Shot by Dennis Toeppen. Enjoy the last supersonic flight for paying passengers. Schedule: Depart LHR 6:30 pm Arrive JFK 5:30 pm. We arrived before we departed. The return flight on 10/24/2003 was invitation only. Comments are now moderated. English only and proper punctuation and caplitalization, please. Emoticons are not punctuation. This is a classy place, not a Spirit gate at EWR.

Here's another trip, exactly four months earlier: [ Ссылка ] Please subscribe. Thank you.

10/23/2003 starts at about 19:15

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Some users have commented that it looks small, crowded, etc. I can attest that the seats are perfectly comfortable. Also, I had plenty of legroom, which is not typically the case. I didn't feel crowded for a moment.

I wanted to ride Concorde ever since I saw one at EAA in August, 1988. The accident in 2000 made me think I had missed my chance. But then Concorde was fitted with Kevlar fuel tank liners and they began flying again. Spring 2003 Airbus announced they would be withdrawing support for the aircraft, which meant it could no longer fly. AIr France shut things down as fast as they could, because they were losing big $$ on Concorde. BA decided to send it off in style. They offered discounted fares and filled more or less every seat for the final 6 months or so.

I have a history of being present for funeral runs. I wanted to get on the last flight. But at the time of the discontinuance announcement, BA could not tell me when the last flight would be. So I settled for 6/23/03 and rode then. There is a video of that trip on YouTube.

After the trip, the local paper did a travel section story about my trip. A few weeks after my trip, BA announced the final flights: the last trip for paying passengers would be 10/23/03 - exactly 4 months after my first flight - and last trip with passengers (invited) would be 10/24/03. I immediately called BA to book a trip on the last flight for paying passengers, but the flight was full. I got on the waiting list. My position: number 100! Since capacity of plane was 100, that meant the entire plane would have to turn over before I'd get a seat. That was not likely to happen!

I sent a letter to BA's CEO along with the newspaper story about my trip. I mentioned that I was hoping to be on the final trip, and I offered to do my best to get BA more favorable press if I was able to ride.

In late August, I got a call from BA reservations. They said I'd cleared the wait list and I needed to decide if I wanted a ticket right then, at full fare ($7500). That was a very stressful moment. But I knew I had to do it, so I whipped out my credit card and bought my ticket.

My initial seat assignment was in steerage (behind the bathrooms). But I managed to get a front cabin seat assignment at the last minute - while waiting in the departure lounge.

Here's another user's video of the takeoff. It's kind of odd to look at that and I know I was on it.
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