Concorde Leaves Brooklyn for the Intrepid

I am glad they fixed her up. She was looking pretty sad not to long ago.

On 21 Oct 2003 this is the same Concorde I flew on from London to New York, I had the happiest time of my life.

G-BOAD (the Concorde in these photos) is a world transaltantic record holder, on 7 Feb 1996 she flew from London to New York in 2 hours 52 minutes 59 seconds.

Before my flight we saw the sunset, we left London-Heathrow at 7pm and flew in to a black sky. 20 mins later as soon as we'd reached mach 2 (twice the speed of sound) we started chasing the setting sun. 5 mins later we'd caught the sun and saw the sunrise, 30 mins later saw "the midday sun" but at the same time in London the it was night time and the sky was black outside.

After this we beat the Sun to New York and 30 mins after landing we saw the 2nd sunset of the day.

No other airliner, not even the "new" Airbus A380 or the "new" Boeing 787 will can ever do the above or match her speed, so not all "new" things are good.

In Nov 2003 when G-BOAD and her sisters where retired I felt utterly gutted and deeply sad as Concorde still had a lot of life left in her and should have been kept flying until we'd got "son of Concorde".

Although she's retired my interest in Concorde will never die and I love the plane as much now as I ever did.

In July 2008 I heard her nose was accidently broken off that hurt like hell as the plane means a lot to me. But looking at these photos she's been repaired and looks "brand new", she looks as good as the day I flew on her.

The 3 photos are brilliant and I wish I could have been in New York to take the above photos with the guy who took these.

It should not have been retired.

She's still quite a beautiful thing to behold.