I’ve often said how much of a shame it is for us to actually go backwards in innovation and technology by retiring her, but I am glad to see at least some of the Concorde’s are being looked after and available to all for a treat.
One of the more accessible Concorde planes is at Manchester airport. This is Concorde G-BOAC.
Here, the airport owners have not only given her a warm safe place to live but also made her easy to view and get into.
The stranger part is that she is actually a registered place to get married. Imagine explaining to your partner that you have booked the wedding venue and they find out it’s in a Concorde!. Well, I would be pleased of course, but I can imagine most people would flip.
Would you be thanked or never forgiven
In its time as one of the world’s most famous aircraft, Concorde G-BOAC played host to a succession of monarchs and presidents. Now it can be yours for the most wonderful day of your life – your wedding day.
Available exclusively at Manchester Airport, the flagship of the Concorde fleet is fully licensed for civil wedding ceremonies, enabling us to hold a very limited number of weddings and civil partnership ceremonies on board each year.
Well, it’s been a while since I reported the model of Concorde, guardian of the Heathrow roundabout, had been retired to Brooklands museum. It’s replacement, the A380 model owned by Emirates, has finally been installed.
It’s over 45 tonnes, and massive, bigger than the Concorde model, but what sort of impression does this give. Without being xenophobic, at a time when we should be saluting British engineering and design, blatantly displaying a foriegn companies plane at one of our main international airports, seems wrong to me.
British Airways, rightly or wrongly, stopped flying the Concorde’s and retired them.
Instead of offering them to a group or foundation to keep at least one of them flying (under supersonic speed) for display purposes as a mark of British engineering, they chose to place them around the world as a 3 dimensional billboard as a advert for British Airways.
Now, there was a history of ill feeling over the Concorde and America, with various action groups trying to stop her flying into American airspace and there was even talk of the Americans assisting the Russians with the russian supersonic plane, nicknamed Concordski.
However, I imagine there were some very embarrassed faces at British Airways when the news started filtering in, that Alpha Delta, the Concorde entrusted to the Intrepid Air and Sea museum, had been damaged. Not only had it been damaged, but the iconic nose cone, so symbolic of the Concorde had been hit by a lorry.
And so unravels a long story of how the plane had been moved and placed in a sports complex etc etc.
I have placed a link below to a blog site covered by the New York times. This gives plenty of information and room for your thoughts on this matter. Also if you take a look in Google and look at some of the images from this Concorde, you will see the famous plane had undergone some horrific visitor damage, with paintwork and cabin seats looking very much worse for wear.
Visit the blog and please feel free to comment. Perhaps we should persuade British Airways to return this aircraft back to the people who would love and cherish her.
The last Vulcan in an airworty condition has returned to the British airshow circuit by displaying at RAF Waddington at the weekend (5th – 6th July).
Not only did the crowd see the Vulcan displaying in a wonderful return solo flight, but it also took to the skies with the only airworthy Lancaster World War II bomber, as a tribute to Avro aircraft and a feast for the eyes for all who attended the event.
