Concorde landmark to go....

[BEagle]

I see from tonight's TV news that the once-proud ba can no longer afford to support the 'Concorde roundabout' landmark at LHR. They are giving up the site to some arab airline, I gather, with effect from 1 Apr 07. Even I can't believe that this is some elaborate April Fools' Day joke.

Now although ba is a pretty bland and insignificant airline these days, with no interest whatsoever in its history, the loss of such a prestigous site to a foreign airline seems somewhat surprising.

Or maybe they're just hugely embarrassed that, ever since they killed off Concorde, they have absolutely nothing special to offer?

Some wide boy in a shiny suit was spouting about Terminal 5, as though that'll be the answer to all ba's woes. But somehow I doubt it will be.

Still, at least the model will survive. ba hope to offer it to either Brooklands or Duxford.

[scotsunflyer]

In other words the lease of the site has run out, then the highest bidder for the site would be successful.

[BEagle]

If you have no feeling for history, then you're probably correct.

But it's yet another PR triumph for ba.....

[Yarpy]

Is WW is in cahoots with someone in Eire to come accross to London and wreck BA completely?

It certainly seems like it . . .

[Fargoo]

I think you're missing the bigger picture here

It's a model of an obsolete aircraft

The site costs a not inconsiderable £1.5M per year to lease plus maintenance

In just over a years time BA will be entrenched within T5

I for one think the concorde model looks a little tired and old now where it is, a relic from a past age. Not like we fly it anymore.

All in my humble opinion of course :ok:

[BahrainLad]

....and for £1.5 million a year they make almost 21,000,000 ABC1 adults turn their heads and see the living embodiment of the British Airways brand.

Cheap at twice the price.

[Fargoo]

Advertiser speak :=

How many of those arriving at the airport arrived without tickets and subsequently bought with BA at the terminal?

How many of those passing the model were drawn to book with BA because of the model?

Compare those numbers with those who visited ba.com because they saw the giant letters ba.com on the side of a bus???

Emirates obviously believe it's worth the money as they are leasing the spot next but then again they have a bottomless wallet dont they??

Again, all IMHO :ok:

[Sleeve Wing]

[Quote] "Still, at least the model will survive. ba hope to offer it to either Brooklands or Duxford." [Unquote]

Are you sure about that, BEags ?
I heard that, because of its construction, it was bound to be terminally damaged during removal.

However, I certainly hope you're right. :ok:
Rgds, Sleeve.

[Gonzo]

Personally I think it should have gone when Concorde was withdrawn from service. If I remember correctly, the tagline below the model is something like:

"BA, Concorde....Timeless."

Timeless? Clearly not!

[BahrainLad]

How many of those arriving at the airport arrived without tickets and subsequently bought with BA at the terminal?

Irrelevant metric to judge the success of a brand campaign.

How many of those passing the model were drawn to book with BA because of the model?

Irrelevant again. This is a brand, not a product. It's the same reason why you spend money on logos, liveries, uniforms, colour schemes etc. It all builds a brand. Or would you have the aircraft painted grey and the hosties wearing overalls? See www.brandz.com for more info.

Compare those numbers with those who visited ba.com because they saw the giant letters ba.com on the side of a bus???

Ah. Now we're getting somewhere. They wouldn't have seen BA.com, they would have seen "Tenerife for £39. Book now on BA.com." This is a call-to-action campaign, and nothing to do with branding.

Emirates obviously believe it's worth the money as they are leasing the spot next but then again they have a bottomless wallet dont they??

Lets say, they have something of a "throw enough sh1t at the wall and eventually some will stick" approach. ;)

[stormin norman]

Concorde has had its day(great bit of kit that it was),now can we move on.

