Campaigners Call 2012 Concorde Flight 'Realistic'

Campaigners trying to get Concorde back into the sky have insisted their call for a fly-past at the 2012 Olympics is "wholly realistic" - despite British Airways saying just last week that the airliner will never fly again.

The Save Concorde Group is urging BA to help restore Concorde 216, the aircraft which is now on display at Airbus in Filton and was known as Alpha Foxtrot while in service.

The group sees a return to flight as the best possible tribute to Concorde, the achievement of those who built and operated the aircraft, and the country's heritage.

Last week BA reiterated that the supersonic, Filton-built airliner could never fly again.

It said that the decision to retire Concorde in 2003 was "not taken lightly" and that a detailed study carried out with Airbus had concluded that technical problems would make it "absolutely prohibitive" to keep a single Concorde flying on a ceremonial basis.

But the group believes that it could meet the challenge of getting Concorde flying again without any financial input from British Airways.

Ben Lord, spokesman for the Save Concorde Group, said: "We believe that our proposition to have Concorde participate in a fly-past in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics is wholly realistic.

"However, if British Airways still wishes to maintain this attitude that Concorde won't return to the sky, then we ask why the airline continues to retain control over the aircraft.

"We maintain that the release of one aircraft to private ownership would not damage British Airways; the publicity would more probably benefit the company in the long term.

"For some time now, my colleagues and I have been asking British Airways to engage in dialogue with SCG to reveal the true cost of returning Concorde to flight.

"To continue stating that it would be commercially unviable, with no supporting facts, or to say that the release of such information would prove to be commercially sensitive does not make sense."

Oliver Dearden, trustee of the Bristol Aero Collection, which looks after the plane at Filton, said: "We know from visitors to Filton that most would love to see it fly again, but just to put it in the air for one fly past and a couple of air shows a year would be a colossal undertaking, and for all the vast amount of work and money it would take it would probably be best spent on other fleets.

"She wasn't really designed for flight around airshows anyway, she was designed for supersonic travel at 60,000ft.

"Comparisons have been made with the restoration of the Vulcan which is not right because even though the Vulcan has a spectacular shape it is a standard aeroplane. Concorde has very complex systems on it."

The first passenger flight of the 100-seat, 1,350mph plane was in 1976. The plane's safety record was marred by the Air France Concorde crash near Paris in 2000, in which 113 people died.

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