Sorry Digitalis, but you're the one who has no idea what your talking about. Branson announced his desire to buy the aircraft days after BA announced it's retirement. Can a 'great deal of research' take place in this time?
Perhaps the design authority could have been transferred to BAe by Airbus, but it would require Airbus to agree to it and they said they never would. The UK government, as is repeatedly demonstrated, has little or no influence over France. BA would be mad to hand over its star asset to a competitor if there was a hope of operating it profitably.
BAe and QinetiQ may have been very interested in the proposal, but the only airliner BAe have supported in service for years is the BAe146/RJ100. A very different proposition. QinetiQ are primarily a research body, with tremendous scientific and engineering expertise, but no actual experience of maintaining a commercial airline operation. Are you really trying to suggest that these two companies could rapidly form a collaborative team that could do the job as well as Airbus, but without their 30 years of expertise, and do it cheaper too?
You then suggest that having got this design team up and running, BA Engineering itself would maintain the aircraft for an arch-competitor? In a scaled down operation????? BA had five airworthy Concordes and every one was needed to just to provide a reliable daily service to JFK. There could not be any scaling down of the operation or there would cease to be an operation.
I personally don't like Branson (so you're right in one respect at least), but I don't consider him a bumbling incompetent. I consider him cunning, cynical and higly manipulative of public sentiment - thats what he does best and always has done. That said, the Virgin proposal was never credible or serious, and to suggest so merely displays a total lack of appreciation of the technological and financial requirements of operating the aircraft. Its not a modern, off the shelf airliner.
Edited to add that PH-UKU appears to be talking completely out of his @rse. Fly-past of Glasgow and Prestwick as well? Why stop there, how about Aberdeen, Inverness, Stirling, Paisley and Stornoway as well. The lines got to be drawn somewhere. If you were so desperate to see it then why not get you're backside on a train to Edinburgh, it only takes 40 minutes you know! As for the elitist party, well I'm sure you are entitled to feel aggrieved that you weren't invited after spending so much money on BA tickets over the years. Hell damn those FTSE 100 chairmen, what have they done apart from pay to keep the aircraft flying for 27 years? Also Concorde doesn't belong to the people, the people got a tidy sum selling Concorde to the public years ago. Once you've sold it you can't demand it back.
Finally, why not give the aircraft to Barbados (don't see many rich geek Bajans, you ever been) and the USA? They are the destinations which have supported the aircraft for the last twenty years, not East Fortune.
Last edited by Hand Solo; 28th Oct 2003 at 06:37.