[darrylj]

money talks..thats all it comes down to these days.....:sad:
i work @ LHR (car rental bus driver) and must drive past that model so many times in a day. yeah, exactly; timeless my a?se..:rolleyes:


not a day passes without some passenger usually commenting on its beautiful life and sad loss.
...some even think it's the real thing....:=
emirates are running the show now.....you'd think heathrow was now a middle eastern airport...;)

[TheGorrilla]

After a good night out I might relocate that model to my pad when noone is looking :E

[411A]

Concorde, phooey...BA should have put a Stratocruiser up instead.:E

[poorwanderingwun]

Whoa there guys...
So the site costs 0ne and a half million a year .. so what ? What is the advertising budget for Birdseed Aviation ? 1 1/2 mill is small potatoes in comparison..The site is at the very entrance to Heathrow, THE airport of the country one might say... BA is THE International Airline of Britain... surely that site has to be an advertising Gem... at least an Arab airline and its ad agency thinks so...

[BEagle]

And if Emirates really do put a model of the A380 where once Concorde stood proud, what will people say?

"What a fat ugly thing"

Can't help feeling that a certain PM of a few years ago would have had wee Willie in for a sound handbagging if she'd learned of the idea.

What's ba.com?

ba apologists love to trot out the phrase "It's gone, let's move on" about Concorde. But the truth is that they've got absolutely no unique selling point nowadays - catering strikes, cabin crew threatening to strike, massive cancellations during the fog last December (and who pioneered Cat 3B landings?), the demise of ba mainline at other airports, the flogging off of ba conair......and now they can't even afford to maintain the iconic 'Concorde roundabout'. They've truly had their day.

Fly ba? No b£oody way - NEVER!

[Gonzo]

I'm certainly no BA apologist, not sure what gave you that idea Beags.

Keeping the Concorde replica there was anachronistic at the least. Worse, it could remind passengers of exactly the point you make....they've got absolutely no unique selling point nowadays

Surely having a mock up of a no-longer flying airliner isn't a unique selling point? When Concorde finished its career it became nothing more than an expensive Airfix kit. They might as well have had a model of a Handley Page HP42, or a Comet.

[Golden Ticket]

Not really interested in a model of the aircraft on a traffic roundabout, there's more important things going on in the industry than this. I'd sooner the £1.5m was given to the museums that look after the real thing to keep them nice and shiny and in the BA livery. To be honest this thread looks like BEagle using another opportunity to spit bile about BA, nothings changed there.:zzz:

[Skipness One Echo]

Slightly more interesting than the model Concorde at Heathrow is the real deal, Concorde G-BOAB rusting away outside the maintenance base at Hatton Cross. Surely that's worth saving!

[6chimes]

This is an interesting debate. Why should the model of concorde be kept? For the same reason we build statues of long dead national heroes, for the same reason we take our children to museums, for the same reason we save old aircraft like the Lancaster and spitfire flying..........because we have a proud history of success in this nation and consigning everything to a history book and without any visual reminders we will become exactly what some in high place want us to be; a bland and soulless nation without any character. It might cost 1.5 million, which is a price worth paying for all the millions of visitors that pass by and are reminded that the UK once lead the world in a certain area of aviation. Maybe the lottery should pay for it to stay?

6

[MarkD]

Shades of Willie flogging the paintings at EI HQ - but passengers - sorry, customers - didn't get to see those.

In some ways it's better to let Conc go - it's old BA making promises the new RyanBA won't fulfill - likely to create disappointed nostalgia than a rush to ba.com for a ride on an ageing 734 or 763.

Here's an idea - is there an atrium in T5 gate area big enough to house it? YYZ has been putting huge arty things into the new T1.

[Skipness One Echo]

BAA only want retail in free space as they are unashamed greedy bastards

[Gonzo]

This is an interesting debate. Why should the model of concorde be kept? For the same reason we build statues of long dead national heroes, for the same reason we take our children to museums, for the same reason we save old aircraft like the Lancaster and spitfire flying..........because we have a proud history of success in this nation and consigning everything to a history book and without any visual reminders we will become exactly what some in high place want us to be; a bland and soulless nation without any character. It might cost 1.5 million, which is a price worth paying for all the millions of visitors that pass by and are reminded that the UK once lead the world in a certain area of aviation. Maybe the lottery should pay for it to stay?

