The Concorde Story

In March 1984, Sir Frank Whittle was guest speaker at the Concorde Dining Society’s annual event, held in the RAF Club, Piccadilly, London. He recalled his aspiration that a jet-propelled aircraft ‘might carry mail across the Atlantic at 500 mph.’ In the 1930s this was regarded as crazily optimistic. As for being able to cross the ocean at 1350mph in a 100 seat passenger aircraft he said, such a suggestion ‘would have me locked up’.
On 24 October 2003 after 27 years the sun set on the first era of 1350mph supersonic passenger flight. There is no successor in view and some contend that there never will be. I am not amongst them. The Concorde fleet still had (has) many ‘reference flight cycles’ available for use. These could have been translated into 5 or more years of service. Indeed, following the tragedy at Gonesse, British Airways (BA) spent some £15m on the modifications required to return all seven of its Concordes to flight and budgeted £14m for the Sir Terence Conran Concorde cabin refurbishment, the ‘interim’ version of which was being fitted during Concorde’s sabbatical. In the event only five were modified for a return to service and Air France (AF) paid proportionately less to modify four aircraft, choosing not to refurbish its cabins. Clearly, with well over £30m being spent or budgeted for, at that stage no one thought that only two years of commercial service would remain.