Addendum
Deciding the fate of the British Airways Concorde
May 1st 2018
Sir Rod said he had been at British Airways about six months when the French lost a Concorde out of Charles de Gaulle [airport]. Read More » “We can still see in our minds the footage of that terrible accident. Subsequent to the accident, airworthiness authorities rightly grounded the plane,” he said.
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“We had to make three substantial modifications to it. We had to put Kevlar lining in the fuel tanks. We had to get Michelin to make new tires and we had to change the wiring in the undercarriages, which was where the spark originated. That took 18 months. We put ours [Concorde] back into the air, as the French did, in November 2001, two months after 9/11.
“There were a couple of things that meant the end. Leaving it on the ground for 18 months to do all the modifications created a terrible corrosion problem. Secondly, a lot of customers stayed away, not so much because of the Air France crash but more to do with 9/11. We had been operating with a 75% load factor. After it was put back in air it was 25%, so we decided to retire it.
“We took the decision about March 2003, but I knew a lot of people had it on their bucket lists so we ran it to October 2003. We put some cheap fares on it so people had a chance to fly on it [before it was retired]. It was a sad day, but it was the right decision.”