By all means put something there that is perhaps a monument to LHR, or something similar.

And instead of getting the lottery to pay £1.5m to keep the model there, I'd far rather see a donation of £1.5m to one of the museums that currently has a full size model of Concorde so it can be well looked after.

I just think it's a bit silly for BA to advertise their services by reminding passengers of their past!

[Gulf4uk]

hi

if none of you want this model anywhere can i suggest its Donated to
FAST musuem At Farnborough . lot of work on concorde was done by RAE
Farnborough and it would be nice to have Somthing there to Show for it
even a Taxyable one there at Airshow time would have been a great crowd
puller or would that have upset a few people MORE POPULER than some of
the things shown there of late .

Tony

[Mooney]

I read some where that the model can't be dismantled and it will be broken up on site.

It would be good to see a Emirates A380 take it's place.

[Gulf4uk]

Putting a 380 IN its place is Showing a SUCCESS Story ?
Tony:confused:

[Gonzo]

A model of a 380 would at least be contemporary, and show the latest example of the UK aerospace industry, and the future of air travel, rather than the perhaps more romantic past.

[Gulf4uk]

HI

Yes you have a good Point . The UK Bit is execellent same as concorde pity about the rest . Will the carbon Brigade win the Day and bring the A380 and others down Somehow i doubt it people will always Fly

[scooter boy]

And if you wanted to remind people about the UK's leading the world in aviation, could you explain why you'd do it with a model of a hugely expensive, uneconomical, shortsighted commercial failure - one that the UK tried to cancel - rather than a much more worthy success story? :hmm:

And the USA's refusal to permit supersonic overflight didn't contribute to the demise of this great machine at all then?

SB

[Just a spotter]

Kalium Chloride:

I never said it should be replaced by an A380. I was talking about a British aeroplane.

Perhaps, but plonking a real life Avro RJ/BAe 146 on the roundabout won't have quite the same effect, now will it?! :}

JAS

[scooter boy]

Kalium,
Great machine? Depends how you define 'great. It's a shame we couldn't put all that technical skill into an aircraft that had a future.

Great because it could do things that no other airliner can to this day.
Simple as that.

I think in the 70s it was state of the art and definitely had a future. However IMHO there were decades of complete lack of continued investment in developing this aircraft - as far as I can see the only "glass" on the concord cockpit was in the windscreen - I was always amazed by the mass of analogue avionics filling up that tiny space.
The costly upgrade that BA put down as the main reason for dropping concord was evidently well overdue.

In practical terms though and putting romanticism aside I completely agree, carrying on with concord was rather like having a WAG type wife - good for the image but poor for the bank balance.

SB

[NWSRG]

Where did the 7 BA Concordes finally end up? Was one not destined for display at T5?

[Skipness One Echo]

G-BOAA dismantled at LHR and barged north to the Royal Museum of Flight at East Fortune near Edinburgh. Safely undercover.
G-BOAB intended to be the centrepiece of Terminal 5 - future is looking very uncertain, parked near the BMI hangar at LHR.
G-BOAC on outdoor display at the viewing area at Manchester Airport.
G-BOAD outdoor in temporary storage in New York as it's home on the USS Intrepid is refurbished.
G-BOAE Barbados -don't ask!!
G-BOAF on display at Airbus (UK)'s Filton facility.
G-BOAG undercover at a museum in Seattle.

www.concordesst.com for more

[KC-10 Driver]

As a young boy living in England, my family flew home to the U.S. twice a year. I was always fascinated by the Concorde model at that roundabout.

From a purely romantic point of view, I am sad to see it go. Too bad, but it is all about the money.

G-BOAD outdoor in temporary storage in New York as it's home on the USS Intrepid is refurbished.


It is stored at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. You can see it on departure from runway 31L at JFK.

[gordonroxburgh]

G-BOAE Barbados -don't ask!!

Due to open in a few weeks time in a multi-million dollar exhibition, they have taken their time at BGI, but by the sounds of it, the new indor climate controlled facility might just have been worth the wait.


