Concorde to fly today

By BARRIE CLEMENT

LONDON - A British Airways Concorde is scheduled to take off today on the first test flight aimed at bringing the supersonic aircraft back into passenger service in September.

The BA planes have been grounded since 15 August last year after an air France Concorde crashed near Paris killing all 109 passengers and crew as well as four people on the ground.

Captain Mike Bannister, the airline's chief Concorde pilot, will be at the controls of today's three hour 20 minute flight, which will initially follow the plane's normal passenger route to New York.

The supersonic aircraft will fly out over the Bristol Channel and begin accelerating to supersonic speed south of Swansea, heading for the south coast of Ireland. West of the republic, instead of heading for New York, it will turn right, climb to 60,000 feet and reach its maximum speed of 1,350mph towards Iceland.

The aircraft, with flight crew and engineers aboard, will then turn back to Britain and head for RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, where it will be checked by engineers in preparation for further test flights.

All Concordes have been modified since the disaster near Paris which happened after a metal object on the runway at Charles de Gaulle airport, burst one of the plane's tyres. Parts of the tyre ruptured a fuel tank causing a catastrophic fire.

Each of BA's seven Concordes is being fitted with new Kevlar-rubber fuel tank liners to avoid any repetition of the accident. The wiring in the undercarriage has also been strengthened.

Both BA and Air France, which has five remaining Concordes, hope to resume customer-paying supersonic services in the next few months. Air France has operated the plane between Paris and an engineering base in southern France, but today will be the first time the plane has flown at supersonic speed since summer 2000.

For Concorde enthusiasts the flight heralds the return of the world's most beautiful aircraft, but for green activists it is the revival of the "dirty old man of the skies" because of the amount of pollution they say it causes.

- INDEPENDENT