Round the world in 22 days

I remember during the late 1980s and early 1990s, you could not pick up a Sunday newspaper without being offered the chance to take a flight on Concorde to some very unusual destinations, writes Brian Austin. And for nearly every first flight a special cover was produced. One of my favourite is the Gatwick to Heathrow flight cover, I think the journey was just over 10 minutes.

Only for the very rich, these flights gave an exclusive set of passengers the chance to tour the world in luxury, travelling at supersonic speeds in this iconic plane. For cover collectors, the closest most of us got was accumulating the individual covers for each of the different legs, or like in our example, a multi-postmarked special.

This cover marks the special ‘Five Continents’ flight which took place between 15 August and 6 September 1987. Concorde left

Dallas on 15 August), Tahiti (18th), Australia (19th), Hong Kong (22nd), India (23rd), Kenya (31st), France (5 September) and finally New York (6th). The cover was, of course, carried on the flight and so it must have been someone’s job, on landing, to get the covers to the post office to be cancelled. As you will see there are gaps in the dates, but this would of course allow time for the crew, or I think crews, to rest, and for the passengers to sight see and unwind in only the best hotels!

I have always been a fan of these 10 to 15 covers which usually cost around £75 to £100 each. As mentioned sets of single leg covers are also available, but it is always worth checking that all the covers are still there; if you are missing just one from the set, you will find it very hard to replace and the value will be affected.