Update on G-CONC :

Its being dismantled next week and handed over to Brooklands Museum who are investiagting where it can be put around the local Weybridge area where it will mean a great deal to the generations whose family members worked in the giant aircraft factory at Brooklands, where more component parts of Concorde were actually built than any other factory in the UK or France. The Museum will look to temporarily rebuild it on thier site, ahaed of a suitable location being found.

[WHBM]

G-BOAB intended to be the centrepiece of Terminal 5 - future is looking very uncertain, parked near the BMI hangar at LHR.
Although intended to be in the centre of T5 BAA reconsidered when they thought about all the retail space it would take up. There was some excuse about the building foundations "suddenly" being found to be not strong enough.

[gordonroxburgh]

There was never any advanced plan for G-BOAB to go inside T5, a few ideas were mooted but thats about it.

The plan all along was for it, under BAA guardianship, to be a gate guardian, but surprise surprise BAA have gone all commercial and think BA should pay for it to be a gate guardian, even though BAA are the guardians of the aircraft.

If I was a betting man; G-BOAB will eventually end up on the flight line at Duxford, more of a chance of survival there than rotting away at LHR.

[Skipness One Echo]

Betting man : Here and now. They'll scrap it on site at LHR. Follows in the footsteps of the BOAC Comet, BA Trident 2 and very nearly Trident 3. And let's not even mention the JCBs at the British Airways Collection at Cosford.

No call five years from now as the moment will have passed. Corrosion willl be found and this will be the perfect excuse. Who's going to pay to move the Concorde to Cambridgeshire if thet can't even move it across the airfield at Heathrow?

[gordonroxburgh]

BA's problem is that can't scrap a Concorde, its too big a part of the UK nations heritage. It would be a PR disaster, and they know that. This was why BA chose to save all 8 of their a/c in 2003 and not just the 7 that were part of the flyable fleet.

The Knowledge gained from Concorde stored in the open is that they are no major corrosion issues 20 years on, when the external T5 options have drawn blanks in a few years, BA will look to move it from LHR one way or another.

[Leezyjet]

I don't see why the BAA cannot do something similar with G-BOAB to what the French have done at CDG.

http://nl.airliners.net/photos/photos/9/3/8/1040839.jpg

and here at night.

http://nl.airliners.net/photos/photos/5/3/8/1094835.jpg

Wouldn't cost all that much either.

But hey why would the BAA want to preserve part of our aviation heritage. It doesn't make them any money !!.

:\

[Navy_Adversary]

I am amazed that the Bearded Wonder wasn't interested in taking over the Concorde roundabout, unusual for VS to miss out on some PR.:8

[Seloco]

I would have thought it rather more appropriate for Harrods, say, to take over the roundabout slot. After all, Heathrow is dedicated to shopping now, not flying.

[Just a spotter]

gordonroxburgh:
BA's problem is that can't scrap a Concorde, its too big a part of the UK nations heritage. It would be a PR disaster, and they know that.Concorde was just as much a part of the French nations heritage ... and they managed to scrap F-BVFD ....

from concordesst.com ...

It was later broken up in 1994, at Charles de Gaulle, Paris, France. After being out of service for 12 years it had suffered serious corrosion.... seems to be what's being suggested here

http://www.concordesst.com/211.html

there are some pictures on airliners.net of the dismantling if you search on the registration

JAS

[Leezyjet]

Just a Spotter,

GordonRoxburgh is actually the web master of www.concordesst.com. It is his website. He was also very heavily involved with ensuring G-BBDG didn't end up suffering the same fate as F-BVFD and I think we can say he has done a remarkable job of that. :D :ok:

Moving on,

F-BVFD was scrapped back in 1994 when Concorde was still very much alive and kicking. Back then that was the only airframe that was unflyable so I guess the thinking back then was to simply scrap it as there were already Concorde's in museums from the test programs and I guess it never even crossed their minds to preserve that one as a retirement was still a long way off. Also that a/c had been used as a spares source for AF much like DG had been for BA so there wasn't much left of it to preserve as all the other spares were needed for the flyable a/c, so there wouldn't have been any left over to restore it as was the case with DG which was done with spares no longer needed after the retirements. Well thats my theory on it anyway. Not sure how accutate it is. :hmm:

:)

[Just a spotter]

Considering myself well and truely told! :uhoh: :\:ugh:

Good site Gordon! :ok:

The remaining concorde airframes are all worth saving and maintaining. It is/was a wonderful piece of engineering and like many other steps in aeronautic development from the Wright Flyer a bold step.

