Jaunted

Valentine's Day Travel / Romantic Travel / Retro Travel / Concorde / Airplanes / British Airways / Travel Contests / → All Tags

Mile High Club or Not, You Could Have Valentine's Dinner on the Concorde

The Concorde may technically be dead, but airline romance isn’t, if British Airways’ Valentine’s deal is anything to go by.

A couple of years ago, the UK airline did a neat Valentine’s Day party kinda thing on flights between London and New York; this year, the celebration is on a more personal scale, though still rather spectacular: dinner for two on the Concorde.

The bad news? You’ll have to pay for it. The good? It’s for charity! Just bid for it in a blind email auction, and you’ll win dinner for two on board BA’s flagship Concorde G-BOAC at Manchester Airport, in the Runway Visitor Park.

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Retro Travel: What The Concorde Gave Passengers in 1995

Do you remember the glory days of The Bullet aka The Concorde? Neither do we. Well, we did fly it once back in 2000 from EWR-LHR but we have very little memory of the ride. Sigh, it's true. Everything good is wasted on the young.

But thanks to the mentally ill hoarding meticulous salvaging of our high-flying parents, we now can see what the Concorde gave out to its passengers in fall of 1995--Leather diary planners for 1996.

We've put some snapshots of the billfold/diary planner below for those of you who still get nostalgic about flying The Concorde. And while we don't have any use for a calendar from 16 years ago, you betcha we stole that silver Concorde pencil!

Got any of your own Retro Travel pieces to share with us? Please do!

Travel Ads / Videos / British Airways / Concorde / Airplanes / Pilots / → All Tags

Video Interlude: The British Airways Ad That Put a Tear in Our Eye

We have a confession. Yesterday, somewhere over the northeast, we almost cried on an airplane. No, it wasn't due to some sappy movie on the seatback TV, nor was it because we didn't have time for a second Goose Island beer back at O'Hare Airport. Nope—we shed a single tear over a commercial from British Airways.

At the end of September, the Brit airline launched their newest campaign "To Fly. To Serve." Hearkening back to the glory days of aviation, BA peppers each spot with flashbacks to prop planes and the Concorde, plus their dashing pilots in full, crisp uniform. They're beautiful ads, but none more cinematic and engrossing than the one above.

Another version of the ad is here, but this one has the moneyshots of each plane taking off—from the early days when pilots were glorified mail carriers to the modern era, when lifting a 747 off the ground is just part of a regular day's work.

Enjoy. Keep a hanky handy.

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The Concorde Olympics Livery That Will Never Be

Oh man. We're totally on a roll with finding notable souvenirs this week. Today, in the aisles of a massive tourist shop in the aforementioned town of Llanfair PG, this struck our eye: a Concorde jet model, sporting London 2012 Olympics livery.

This is a unicorn. It is a fairytale, but without a happy ending for the simple fact that no one flies Concordes anymore, and definitely not British Airways, who otherwise could have made this awesome fantasy a reality probably 10 years ago...except London didn't have the Olympics then.

Pink and green...kind of cutesy colors for airplane livery. Regardless, she would have cut a fine line in the skies.

[Photo: Jaunted]

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Sir Terence Conran Had Big Plans for the Interior Design of the Concorde

We're a bit overdue for another ode to the Concorde, so today we look back at a recent interview that Nowness conductors with the great designer Sir Terence Conran. We just don't talk about how great design plays into the way we travel enough, and they've asked Conran specifically about his interior designs for a refit of the Concorde, plans that were never realized since the planes were grounded in 2003 after safety concerns.

Conran, whose sleek, often mid-century modern furniture designs are classics and who is behind some of our favorite stores, The Conran Shops, was all set to revolutionize aircraft interior design with the Concorde refit. His work on the project referenced classic Eames designs to make all 100 privileged Concorde passengers feel more comfortable as well as more stylish, just by sitting there as they flew at a height of 60,000 feet above the Earth.

The brief interview—read all of it HERE—also touches on his idea to change the lighting of the plane once it broke the sound barrier, and what is his concept of modern luxury. It's a beautiful little piece of reading for a snow day like today; it's only too bad we'll never see all of that which he describes.

[Photo: Getty/Gamma-Keystone]

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Continental Airlines is Now a Convicted Concorde Murderer

The remembrance stone in Roissy, France

Just over ten years after the deadly day, a French court has found Continental Airlines guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the July 2000 crash of the Air France Concorde, which took the lives of 109 passengers and crew and another 4 on the ground. So just how did this come to be, that another airline is convicted of murdering the entire flight of another airline? It all goes back to a small piece of metal.

