Mike Bannister - Concorde: The thrilling account of one of the worlds fastest planes

MIKE BANNISTER is an aviation consultant and former pilot. He became the youngest pilot on the Concorde fleet in 1977, was appointed British Airways Chief Concorde Pilot in 1995 and regularly flew as captain on all of the aircrafts routes worldwide. He was at the controls when BAs supersonic flagship returned to service in November 2001, and commanded and flew the final Concorde commercial flight from New York to London on 24th October 2003. By the time Concorde retired, Mike had amassed over 9,200 Concorde flight hours around 6,900 at supersonic speeds.

For over ten years he was extensively involved as an expert witness and lead technical advisor in the Air France Concorde Trial. He now runs an aviation consultancy and resides in Middlesex, UK.

To my very long-suffering family,
who I took to The Edge of Space

25th July 2000

The starboard flank of the QE2 soared above us. Some confusion over our sailing time meant wed arrived at Southampton Docks an hour late. Our bags were in our cabin; the ship was about to sail.

We were halfway up the gangplank when my pager went off and my mobile phone rang at the same moment. I glanced at the message on the pager: Call BA. Most urgent.

I was patched through in seconds to the duty manager at our Heathrow Emergency Centre.

Mike, Ive got terrible news, he said. Theres been a crash a Concorde crash.

The details were sparse and coming in as we spoke. Air France Flight 4590 had slammed into a hotel on the edge of a small town called Gonesse, 2 miles from the end of runway 26R at Pariss Charles de Gaulle airport.

My wife Chris, a former cabin service director, was part of the BA family too. She immediately knew how serious it was and didnt need me to tell her what this meant for our much-anticipated Atlantic crossing. Our daughter Amy had been so excited she hadnt talked about anything else for months.

As soon as I hung up, she touched my arm. Dont worry about Amy or me, Mike. Just do whats right.

I called the driver. Within a beat, hed turned around and was heading back to the Ocean Terminal.

Chris, meanwhile, spoke to the Cunard check-in desk about rescuing our bags, whilst trying to explain things to one very disappointed six-year-old.

While waiting for the car to arrive, I called my counterpart in Air France. In the background, as he picked up, I could hear sirens the distinctive, discordant wail of French emergency vehicles.

Curiously, as the only two airlines to operate the worlds most exclusive passenger plane, there hadnt been more than cursory contact between BA and Air France Concorde crews for many years. When I became BAs Chief Concorde Pilot in 1995, I made an effort to put that right. Edgar Chillaud and I were still getting to know each other, but I already respected and liked him a lot. The fact that my opposite number at Air France was now at the crash site shocked me. Id assumed hed be at their equivalent of our crisis centre.

Everything, it is burning, he said. It is terrible, Mike. Truly terrible

I mumbled something about the possibility of survivors.

I dont think there could be. Most of the wreckage, and thus the people on board, were contained within the impact site.

He told me the name of the pilot: Christian Marty, a Concorde veteran. Captain Marty had made a name for himself in 1981 as the first person to windsurf across the Atlantic.

Our Concorde crews were a close-knit family; Air Frances, being smaller, were even closer. My presence on the call suddenly felt like an intrusion. I could only imagine Edgars pain and grief as he confronted the full horror of the disaster.

As the car pulled up beside us, Chris and I agreed that she and Amy would go home and the driver would then take me to Heathrow. I climbed in beside him and had hardly fastened my seatbelt before he said: Have you heard? Theres been a terrible Concorde crash. Everyone killed.

Without a pause, he proceeded to tell me what had caused it and that it was the end of that beautiful aircraft. I said nothing because I was already patched into a conference call with David Hyde, BAs director of safety and security, Alan McDonald, the airlines director of engineering, and Geoff Want, general manager of operations. For a while, we were joined by Rod Eddington, the chief executive.

We went through the options. At one end of the spectrum, we could continue as normal this was an Air France accident; we should maintain a stiff upper lip and carry on. At the other was the nuclear alternative: halting all Concorde operations indefinitely. Continuing as normal got my vote. As tragic as this was, I said, if we responded purely emotionally, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to come back from it. Emotions, unlike facts, were hard to push against; facts we could deal with.

At the back of my mind was the knowledge that Concorde had become a Marmite issue inside BA. For many of the senior execs, she was love it or hate it. A number of them, including some now on the call, saw it as a massive drain on the airlines resources and had been looking for excuses to kill it. Others me amongst them saw it as a huge asset. Until this moment, the aircraft had operated for twenty-four years largely without incident or interruption and there was no reason why she shouldnt carry on unless the evidence told us otherwise.

I was still on the call when we dropped off Chris and Amy.

The Emergency Centre was a few miles up the road. Its interior reminded me of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, with TV screens on the walls and banks of computer monitors on its many desks. Profound shock and sorrow were etched on every face as I walked in.

It was now coming up to 18:00.

A series of nightmarish images had started to appear on one of the giant screens. A still shot by someone close to the end of Runway 26R showed a massive jet of flame streaking from the Concordes left wing, just inboard of the two engines, moments after take-off.

Video footage taken on a camcorder by a passenger on a passing truck tracked the stricken aircraft for several more seconds. It was almost unbearable to watch: her back end now ablaze, a trail of smoke darkening the sky.

Air France had immediately cancelled all its Concorde operations for the duration. As a mark of respect, we decided that we would cancel our next one, Flight BA003 to JFK, scheduled to depart in a little over an hour.

As the night wore on, we coordinated our strategy in response to the emerging details.

The aircraft had been chartered by a German company, Peter Deilmann Cruises.

The one hundred passengers had been on their way to board the cruise ship MS Deutschland in New York City. From there, they would have steamed south on a 16-day cruise to Ecuador.

The flight had been running late.

Metallic debris on the runway had blown a tyre.

Fragments of the tyre had cannoned into the underside of the port wing, causing an A4-sized hole in the fuel tank between the Number 2 Engine and the fuselage.

News from Paris indicated that the French authorities were already zeroing in on a titanium alloy wear-strip that had apparently dropped off the engine reverse-thrust mechanism of a Continental Airlines DC-10-30, which had left for Newark five minutes earlier.