It would be a shame to lose anymore.

JAS

[Skipness One Echo]

Screw the Airfix model - save the REAL Heathrow Concorde!

[gordonroxburgh]

Were Ok at the moment with the real one at LHR. :)

There are a lot of arguments against doing what the french did at CDG (and with the one in Germany). Once stuck up on a pole you can get at it easily to do any maintenance. Additionally it was not designed to sit at that attitude. When it rains the water does not drain correctly and you will end up with corrosion where you least expect and can't get to it, so bad idea all round sadly. :=

Lets leave the stuffed on a pole stuff to the models

[Skipness One Echo]

Gordon not sure forgotten at Hatton Cross is a good definition of OK. They're made of metal and won't last forever and at least the Air France one at CDG looks impressive and will do for a few more years, People can see and experience the aircraft.
G-BBDG wasn't saved to prevent a PR debacle, it was saved because they wanted it gone and someone was willing to take it. And I am immensely grateful and looking forward to going to Brooklands to see it. I had never seen her and always assumed she would be scrapped .
Assuming that the 20 years in the outdoors refers to G-AXDN at Duxford? Wouldn't bet on BA being that careful with their own machine as it is becoming an embarrassing reminder of something missing in the fleet.
And as the man in the know ( cos I'm from Kilmarnock too !) what's the new plan for Alpha Bravo?

[monkeyboy]

It's a sad day when it all boils down to money......:(


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6509667.stm

[Stoic]

That's business!

[bomarc]

ON my PPL check ride, the examiner asked: why does a plane fly? I started off with the concept of lift, bernouili and all that jazz.

His answer was: MONEY.

The concorde was something that the UK and France could have been proud of.

The A380...well, size doesn't matter.

I would have paid to fly on the concorde and will avoid the A380...too many people...and IF I was a bad guy, the A380 would be the choicest target of all time.

but I am not a bad guy, so I will just stay away from it.


Money makes the world go 'round...but shouldn't be part of planes.

[theWings]

Wonder if the A380 model is to the same scale?:E

[False Capture]

So, they're going to replace the model of a 4-engine European financial disaster with a more modern version? ;)

[Dozza2k]

I really can't fathom the wisdom of our management sometimes, well all the time! 1.5 mill is not a lot when we talk about ba's annual sums.
still, lets give the competition a chance to get in on our home turf eh?
I'm sure some manager is getting a nice pat on the back and a wedge in the wallet for finding yet another 'cost saving initiative'. twats.

[WindSheer]

That just sums up Uk aviation at the moment!! How long is it going to be before an airline MD says..."I know, lets ground our a/c and save money.."!

Nice one Emirates.....:ok:

This country is pathetic....:mad:

[Slavedriver]

That witless nerk Walsh is at it again, he'll be stripping the Union Flag off the tails soon in order to save a bit of weight. I fully understand that costs have to be controlled in such a competitive industry but really.....it's so sad to see BA become such a cold organisation :sad: .

£1.5m is only a couple of hours worth of fuel :rolleyes:

[PAXboy]

Why should BA pay 1.5mil pa in brand awareness that features something they do not have?

This story did the rounds through here when the announcement was made public over six or eight weeks ago.

[adm100]

I thought it was more to do with the move to T5, as in most BA customers won't be driving past that site and the majority of BA business will be through T5, so they will be concentrating their advertising there. just a thought.

[Jordan D]

The savvy move would have been to keep it there - after all, advertise to the competition and they might move!

What a shame ...

Jordan