The tragedy of the Concorde AF Flight 4590 is well known, but here's a sentence to refresh your memory: a Continental Airlines DC-10 flew out of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane wasn't properly maintained, and a 12" x 17" piece of titanium (that shouldn't have been on the plane anyways) fell of it onto the runway at CDG. The Concorde took off next, and the metal strip burst a tire, pieces of which then ruptured a fuel tank, which then did all sorts of damage and turned the Concorde into a flaming projectile that crashed into a motel outside the airport. The structural fragility of the areas damaged in this crash caused all Concordes to be grounded for the time being, and all Concordes ceased flying in 2003.

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We Are So Ridiculously Jealous of 'The World's Most-Traveled Man'

You know how everyone always wants to know how to make a living just traveling around the world, but not like a budget traveler...as a business person with an expense account and frequent flyer status? Yea...forget it because Fred Finn has had it all figured out from decades ago, and his jetsetting profession allowed him to experience the best of it, like 3 Concorde trips in one day.

Finn earned the Guinness Book of World Records title "World's Most Traveled Man" when he achieved 7 million miles flown in 1983, but the Daily Mail reports that he holds that title more strongly now, after notching up his total to a ridiculous 15 million miles. Their article on him is a really beautiful story of a man so in love with air travel and the world that he made international business travel his lifestyle. The statistics alone are enough to make airline CEOs stutter:

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Concorde's Next Landing May Be In The Thames

We’ve taken some time to look at where the Concorde has landed all over the globe, but one of the supersonic birds might be on the move. No longer will visitors need to plan a side trip to visit a piece of aviation history, as one of the planes might be taking up a prime slice of tourist trap real estate in London.

Yes, it's true - one of the jets is sitting at London-Heathrow airport, not really doing anything right now, so fans of the plane are looking to move it onto the Thames next to another tourist hotspot: the London Eye. And when we say "onto the Thames", we mean it - it'd be fixed up on a floating pontoon in the river itself.

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Will the 2012 London Olympics See a Return of the Concorde?

Although we think this idea is totally awesome, there’s little to no chance that the Concorde is going to fly again anytime soon. Hopefully we’ll be wrong, and that’s exactly what bunch of rich smarty pants people are hoping as well. A team is starting to check out the condition of the engines on an Air France Concorde, and if all goes well, they'd like to get her up and flying by sometime in 2012.

Right now the supersonic society is gathering at the Le Bourget Air and Space Museum —just one of the spots to see a preserved Concorde—to work on their plans. The funds for this project are coming from the UK-based Save Concorde Group, as well as Olympus 593 based in France. The very first tests will see exactly how many cobwebs are clogging the engines, and if there is any chance of the plane successfully performing a ground taxi.

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Five Supersonic Spots To See The Concorde

We’ve always been a little sad inside that we never flew aboard the Concorde. There’s been little realistic talk of getting another supersonic jet off the drawing board, so unless we win the lotto seven times, we’re stuck going slower than the speed of sound. We’ve kind of accepted our turtle-like pace, so it’s time to set out to see the Concorde in all its museum glory. We can’t promise that it doesn’t smell like moth balls, but here are five spots to dream about what could have been aboard one fast bird.

· Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace
Not too far outside Paris sits The Museum of Air and Space in Le Bourget. This place is probably the Concorde capital of the world, because it has not one but two of the supersonic jets on display. In its collection is the prototype plane which made its maiden voyage in 1969 as well as Concorde Sierra Delta that was active within Air France’s fleet for years. Although not exactly ready to take to the skies, museum officials do fire up Concorde Sierra Delta every once in a while. Entrance to the museum is free, but access to some of the fancy exhibits like the Concorde will set you back 6 Euros—about $8.50.

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Elegance In Flight: Bring Back the Concorde!

Flying these days just ain't what it used to be. Nobody gets dressed up any more, security proceedings just moved from vaguely creepy to downright invasive and four ounces of shampoo is apparently a dangerous weapon on a plane. But what the International Herald Tribune misses most these days is the Concorde -- the graceful jet of yesteryear replaced by the pot-bellied planes of today.

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Throwback Travel: A Concorde Slideshow

Amy from NewYorkology has been obsessively following the Concorde around New York City, and today it returned to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. (The floating plane graveyard reopens November 8.)

In honor of the occasion, we put together a little slideshow of some old-school photos of one of the coolest planes ever built.

Related Stories:
· The Intrepid's Back [NewYorkology]
· Airplanes coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Niquinho]