The Nitty Gritty
I have been trying (without much success) to get down to the *real* reasons why BA have decided to cut off their right arm in grounding the Concorde fleet and found Tudor's post (see earlier) to be about the most plausible I have yet seen.
It doesn't take very much imagination to believe that a few faceless suits managed to convince themselves that the Concordes were incapable of being run profitably (something I would hotly contest given their track-record) and that their operational costs could not be at least partially justified by the absolutely unique position that they gave BA worldwide.
The question that nobody seems to ask, is just what 'incentives' Airbus offered BA and HM Govt to roll over and co-operate? Let's just wait and see, but I am sure we'll see the announcement of a few hundred new jobs in Filton over the next few months and BA will no doubt be getting a half-price 321 (or similar) - not that any of us will know about that if and when it happens...
The sums mentioned are not terrifying large for an airline of BA's scale and could have been turned rapidly into profit with just the tiniest application of imagination (the a/c was in profit until they started screwing its schedules and use around after all).
At the end of the day, BA either killed it deliberately or mis-managed it until the bean-counters got their way. I hope that HM remembers this one when the 'normal' knighthood for an outgoing BA Chairman is proposed...(if she grants those to Australians that is?)