Renewing a supersonic acquaintance
It was strange seeing an old friend from 40 years ago. In some ways we have both changed a lot but in others we remain the same.
On the outside, she didn’t look very different from when we used to rendezvous most nights at 9pm when she had just flown in from New York.
As a young news agency journalist, one of my regular and most exciting tasks was to greet the late evening Concorde which often had a full complement of high flying businessmen and, of more interest to Heathrow hacks, some A-list celebrities.
Rock stars, from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, film actors promoting their latest movie, and the occasional Person in the News, all were usually quite willing to spare a few moments for the assembled handful of reporters and photographers meeting them at Terminal 3, when it was a more modest building of the 1970s and 80s.
But those glory days of Champagne and caviar are behind Concorde Alpha-Delta, and this particular supersonic jet — which first flew in August 1976 — is now a museum piece aboard the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier in New York.
I don’t know how many times I met this particular Concorde on my nights shifts at Heathrow for the Brenard Press agency, but I feel certain that I met her many times, hoping to interview some of her famous passengers.
I never got to go inside a Concorde, let alone fly on one, not on £15 a week, and the nearest I got was watching them through the window of a departure lounge at Terminal 3.
It was a very wet New York when I turned up for my Concorde tour, but had been warned that you had to book early as 20 was the maximum number of people allowed on any one viewing.
The heavy rain worked in my favour, as I was the solitary visitor going on the tour. The young guide went through the 1960s ambitions of France and Britain to beat Boeing in the race to go supersonic for passenger travel.
Alas the combination of rising fuel costs, very noisy engines, limited passenger capacity and the tragedies of 9/11 and French Concorde crash put an end to the supersonic dream.
On the deck of the US aircraft carrier Intrepid Museum in New York*
But my memories of Concorde remain in aspic, and it was a pleasure to sit in the seats of an surprisingly narrow cabin, and to sit in cockpit. I was allowed to close the door, but not before I was warned to keep my fingers free of the handle mechanism. The old girl can still bite! It was good advice, otherwise I would have been a one-handed freelance.
But the past is past, and now I have a new challenge to conquer, that of a freelance journalist.
*The Intrepid Museum complex on Pier 86 in New York now hosts a range of military aircraft and the Enterprise Space Shuttle.
To learn more about Concorde Alpha-Delta go to the Intrepid Museum webpage here
