Club Concorde Wants To Put a Concorde Back In the Air

The Verge (relying on The Telegraph) reports that the Concorde, grounded since just a few years after the disastrous loss of flight 4590 in 2000, may yet fly again, with the help of a private coalition of Concorde enthusiasts that's already managed to raise $160 million. ("A massive war chest," says Jalopnik.) The Verge explains that Club Concorde ("a club for all things Concorde, run by ex-Captains, ex-charterers and people passionate about Concorde") would like to buy two of the existing but idle Concordes, turning one of them into a ground-based tourist attraction for gawking and for dining on Concorde-style meals. But as for the second? The more ambitious initiative is to purchase the second plane, have it restored, and get it in the air once more. Concorde Club president Paul James is aiming to resume flights by 2019, while the tourist attraction would be opened around 2017 if all goes according to plan. British Airways and Air France have no plans to resume commercial Concorde flights, meaning it would likely cost quite a lot of money to grab a private ticket if and when the plane gets off the ground again.

Comments

Re:Nostalgia is nice

[istartedi]

Concorde was the future. When I was a kid, I sometimes caught glimpses of it around Dulles airport near DC, and as a young man I got to see some fantastic take-offs. I'd like to see commercial SST and humans on the Moon again in my lifetime. I was too young to have a clear memory of the latter. All I have is a vague memory of being kept up late for a change because "he should see this", and a lot of people being proud of what we were doing. We've regressed to not have these things, even if they are only for a select few. We've learned a lot since then. We can probably do it much more efficiently and safely now.