which he described as blue blades several feet thick, and thunder that he could feel. The rain forced him to hold his breath to keep from drowning. One lightning bolt lit up the parachute, making Rankin believe he had died. Conditions calmed, and he descended into a forest. His watch read 6:40 pm. He searched for help and eventually was admitted into a hospital at Ahoskie, North Carolina. He suffered from frostbite, welts, bruises, and severe decompression.
Nothing about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Blimp makes sense. An enormous, slow-moving, easily attackable vehicle would seem idiotic even if the Turtles weren’t carrying tons of sharp edged objects that could easily puncture the hull. Then there’s the issue of storage. How do you get a gigantic blimp down into the sewers?
