Concorde’s Heathrow Home At Risk

0

Officials at London’s Heathrow airport say they just can’t find a good spot to display their Concorde and may have to get rid of it, a prospect that has Concorde fans up in arms. “The Queen of the Skies should now be the Queen of Heathrow,” said Ben Lord, spokesman for the Save Concorde Group. Instead, the airplane has been shuffled around from place to place, and is now stored behind a maintenance hangar. Earlier this year, the airport tried to sell off the airplane to a buyer in Dubai, but the deal fell through. Plans to display the Concorde in British Airways’ new terminal also did not materialize. “Heathrow is the world’s most congested airport and finding a permanent location is not proving straightforward,” an airline spokesperson told the London Times. “We are looking at a number of options for the aircraft including a permanent home at Heathrow but have not made any decisions.” Lord said his group would vehemently oppose moving the airplane. “Heathrow played a vital role in the 27 years of Concorde’s commercial lifetime, and it’s critical that Alpha Bravo remains there,” he said.

“We don’t deny that finding a suitable location at Heathrow is a difficult issue,” Lord said. However, the London Olympics are coming up in 2012, and he hopes to have the display issue worked out before then. “We’d even go so far as to say that we wouldn’t expect BA to pay for this and we would put a fundraising initiative in place to raise the funds needed to relocate Concorde to a new, permanent location,” Lord said. “Alpha-Bravo” (G-BOAB) is one of 20 Concordes that were disbursed to airports and museums around the world when the fleet was grounded in 2003.

LEAVE A REPLY