The Times -
1st May:
BRITISH AIRWAYS was forced into retiring Concorde because Air France and Airbus, the French-based manufacturer, refused to continue supporting it, the airline’s chairman said. Lord Marshall of Knightsbridge said that BA would have been keen to continue operating the plane beyond the end of October if the French had been prepared to share the burden of extra maintenance costs.
BA originally said the decision to retire Concorde had been taken jointly, but Lord Marshall told The Times: “Concorde can’t keep flying unless the manufacturer is willing to go on producing the parts. Airbus said they were not willing to support Concorde beyond the end of October. We might well have considered continuing if they hadn’t. It would have made it much more difficult for Airbus if Air France and BA had presented a united front in supporting the continuation of scheduled services.”
Lord Marshall said that Airbus had been determined to redeploy the staff who supported Concorde to more profitable production lines. Airbus told BA that it would have to spend £40 million on maintenance over the next two to five years to keep Concorde flying. Air France said that the decision had been taken “in close conjunction with Airbus”.......
Jock Lowe, BA’s former chief pilot and commercial manager of Concorde in the late 1990s, said......that BA should have invoked the terms of the 1962 treaty on Concorde signed by Britain and France, which obliged them to continue supporting the aircraft even if one wanted to withdraw.......Mr Lowe said that he supported Virgin Atlantic’s attempt to take over BA Concorde services. “They would need a huge amount of expertise but there is a pool of recently retired engineers who would be very willing to help. Virgin has the marketing flair needed to make it work.”
Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin chairman, said: “Concorde was built with taxpayers’ money and handed over to BA and Air France for virtually nothing. BA is only acting as custodian of those planes for the British people.”
5th May:
The Goverment is to discuss with Sir Richard Branson, the chairman of Virgin Atlantic, his proposal to buy Concorde from Bitish Airways. Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary is, "very interested" in the plan to save the supersonic aircraft due to be grounded in the autumn.......
Sir Richard Branson will this week unveil a team to work on his bid to buy Concorde that will give the Virgin Atlantic boss "more experience than British Airways" on the spersonic jets. Sir Richard said that Virgin was in discussions with "current and former employees of BA" as part of its efforts to take control of the ageing Concorde, which British Airways plans to retire at the end of this year. He said, "We have a formidable team lined up. BA has to realise that there are a lot of people in all sorts of positions, who worked on Concorde, who love Concorde, and who want to see it carry on flying."