BlueConcorde
1) Were the flights to Ronivaniemi supersonic?
2) For BA001 and BA003, 2 Concordes were prepared for the same flight, right? Did ever happened some situation that required a ready-for-takeoff Concorde be brought back? How long a cargo and passengers transfer would take? The backup Concorde was fueled?
Hi again. Yes, the Ronivaniemi charters were supersonic) and VERY popular).
As far as the BA001 and BA003 go, these flights were not really 'related'. The 001 would depart LHR at 10:30, arriving at JFK at around 09:10 EST. (14:10 UK time). That same aircraft would then be turned round at JFK before returning to LHR on the BA004, which departed JFK at 13:45 EST (18:45 UK time), arriving at LHR at around 22:10. The BA004 was fairly critical as far as departure times went; if you had a technical problem you only had around an hour to an hour and a half to solve the issue, otherwise you risked running into the 23:30 LHR jet ban.
The BA003 departed LHR at 19:00; arriving at JFK at around 17:40 EST (22:40 UK time). This aircraft would night stop at JFK, departing the following morning at 08:45 (13:45 UK time), arriving at around 17:00.
We did try and provide a standby aircraft at LHR for both flights, but this was not always possible; We only had seven aircraft in the fleet and sometimes, because of charter operations etc., a standby was just not possible. The standby aircraft was not fuelled, and would be parked as close as practically possible to the Concorde departure stand. However, Terminal 4 was a very busy place, and the nearest 'practical' stand was often not that close at all. If you had to 'change aircraft' it could take anywhere between 90 and 120 minutes to implement the changeover of baggage and catering etc.
Dude 