Possible return to the sky for iconic airliner

As the by-product of an engineering race between Britain, France, the USSR and the USA to produce a supersonic airliner, Concorde stood unique in that it was the only one with any glimpse of commercial viability. Operated until the end of 2003, for 27 years it was the favoured Transatlantic transport of the rich and famous due to its ability to cross the Atlantic in less than half the time of conventional airliners.

It started out as a figment of German aerodynamicist Dr. Dietrich Kuchemann’s imagination; the delta-wing as a basis for supersonic flight. Following an Anglo-French deal his principles evolved into an unsurpassed feat of engineering and aviation history. The first prototype Concorde flew in 1969, and despite declarations of interest from many global carriers, only British Airways and Air France followed through with their orders for Concorde.

Concorde always ran at a loss whilst the government owned it: only when BA was privatised and had been sold the aircraft did it start to make any money. In its best years it made up to £50m in profit. After a fatal crash in 2000, demand for Concorde waned and in 2003 both Air France and British Airways sadly decided to end its service.

History lesson over: the Save Concorde Group in conjunction with French group Olympus 593 are researching the possibility of an audacious return to the sky for this legendary aircraft. Former BA and Air France Concorde engineers are over in France at Le Bourget Air and Space Museum examining the engines of Concorde 213 with a view to starting them up, performing an initial ground taxi and then hopefully firing up those Olympus beauties and flying once again.

It is not intended to bring this plane back into the hands of a scheduled transatlantic carrier, though. This is purely for heritage purposes and it’s not even clear whether they’ll let passengers on it.

I’m lucky enough to have flown on Concorde and it was a world apart from your traditional airliner at the time. Seats were all leather and had tons of legroom unlike the cattle markets we’re used to now. Take off followed the captain reminding us in his typically British pilot’s voice to enjoy the power of the four Olympus engines as we were rammed back into our seats. As the plane lifted from the ground it ascended rapidly into the air and you really felt like you were pointing upwards, blasting off into space (which I suppose wasn’t far from reality). Once at cruising altitude, the champagne flowed, and it was thoroughly pleasant!

I know there was a pretty horrendous crash that with hindsight was preventable, but the trouble with Concorde was that everyone was waiting for it to fail. Once it did, the ravens were circling whilst the project was mauled by just about everyone, leaving the carcass of a once great British icon and sign of when countries do work together they can achieve remarkable ingenuity.

Reportedly, Richard Branson wanted to buy Concorde but British Airways would not sell him the aircraft.

I’d love to see the return of this plane because I think even now it’s an aspirational icon and shows that what may seem impossible can actually be achieved.