Icon ready to land more records

IT’S taken almost a year of painstaking work but Golf Bravo Oscar Alpha Alpha - Lothian’s own Concorde - is now back in one piece and ready to face her public.

And it’s likely to be quite a sizeable crowd - within the first week of tickets going on sale on March 4 for the Museum of Flight’s newest resident, more than 200 group bookings had been made.

From Wednesday, those eager fans will be able to tour the plane which flew the world’s first supersonic passengers from London to Bahrain in 1976.

It’s the culmination of National Museums of Scotland’s triumph back in October 2003 in successfully laying claim to one of just seven supersonic aircraft from a worldwide field of 60 bidders.

As Gordon Rintoul, NMS director, says: "We have been overwhelmed by the level of interest, both national and international, in the acquisition of this iconic aircraft.

"Now carefully installed at the Museum of Flight, Concorde and its supporting exhibition offer an exciting new experience for all the family."

The highlight of this visit is the on-board tour of the jet itself. In keeping with the aircraft’s exclusive image, visitors will have to book a place for a 40-minute tour of the jet - although the price isn’t quite so harsh at an extra £3 on top of the £5 to get into the Concorde Experience.

A standard return from London to New York used to cost Concorde passengers £6636.

Audio handsets will guide visitors through the cabin where they can view the original seating and decor - not forgetting to look out for the Queen’s favourite seat, A1. Visitors won’t be allowed to sit on the seats, though, for "conservation purposes".

In the cockpit, the complex instruments used by the pilots and flight engineers to take Alpha Alpha to speeds of more than 1350mph - almost twice the speed of sound - will be on display.

But those who don’t book in to walk on the hallowed carpet in the plane’s narrow cabin can still follow the history of supersonic flight under the elegant nose of the 110-tonne jet in a ten-section exhibition called the Concorde Experience housed in its giant hangar home.

It begins with the race for supersonic flight and the designing and building of Concorde itself. It was a joint operation by Air France and British Airways and although the name means harmony or agreement, the French and the British still argued about whether there should be an "e" on the end of the word.

There is also a virtual tour of Concorde, to see what it would have been like on board. And being on board Concorde was quite unlike travelling in any other aircraft.

As the exhibition will explain to visitors, as the jet flew higher than other aircraft, at 60,000 feet, close to the edge of the stratosphere, passengers could see the curve of the earth and the blurred line where night meets day.

Flying on Concorde was, of course, the ultimate in elitism. All the seats were first class but there was an unspoken rule about who sat where - royalty and celebrities at the front, chief executives in the middle and the "trip-of-a-lifetimers" at the back.

Even the crew had a stricter hierarchical system than other planes - to become a Concorde pilot required 25 years’ airline flying experience.

Cabin crew were only allowed to work on Concorde for three years, such was the demand for posts.

The exhibition also invites visitors to leave their comments as to whether the plane was a gas-guzzling environmental monster - it consumed 25,629 litres of fuel every hour - or a technological marvel.

It also looks at the 2000 Concorde Paris crash in which 113 people died and which spelled the beginning of the end for the aircraft, ultimately leading to its retirement.

And of course much memorabilia will be on display, those little touches which helped hold the public’s fascination with Concorde over its near 30-year career.

There’s a Concorde toilet - graced no doubt by many a famous bottom - and a pair of seats designed by Sir Terence Conran for the 2001 re-fit.

THERE’S also a set of British Airways Concorde table ceramics and cutlery, in use from 1976 to 1985.

No plastic knives and forks were ever allowed on Concorde; there were champagne flutes and silver cutlery, for meals which included caviare, roasted quail and fresh lobster.

And for those fascinated by the technical side, there’s a Rolls-Royce Olympus prototype Concorde engine and a machmeter, used on the plane’s test flights.

And it is the power of this aircraft to captivate the public which museum chiefs are hoping will see a steady stream of visitors - and businesses in East Lothian hope will inject an estimated £20m into the local economy over the five years.

It’s unlikely to fail - hundreds of spectators flocked to see the plane make its final journey last April when it arrived in Lothian by barge.

At that stage, the aircraft was missing its wings, tail and undercarriage - they had been removed to allow one of the most complex transportation exercises ever undertaken in Britain.

The reassembled jet was supposed to have gone on show last summer, but the job of putting the aircraft back together, by Air Salvage International, proved more difficult than originally thought.

Thousands have visited the museum even just to see the plane being reassembled from a special observation platform.

So perhaps it’s not unexpected that the one part of the exhibition which doesn’t provide a definitive answer is the section which asks why the aircraft continues to fascinate.

Perhaps it’s best summed up by Brian Trubshaw, the Concorde test pilot, whose quote is included in the exhibition.

He said: "I’m still impressed to think of all those people having their roast beef and champagne behind you while you’re cruising at a speed slightly faster than a rifle bullet."

• VISIT CONCORDE FREE! Don't miss your Evening News tomorrow for your chance to be one of the very first visitors to Concorde. We have an exclusive allocation of tickets to be won. Full details will be printed tomorrow, Tuesday March 15