Originally Posted by
SpringHeeledJack
An interesting documentary all in all. A question, why did the first UK Concorde take off from Filton, but land at Fairford on it's first flight ? Especially as the latter was/is an RAF base.
This is fully explained in Brian Trubshaw's autobiography (page 91). He made himself very unpopular at Filton by telling them that their beloved Brabazon runway was no good for Concorde test flying, noting that it undulated so much that "one could not see one end from the other" among other things (such as the need to close the A38 road for every take off). RAF Fairford was not far away and had a largely flat 10,000 foot runway courtesy of the USAF.