Yes they did, bloody strange they want it now, it could have gone to a whole host of museums in the UK. Still they could've sold them to Branson and they'd still be flying.......
Still a daft Goverment gave the US all of our Jet engne & Supersonic secrets in the 40's so what do you expect.
Funny old world. WWII, Brits, Yanks, & Russkies have no operational jets. Later conflict in Korea, saw conflict between Yanks with ME derived engines in F86 and Russkies with Brit engined Mig 15's......./forums/images/icons/crazy.gif
Saw a fleeting glimpse between clouds and heard that wonderful roar for the last time yesterday as the final one left LHR for Filton. For years they announced a tea break and time for gin, I'll miss that.
One of seven actually.. plus 001 which is at Filton plus the AF remainder fleet
A few misconceptions about the US input into the programme. It was always funded by us and the french although a number of airlines (Pan AM and TWA) did commit extensive resource at Filton during early development.
Oil crisis..programme would have been history if not for Anglo/French belligerence (stupidity)...
For real saddos you may rememer that BA flights were co-branded with Braniff being the US internal operating carrier to Dallas in early days. So not quite fair to say the septics killed it. It takes a Brit airline to do that properly. a la Comet, Trident, VC10, BAC 1-11 ettttcccc.....
Also in respone to an previous erroneous post BA did pay for Concorde , plus paid for spares/development AND underwrote development/production costs from c. 1984... so I'm led to believe
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Im far too young to remember all this but I thought that if it wasnt for the USA concorde would have had nowhere to fly to, as everywhere else had not wanted to buy it or let it fly over them?
Not sure, but got the impression at the time, that because the US got their nose out of joint over it, they started the ball rolling and the others just blindly followed suit for no good reason.
Interesting post on Shufflebum a while ago from a chap working for the first airline to cancel its options on the Concorde as soon as it become obvious to them the thing was never going to make any money for his airline on the proposed routes they wanted to fly.
<hr width=100% size=1>If it aint broke fix it till it is.
If my memory is working OK, I believe 17 airlines actually took options to purchse Concorde (including luminaries such as IranAir). I think only 3 made firm orders .......we all know 2 but you may be surpised by the third, can anyone name them ?
History will always argue about who took the first options ...only the BAC bosses know the truth to that; although I suspect Pan Am.
First to cancel were Pan Am and TWA... I would argue that they could have made money ( and still be around today!!) as the original purchase price was around £16m......1.e. peanuts in terms of the aircraft life...
I think the most options open to purchase at the 'peak' was around 78
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