Western Daily Press (Saturday)
The final flight: Twenty years since
Eugene Byrne looks back to the day 20 years ago that Concorde landed in Bristol for the very last time
THE weather on Wednesday, November 26, 2003, was no better or worse than you’d expect for the time of year. Intermittent heavy showers were broken by spells of cold sunshine and a blustery wind. Sometime after eleven that morning there was a heavy hailstorm.
But that didn’t stop almost everyone in the city quitting work or taking an early lunch-break. By about 12.30pm the number of Bristolians still indoors was very small indeed.
People crowded at vantage points everywhere. On the roofs of buildings, on the Downs, over by the Suspension Bridge. As primary school teachers herded children onto playing fields across the city, police officers were preparing to temporarily close the A38 around Filton.
Concorde 216, the last airliner ever to be built in Bristol, was coming home for the last time.
All the other Concordes in the British Airways and Air France fleets had now been grounded. This would be the very last Concorde flight ever.
Never again would she grace the skies, and nobody wanted to miss a proud and poignant historic moment.
The M32 outbound was also choked with traffic from Bond Street to the M4 and roads leading to the Downs, another viewing point in the city, were also congested.
The final flight had taken off from Heathrow at 11.30am, with Captain Paul Douglas at the controls. Captain Les Brodie took over before the plane went supersonic over the Bay of Biscay.
Many had thought the honour of flying the plane would have fallen to BA’s chief Concorde pilot Mike Bannister, but he gave his colleagues the chance after piloting Concorde on its last commercial flight from New York to London on October 24. He chose to sit at the back of the cockpit for the entire flight.
The plane was filled with British Airways staff. Some had worked on
That was the end of her flying days, but then that feeling was soon overtaken with feelings of joy. She’s come home, where she belongs OLIVER DEARDEN
Concorde for the entire 27 years she was in service with the airline.
The weather cleared, and with a rainbow over the Avon Gorge, she flew over Bristol, over the Suspension Bridge, and over Filton at around 12.45pm.
She then banked south towards Portishead and Clevedon to complete a lap of honour over the city. Some women cried, while hundreds, if not thousands, of grown men reassured wives and girlfriends that it was just the wind that was causing their eyes to redden and water.
Concorde 216 touched down at Filton at exactly 1.08pm.
Pilot Les Brodie brought her back home more than 24 years after her maiden flight left the airfield on April 20, 1979.
Around 20,000 people, including Airbus and Rolls-Royce staff, and 3,000 lucky Post readers, had gathered at the airfield to welcome her home. They clapped and cheered as she landed.
Soon afterwards, a restored Spitfire swooped low over the supersonic jet as she taxied along the runway.
The rain started again moments later.
Until then, it had been by no means certain that any Concordes would return to Bristol at all.
Earlier that same year, nearly 8,000 people signed a petition as part of our sister title the Bristol Post’s Bring Her Home campaign, calling for Concorde 216 to be retired to Filton.
Many other cities and museums around the world wanted a Concorde. What stuck in the throats of many people, for instance, was the fact that two of them had gone to the United States, one to New York and one to Seattle.
This was the same country which had done its damnedest to destroy Concorde as a commercial proposition. It was American politicians who had denied her the right to fly into the States in the first place on spurious environmental grounds. At the same time, coincidentally or
not, the United States was attempting to develop a supersonic airliner of its own…
Later the same day, she was moved to Filton’s historic Brabazon Hangar for decommissioning. The flight recorder and the store of Dom Perignon champagne were taken out, and over the next few days she was drained of unused fuel and oil.
In the coming years she would be put on display to paying visitors within her own compound on the Filton tarmac before finally taking pride of place in the new Aerospace
Bristol museum, which opened in 2017.
Back on that sad/wonderful day in 2003, Oliver Dearden, curator of the Bristol Aero Collection, which would go on to form the basis of the Aerospace Bristol museum, told the Post’s reporter: “As the engines were turned off and they wound down, that was the moment I had a lump in my throat. That was the end of her flying days, but then that feeling was soon overtaken with feelings of joy. She’s come home, where she belongs.”