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dedicated to the British Aircraft Corporation / British Aerospace / Sud Aviation /Aérospatiale Concorde, and to Filton Airfield near Bristol, UK, where the British Concordes were assembled.
This is my own
personal view of the aircraft drawn mainly from personal experience of growing up in Filton whilst Concorde was being developed.
All the photographs used so far on this site were taken by myself except for the photos of the model of 202 on its trailer. You may well ask how did I manage to take a photograph of the
Bristol Brabazon flying over Filton Airfield when the aircraft was scrapped before I was even born! Well, the answer is that the “Brabazon” shown is actually a very accurate radio controlled
flying model with a wingspan of about 14 feet. I believe it was the model built by John Menhennet and was being flown over Filton airfield on the same day as the Concorde 25th
Anniversary flights. I couldn’t resist including it in the section on the Brabazon hangar (‘Birthplace’).
This is very much an emerging site and I welcome comments - both constructive and otherwise! I have also placed question marks at various parts of the site - you have to remember that I
was at primary school when Concorde was being developed and therefore much of this site represents a very young person’s eye view of things. As I write this some 35 or so years later I
may therefore not be entirely accurate with some of my memories. If you would like to contact me to confirm or correct any doubtful points please e-mail me at andy.buckley@ntlworld.com.
I have been building this site over the last few months as part of a Vision2Learn online web
course - in fact I started this before the shock announcement that Concorde was to be retired prematurely. I suppose, like thousands of others, I was hoping that the great white bird would
not retire before at least 2010 or so and that I would eventually get to have a flight. Sadly this is not now to be.
Unfortunately I missed the last flight into Filton due to illness but I’m grateful to the BBC’s
website - especially BBC Bristol - for the extensive coverage which you can watch on the BBC’s website if you have Realplayertm. Here’s the link to the BBC’s Concorde pages. My brother and sister were both there in the crowd of thousands on the A38 at the end of the runway watching
216 come in so I may be able to scrounge some images off them in the near future.
More recently I was lucky to be visiting my parents when Concorde 202’s fuselage left for Brooklands on 5th June - you can see some of the images I took including a first experiment with multimedia.
I was very pleased to hear that the last Concorde to be built at Filton (216) was to return to its birthplace and to take pride of place in the proposed museum of aviation at Filton Airfield.
Although I understand that it is not proposed to allow any Concorde to fly again in the future - the costs are apparently just too
prohibitive - wouldn’t it be wonderful if Concorde 216 was allowed to do a fast taxi down Filton’s Runway 27? If the XM655 Maintenance and Preservation Society can do it with their Vulcan V Bomber then why not BA/Airbus with Concorde 216? It’s enough of a tragedy
that we won’t see Concorde in the air again - especially as, to my mind, nothing else flying today comes close. It would be a real
shame if those Olympus 593s were never fired up again and Concorde allowed to roll, maybe even get the nosewheel off the ground... what do you think?
You can share your comments in my Guest Book - please do leave a note to say you called!
Andy Buckley
Most recent update 08/05/06 Please note: This website copyright Andy Buckley 2003 - 2006. Images used on this website are copyright by Andy Buckley unless
otherwise stated and must not be reproduced without permission. Images have a Digimarc ‘watermark’.
