SLFConcordeBore
Please please please let me be a SLFConcordeBore - 1 post, then I’ll shut up.
2 items that I had on my “Do before I die” list were “Sail into New York on QE2” (sadly, didn’t happen, now obviously won’t), and “Fly on Concorde”.
Part of the enthusiasm for Concorde came from a friend in the Middle East, who worked for Airwork, who did contract maintenance for your air force. He was based in Saudi Arabia IIRC, working on Lightnings. As an expat in Saudi (good pay + no tax = high disposable), when he had some leave available at one point he took Concorde from Bahrein - London - Bahrein. Loved every moment.
He told the lovely story of his first day back after his hols, when a Lightning pilot came in in his G-suit, saying “I’ve just done Mach 2” (you know where this is going...) to which Slim was able to reply “I did that yesterday - and I was drinking champagne at the time”. What an astonishing aeroplane Concorde was.
I got to fly Concorde courtesy of BA - they called one day and asked if I’d like to fly Concorde LHR - JFK - LHR, out one day, back the next, put up overnight at the Waldorf Astoria - all courtesy of BA. After the “is this a practical joke?”, and “what’s the catch?”, it transpired that they did invite people from time to time for this type of trip, and somehow my name came out of the hat.
A truly memorable trip - the acceleration, the hot windows, the fantastic service (and excellent food & wine), trip to cockpit, and the “Concorde grin”. Memorable guests on the way out were Paul & Linda McCartney, with children and minder. I seem to recall that the takeoff from JFK was even more spectacular than the one from LHR. It just seemed to jump out of the blocks and keep going.
Also notable were how much of a private club it was - the crew were welcoming passengers to New York, and saying to various passengers things like “I didn’t see you last week”, with the passenger replying ‘Oh no, I couldn’t make it last week, but I’ll see you again next week” etc.
Thanks to everyone, ChristiaanJ, M2dude, Bellerophon, EXWOK, Brit123, landlady and stilton and all the others for a wonderful thread about a wonderful plane.