PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Concorde to fly again?
View Single Post
Old 1st February 2005 | 17:05
  #18 (permalink)  
ChristiaanJ
 
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 2,315
Likes: 10
From: France
Concorde spares

In France, some of the "prestige" spares, such as a radome, engines, cockpit instruments, etc. were auctioned off by Christies. After that, Air France personnel was allowed to pick and chose parts for themselves. Some went to museums, the rest was unceremoniously scrapped.

In Britain they had more luck.
First there was an auction by Bonhams, again of the "prestige" spares".
Then BA, through the Dovebid firm, auctioned off a HUGE amount of stuff. In a four-day auction they went through 6000 lots of about 150,000 items in all.
Just about anything you care to name. Seats? Sure. A complete toilet cubicle? Sure. A PFCU? I seem to remember at least one.
There were boxes full of compressor and turbine blades, and vast amounts of less spectacular stuff. The list is just too long...
Not everything was sold there, so a second auction was held.

Even before the auctions, BA had gone through a lot of the spares and selected several tons of bits and pieces that would be useful for the restoration of G-BBDG at the Brooklands museum. Anything from screws to spare elevons and leading edges, and landing gears. In all I seem to remember about twenty lorry-loads were moved to Brooklands.

At the end, the left-overs - which still filled a hangar - were scrapped.

Now that the worst Concorde mania is over, you may find some interesting pieces on eBay. Just beware the doubtfuls.... only the other day somebody tried to pass of something as a Concorde part, while it clearly wasn't.
ChristiaanJ is offline