Concorde’s demise

Think back 5 years or more, and any visitor around the Heathrow area, and quite often in the centre of London, would hear the mighty roar of 4 Olympus engines a few times a day and most people would stop and stare. The impressive sight that was Concorde doing what it should be doing (flying of course) was enough to make most people take a moment out of their hectic days to stop and watch. Concorde was unique (let’s not get into the discussion here around the building of the Tupolev Tu-144 “Konkordski”), and always turned heads.

Now fast-forward to the present day. Concorde is nothing more than a museum piece now. Retired before its time was up, and resigned to gathering dust in various places around the world. Only 20 were built and so there are very few places around the world when you can now see them, one of these places being New York. Originally bound for the USS Intrepid floating aviation museum, Concorde “Alpha Delta” (G-BOAD) is currently sat in a yard in Brooklyn while the Intrepid and its home pier undergo repair works. Now you’d assume that anywhere that such a prized asset is stored would take care of it and make sure nothing could happen to it. Apparently not…

One of AD’s side windscreens is now showing signs of cracking, the nose has been knocked off when the aircraft was hit by a truck, and birds have taken to nesting in several areas of the fuselage. A sorry state for the once magnificent supersonic jet.

So why does The Sun (not something I normally read!) have to make such a pigs ear of reporting this (see article here). In the article they claim that “its windscreen cracked by footballs and its engines are full of birds’ nests”. I mean come on. You seriously expect people to believe that a jet that used to travel faster than the speed of sound had windscreens that weren’t even tough enough to withstand a football? Please. And if birds are nesting in it’s engines then someone should be quite worried as the only aircraft flying with Olympus engines nowadays is the Avro Vulcan (which has just returned to the airshow display scene). Now I know the reputation of this particular paper and so you can take it all with a pinch of salt. Just makes you wonder whether the story is there to report the demise of a once glorious airliner, or drum up more bad feeling towards America amongst the knuckle-dragging (allegedly) readership that it prides itself on having…