Month: February 2017

Alpha Golf, first flew in 1978 but did not enter service with British Airways until 1980 as it remained otherwise unsold by British Aerospace. There are a few pictures of the airframe as a “whitetail” online, looking rather sad without any livery.

Upon entering service in April 1980 water contamination in the hydraulic system resulted in an air intake failure which in turn caused multiple engine unstarts at Mach 2 ! no doubt spilling a little champagne and ending up with a £1 million repair bill.

After this problematic start Alpha Golf went onto operate just over 5000 flights until retirement in 2003 flying the very last passenger service from New York on October 24th that year and along with Alpha Echo and Alpha Foxtrot landing together at Heathrow to  mark the end of Concorde Service.

A very emotional occasion, I know as I was there !

A month later Alpha Golf flew to New York and then on the 5th November with special permission flew from New York to it’s final destination of Seattle in a record time of 3 hours 55 minutes flying Supersonic for a hour over northern Canada and setting a East to West Transcontinental record which stands today.

For the next 13 years the airframe was stored outside the Museum of Flight alongside it’s other large aircraft exhibits including the prototype Boeing 747 and a Boeing VC-137 “Air Force One”. Last year a roof structure was completed bringing Alpha Golf under cover and not a moment too soon as the aircraft has clear signs of damage caused by the Pacific Northwest weather.

And so on to the last Concorde to visit… Concorde 01 G-AXDN at Duxford..

Alpha Echo is a gem, beautifully preserved and very well looked after by a small but enthusiastic team, you could imagine the flight engineer selecting REFLIGHT/START Switch for Engine Number 3 to START and the Olympus 593 spooling up.

Concorde 212 G-BOAE was completed in Filton in early 1977 and entered service with British Airways that summer. Over the next 26 years Alpha Echo operated just over 7000 supersonic flights before finally landing at  Grantley Adams International Airport in Bridgetown on 17 November 2003.  This final flight, taking  just under 4 hours from London, reached the maximum certified height of 60,000 ft.

Barbados is the forgotten regular destination of Concorde,  from the mid 1980’s until the retirement of Concorde in 2003 it was possible to make a Saturday day trip the Caribbean from Heathrow.

With time differences playing in your favour an arrival at 9am in Barbados would mean you arrived before you took off! A few hours later after a quick lunch and paddle you could return on the same aircraft arriving back in London just before 9pm.. Of course most of the holiday makers onboard paying around £6500 for the ticket stayed rather longer than a few hours, but the route did much to cement Barbados as a luxury holiday destination.

The home of Alpha Echo is the “Concorde Experience Barbados” which is a purpose built hanger, with some displays of Concorde artefacts very similar to the Scottish home of Alpha Alpha at East Fortune. A really well made and informative video is projected onto the fuselage which explains many of the technical advances that Concorde represented in simple terms.

The experience is open Tuesday to Saturday and the entrance fee is $40 (BBD)

So my quest continues, sixteen done only two to go…