Wednesday 14 January 2015

Bill remembers his Concorde flight

Val says we were never lucky enough to fly on Concorde but it flew majestically over Henley at 7 most  nights when it was flying. Seeing the poster with Concorde on made me remember Bill's post

With reference to Concorde, I actually flew from Bahrain to Heathrow on the supersonic jet in 1978. I was working on chicken farms in the middle east and the company I worked for paid for standard return flights from Jeddah to London, so I paid  an extra £100 to fly Concorde which meant Jeddah-Bahrain-Heathrow. It was worth every penny!
The inside of the plane was small with two seats on either side and I could not stand up straight in the middle.
There were only about thirty passengers on the flight, there was a digital clock in front of you informing you how fast you were going, I remember it reading Mach2.2. The service was first class all the way, flying about 55,000ft altitude and I could see the curve of the earth. You could stand a coin on edge there was so little turbulence and we the Captain telling us when we went supersonic, although I did not hear the sonic boom.
The flight took 2hr 15 min which was incredible and yes you were served champagne and caviar!
One coincidence was one of the crew had the same rare surname as myself and came from the same area as my father, so we could have been related.
Bill Abley

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