Where in the world: Touring the skies in the Super Sonic Concorde

How many of you remember the short-lived Super Sonic Concorde planes? Strange looking flying objects, weren’t they?

They were much smaller than jumbo jets of the day. Long and slender with a spiked nose and wings that looked like an enormous moth.

As one of the perks for high sales at the travel agency where I worked in Houston, I was honored with a special flight on British Airways Concorde, along with other colleagues.

The travel agency was offering a package trip flying to London on the Concorde and returning on the Queen Mary cruise ship.

During that time, the Concorde was also chartered by someone in Tucson, Ariz., for a different trip, so the Concorde had to fly to Tucson to originate the flight.

Since they had no scheduled service to Tucson, the plane would have flown empty, so we were offered a complimentary flight because of our promotion with British Airways.

We were first flown to New York where we spent a night, then boarded the Concorde the next morning.

The interior of the plane seemed very small, long and narrow, with only two seats on each side. It was, however, very luxurious with leather seats, if I remember correctly.

Then came take-off. Oh, my!

It was like being in a rocket blasting into the skies.

After the seat belt sign went off, we were served breakfast with champagne. I guess that’s what celebrities have for a breakfast beverage!

In route we were advised that we were going to break the sound barrier somewhere over a western U.S. desert, and shortly make our descent into Tucson.

The most exciting part of the trip was the approach for landing.

Since all the media and half of Tucson were out to watch the landing, the pilots circled the city a couple times for the spectators to see the beauty of this marvelous plane.

Maybe that was showing off, but it was thrilling to us and to the spectators on the ground as well.

My airline, Braniff International, had a brief encounter with the Supersonic Concorde, placing an order for a Mach 3 SST, the Boeing 2707, as early as 1964.

However, the 2707 was too costly to take flight and Congress cancelled the program in 1971.

For a short while, Braniff had an interchange schedule with both British Airways and Air France Concorde service where it would fly to DFW and fly back to Washington D.C. the next morning and continue on to Europe.

The first domestic Concorde service began on January 12, 1979, and it ended June 1, 1980. I will write more later about Braniff International Airways; it’s rise and fall.

“…life is short and the world is wide.” – Simon Raven